UNPRINCIPLED MONKEY-FACE (1843)
Newspapers in the early 1800s had fewer guidelines to follow than today’s papers do.
The only serious standards editors were certain to follow back then were those concerning making money and keeping the number of libel lawsuits down.
One Manhattan newspaper, The Subterranean, truly lived up to its name in terms of the depths the owners would go to expose the dirt of others living upon the island at the time.
“If the unprincipled, monkey-faced blackguard with dirty whiskers, who works in a cooper’s shop in First street, near Avenue A, does not desist in his disgraceful annoyance of the young ladies in Houston street, we shall strip the hide off of him,” the paper’s editor wrote, in an attempt to sully the already low reputation of a certain character residing in what would be today’s Bowery.
“We have been informed that he stole two work bags the other evening, and would have committed other depredations, were it not for the timely interference of a young butcher, who chastised him on the spot.”
The Subterranean, which was “committed to the interests of the working classes” and was written for at one time by Walt Whitman, was literally replete with colorful stories about various “fanatical traitors, bigoted sectarians, speculators, robbers, bankers and brokers…”
According to the American Antiquarian Society, who wrote a story about the conservation of a copy of the 1843 newspaper, “People were named outright, so it’s not surprising these papers were found in the N.Y. District Attorney’s office for possible slander lawsuits.”
It’s also not surprising that barely anyone recalls The Subterranean. Containing the unfiltered and unsubstantiated diatribes that you might expect from a modern-day Donald Trump, the paper likely folded after just a few years.
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