July 13, 14.51pm
It's been a big week for the outside event arm of London's publicists.
By lunchtime today the wanted posters for William Hornet outside Cannon Street advertising the Last Days of Newgate (see yesterday's post below) had disappeared replaced by a one sheet newspaper reporting his arrest, trial and sentence (quick justice) and on the back the result of the first Oxford/Cambridge boat race. It also contained an advert for the book.
Again passers-by seemed to be interested but on this occasion I suspect it had more to do with the wenches in period costume handing them out. They looked the part with grubby, dirty faces too.
Working feverishly away alongside them were modern costamongers handing out copies of Standard Lite, the lunchtime freesheet, wrapped by a mocked-up four page copy of the Daily Planet reporting the return of Superman.
Amazing really, that at a time when newspapers are supposedly under fire from new media and rapid technological change that they are still viewed as such a powerful medium. The ploy was certainly working today.