Procession, Dirge and Funeral Solemnities of King George IV

Souvenir broadsides commemorating royal events and pageantry were a popular form of street literature in London. Mass printed by small back street printers, often based in the Seven Dials area of London, they were sold cheaply by street hawkers and travelling pedlars. James Catnach, the most famous of the Seven Dials jobbing printers opened his printing business in Monmouth Court in 1813. On his death in 1842, the business was continued by his sister and her children. Up to 250,000 copies of such broadsides were quickly run off the printing presses to satisfy the public's appetite for celebrity and sensation. Woodcuts and type-faces were used so often that they were often ' worn to a degree of indecipherability that hid their almost complete irrelevance to the text they were supposed to illustrate'.

This letterpress broadside is printed with an account of the 'Procession, Dirge and Funeral Solemnities of King George IV' who died on July 15th 1830. It includes a wood engraving depicting Britannia in mourning beside an urn marked 'George the Fourth'. The Dirge on the King's Death comprises nine verses, the 'elegiac ballad' three verses.