Broadside entitled 'Trial and Sentence'

Commentary

This crime report begins: 'A Full, True and Particular Account of the Trial and Sentence of Thomas Beveridge, who is to be executed on the 2d of December next, for the Murder of his Wife, on the 2d of October, 1831, and his body given for dissection'. This sheet was printed for George Craig and sold for a penny a sheet.

Beveridge was condemned for battering his wife, Janet Greig, to death with a heavy household implement and then trying to conceal his crime. This crime and the subsequent events were perpetrated in Little Jack's Close in the Cannongate, Edinburgh. There are many different people mentioned in the report, as the sensational details of the courtroom drama are relayed to the public.

Reports recounting dark and salacious deeds were popular with the public, and, like today's sensationalist tabloids, sold in large numbers. Crimes could generate sequences of sheets covering descriptive accounts, court proceedings, last words, lamentations and executions as they occurred. As competition was fierce, immediacy was paramount, and these occasions provided an opportunity for printers and patterers to maximise sales.

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