Quality - Fitness for Purpose

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho Ad Min

Just out of interest.....how did it get attached to this thread?

The thread started out admirably enough (as a discourse on quality of textual musings) and then careened out of control into a discussion on the sales of certain magazines. It was then on page 17 in a fit of pique, the ever honourable Mr P stated "I am now putting up a poll" and that was that.

And my theory was that the smell of suplhur emanating from the few posts after the stated poll erection kept people away from it?

p

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho

This mutated into a Sims arena at the time but seeing as it is now revitalised (or at least back on my radar), here is an interesting little snippet from dagonet (which is no doubt reproduced elsewhere although I have not seen it in the appropriate dissertation over on t'other site) which is indicative, to my mind, of the nascent Ripper "Industry" which, I beleive, in its proto-state was more honest - no one was interested in respecting the victims but would rather read about who it was who liked to cut into full breasts of maidens and such like.

To-day is market-day in Lugano. The
greatest crowd is round a man who is displaying on
a pole an enormous and highly-coloured picture of
a man dripping with blood, who is stabbing a very
decolletee lady in blue silk. The banner is labelled in
huge letters, 'Jack, l'Assassino di Londra ! Lo
Sventratore di Donne !' The man is doing a roaring
trade in a penny book which is no less than the life
and adventures of our old friend Jack the Ripper.

The country people who have come from the
mountains and the valleys are positively trampling
each other down in their eagerness to purchase
copies, and presently the vendor raises his price from
a penny to twopence. What a reputation has Jack
made for himself! All over the world he is famous.
Gladstone is not in the same street with him as a
European celebrity. Such is fame !

p

[admin tim]

I take it back, Mr. Poster, the software does allow polls to be added to an existing thread. That option didn't used to be there and I don't know when it first became available. So maybe things aren't as dire as I had intimated they were.

But I hadn't read the whole thread and didn't see the part about adding a poll. The thread and poll were hard to find amongst the many dozens of others in that forum, but it does explain why it wasn't with the other polls.

Thanks for the background.

[Chris G.]

Hi ho

This mutated into a Sims arena at the time but seeing as it is now revitalised (or at least back on my radar), here is an interesting little snippet from dagonet (which is no doubt reproduced elsewhere although I have not seen it in the appropriate dissertation over on t'other site) which is indicative, to my mind, of the nascent Ripper "Industry" which, I beleive, in its proto-state was more honest - no one was interested in respecting the victims but would rather read about who it was who liked to cut into full breasts of maidens and such like.

To-day is market-day in Lugano. The
greatest crowd is round a man who is displaying on
a pole an enormous and highly-coloured picture of
a man dripping with blood, who is stabbing a very
decolletee lady in blue silk. The banner is labelled in
huge letters, 'Jack, l'Assassino di Londra ! Lo
Sventratore di Donne !' The man is doing a roaring
trade in a penny book which is no less than the life
and adventures of our old friend Jack the Ripper.

The country people who have come from the
mountains and the valleys are positively trampling
each other down in their eagerness to purchase
copies, and presently the vendor raises his price from
a penny to twopence. What a reputation has Jack
made for himself! All over the world he is famous.
Gladstone is not in the same street with him as a
European celebrity. Such is fame !

p

This may be from Sims but note the following found at http://www.sciabolata.com/cordel.htm. Who here knows Italian?

I fatti diversi

Oggi i quotidiani dedicano una o più pagine alla cosiddetta "cronaca nera", ma la naturale curiosità intorno ai fatti fuori dell'ordinario, ancora più intensa se si tratta di eventi violenti e tragici come la morte e i delitti, è sempre esistita. Per soddisfare questa sete di notizie, quando i giornali non erano ancora tanto diffusi e la gente leggeva poco, si potevano trovare nei mercati e nelle fiere foglietti e libriccini illustrati che raccontavano i cosiddetti "fatti diversi" cioè la cronaca nera di quei tempi. Erano prodotti molto poveri ma anche allora gli stampatori sapevano bene che, per attirare la massa dei lettori, bisogna insistere sugli aspetti più terrificanti e straordinari. Per rendersene conto basta scorrere alcuni titoli come, per esempio, Delitto infame avvenuto a Roma, Inaudito delitto di quattro assassini vestiti da frate avvenuto nei boschi di Palma nuova, Falsi carabinieri e carabinieri veri: fatto successo a un contadino, Un giovanotto tagliato a pezzi e dato in pasto a 36 maiali in Sardegna, Una ragazza assalita da tre giovani e vendicata dal fratello, Il terribile e spaventevole omicida Antonio Stifel, Il raccapricciante delitto di Moltrasio. Molti titoli insistono sulla parola "orribile": L'orribile scoperta nell'osteria di Belvedere, Orribile attentato di tre assassini ad una giovane diciassettenne, Orribile scena di sangue avvenuta nelle Marche, Orribili delitti commessi da un pericoloso latitante che uccise suo padre e altre due persone, e così via. Chissà poi quali erano i fatti reali a cui si riferivano; è vero che in alcuni foglietti si raccontano delitti rimasti famosi (per esempio Jack, l'assassino di Londra, detto lo sventratore di donne) ma più spesso i dati sui protagonisti sono incompleti e lo svolgimento dei fatti narrati sembra piuttosto inverosimile. [Emphasis mine.]

Purtroppo oggi non è facile trovare copie dei vecchi opuscoletti popolari di cronaca nera che, considerati di scarso valore economico ed artistico, venivano probabilmente gettati via dopo l'uso. Fa eccezione la Civica Raccolta di Stampe "A. Bertarelli" di Milano che conserva, fra l'altro, l' esemplare che qui vi presentiamo. Essendo andato perduto molto materiale non si può stabilire con certezza quando si è diffusa la moda di questi opusculi, anche perché molti di essi sono privi di data e lo stile popolare resta quasi invariato anche a distanza di decenni; comunque sappiamo che gli esemplari più antichi conservati alla Raccolta Bertarelli risalgono agli ultimi venti anni dell'Ottocento. Con maggiore precisione si può datare invece la fine del fenomeno, come testimonia una nota manoscritta che si trova in margine a un altro racconto in versi di Guido Langianni: "Impedita dalla polizia la diffusione di questo tipo di fattacci". Verso la fine degli anni Trenta, infatti, per presentare all'opinione pubblica un'immagine positiva dello stato italiano il regime fascista al potere aveva deciso che, se proprio i crimini non si potevano impedire, si poteva almeno fare in modo che nessuno ne sapesse niente. Allo stesso modo, poco dopo, furono proibiti la cronaca nera dei giornali e i romanzi gialli; per gli amanti del brivido e del delitto incominciò un lungo periodo di astinenza.

Ci risulta invece che in altri luoghi l'uso dei libretti popolari sia ancora diffuso. Nel 1987 potemmo constatarne l'esistenza nei mercati del nord del Brasile, citati anche dal grande romanziere Jorge Amado con il nome di "storie di cordel" (la nota dell'edizione italiana di Teresa Batista stanca di guerra specifica che si chiamano così perchè il venditore le espone al pubblico appese ad una corda).

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho ChrisG

All I know is that it came from Dagonet Abroad....

But it does seem to refer to the same Italian text as mentioned in this part of teh Italian text you provided:

"Who knows what were the facts to which they relate, it is true that in some leaflets are told remained famous crimes (such as Jack, the murderess of London, called the Slayer of women) but more often data on the protagonists are incomplete and narrated the course of events seems rather improbable.
Unfortunately today is not easy to find copies of old pamphlets popular crime reports that, considered of little economic value and artistic, were probably thrown away after use. One exception is the Civic Collection of Prints "A. Bertarelli in Milan which houses, among other things, the 'original, which we present here. Since we lost a lot of material we can not determine with certainty when there is a widespread fashion these Opuscula partly because many of them are not dated and the style is still popular almost unchanged even after many decades, however, we know that the earliest examples preserved in the collection date from the Bertarelli last two decades of the nineteenth century."

p

[Chris G.]

Hi ho ChrisG

All I know is that it came from Dagonet Abroad....

But it does seem to refer to the same Italian text as mentioned in this part of teh Italian text you provided:

"Who knows what were the facts to which they relate, it is true that in some leaflets are told remained famous crimes (such as Jack, the murderess of London, called the Slayer of women) but more often data on the protagonists are incomplete and narrated the course of events seems rather improbable.
Unfortunately today is not easy to find copies of old pamphlets popular crime reports that, considered of little economic value and artistic, were probably thrown away after use. One exception is the Civic Collection of Prints "A. Bertarelli in Milan which houses, among other things, the 'original, which we present here. Since we lost a lot of material we can not determine with certainty when there is a widespread fashion these Opuscula partly because many of them are not dated and the style is still popular almost unchanged even after many decades, however, we know that the earliest examples preserved in the collection date from the Bertarelli last two decades of the nineteenth century."

p

Thank you, Lars.

C

[Sam Flynn]

This may be from Sims but note the following found at http://www.sciabolata.com/cordel.htm. Who here knows Italian?

I can struggle through it, Chris - although a lot of this was beyond me. "Google Translate", therefore, to the rescue, with some emendations and clarifications by me:

DIFFERENT FACTS

Today's newspapers devote one or more pages to so called "crime reports" but a natural curiosity about unusual facts has always existed, even more intense when it comes to violent and tragic events like death and crimes. To meet this thirst for news when newspapers were not so widespread and people read little, one could find in the markets and fairs little picture books that told the so-called "Different Facts" of the crime news of the day.

These publications were very poor, but even then printers were well aware that in order to attract the mass of readers, they must insist on the most terrifying and extraordinary. To realize this, just examine a few typical headlines, such as - for example - "True Story! A young man cut into pieces and fed to 36 pigs in Sardinia"; "Girl attacked by three youths and avenged by her brother"; "The terrible and terrifying homicidal Antonio Stifel"; "The gruesome murder of Moltrasio". Still more titles insisted on the word "horrible": "The horrible discovery at the Inn"; "Horrible attack of three murderers on a seventeen year old"; "Horrible scene of blood"; "Horrible crimes committed by a dangerous fugitive who killed his father and other two people"; and so on. Heaven only knows the facts to which they related.

It is true that some leaflets told the tales of famous crimes (such as Jack, the murderer of London, called the Slayer of Women), but more often than not, the data on the protagonists were incomplete, and the narration of the events seemed rather far-fetched. Today, unfortunately, it is not easy to find copies of these old pamphlets. These once-popular crime reports, being considered of little economic and artistic merit, were probably thrown away soon after use.

One exception is Bertarelli's Civic Collection of Prints in Milan. Since a lot the material is missing, we can not determine with certainty when the fashion for these tracts was at its height. Many of them are not dated, and furthermore the style changes little, even after many decades. However, we know that the earliest examples preserved in the Bertarelli collection date from the last two decades of the 19th Century. We can date the end of the phenomenon with greater accuracy, as evidenced by a handwritten note in the margin of a story, in verse, by Guido Langianni: "The police prevented the publication of this sort of nasty business." In the late 1930s, the Italian fascist regime was in power and, in order to present a positive image of itself, it decided that if crimes could not be prevented, it could at least make sure that no one knew about them. Similarly, shortly after, crime reporting in the newspapers and books was banned. For those who sought their thrills in crime, a long period of abstinence was to follow.



(The rest I can't make much sense of... although it doesn't add much to the above.)

[Chris G.]

Very fine. Thanks for that, Gareth. Well done.

C