''The Illustrated Police News'' was a weekly illustrated

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...

which was one of the earliest British tabloids. It featured sensational and melodramatic reports and illustrations of murders and hangings and was a direct descendant of the execution broadsheets of the 18th century.

History

IllustratedPoliceNewsSeptember1888AnnieChapmanJacktheRippera

''The Illustrated Police News'', first published in 1864, was inspired by ''

The Illustrated London News ''The Illustrated London News'' appeared first on Saturday 14 May 1842, as the world's first illustrated weekly news magazine. Founded by Herbert Ingram, it appeared weekly until 1971, then less frequently thereafter, and ceased publication i ...

'', which had been launched in 1842 and revealed that newspapers with illustrations could achieve high sales. Its standards of illustration and tone were reminiscent of an earlier publication, ''

The Newgate Calendar ''The Newgate Calendar'', subtitled ''The Malefactors' Bloody Register'', was a popular work of improving literature in the 18th and 19th centuries. Originally a monthly bulletin of executions, produced by the Keeper of Newgate Prison in Lo ...

'', and the popular "

penny dreadful Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to ...

s". It gained a reputation for sensationalism during the

Jack the Ripper Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer w ...

murders of 1888. Around the turn of the 20th century ''The Illustrated Police News'' ran numerous articles dealing with the "alien immigration question" that promoted

xenophobic Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...

attitudes and paranoia amongst its mostly working-class readership. ''The Illustrated Police News'' ceased publication in 1938.telegraph.co.uk
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In popular culture

The 2011 film '' Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows'' includes scenes in which characters are reading copies of ''The Illustrated Police News''.

Notes

References

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External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Illustrated Police News, The Publications established in 1864 Publications disestablished in 1938 Defunct newspapers published in the United Kingdom Weekly newspapers published in the United Kingdom 1864 establishments in the United Kingdom