Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Favourite Xmas pressie? It would be invidious to pick one, but My Trade by Andrew Marr, a gift from the Rainy Day sister, is close to the top of the list. Subtitled "A short history of British journalism", the book provides a panoramic tour of the "trade" that has propelled Marr to his position as Political Editor of the BBC. Expect many excerpts from it here in the coming weeks.

Marr is particularly entertaining when it comes to answering the question: What is news? His search for a suitable definition takes him back as far as the 1680s and the emergence of the English newspaper. By the beginning of the 19th century, he say, the Observer was printing items that would make the front pages of the Sun today. An example from 18 January 1829 entitled "Extraordinary Investigation: or the Female Husband" concerned a "person known as James Allen, 42" who had been working for a Mr Crisp, a shipwright, when he was killed by a piece of falling timber. He was rushed to St. Thomas' Hospital where, the report continues:

"An examination took place, when, to the astonishment of all present, it was discovered that the deceased was of the female sex. Mary Allen, who had been married to the deceased for 21 years, on hearing of the accident, flew to the hospital and was present when the sex of the deceased was discovered, and was very evidently no less astonished than any of the others positively declaring that she had never before known that her husband was a woman. Both the coroner and the jury expressed their astonishment of so extraordinary a circumstance of two females living together as man and wife."

The report goes on to say that "James Allen" never seems to have had sex with Mary and was generally considered "of rather an ill temper" and would beat her "if she noticed a man particularly". The word "lesbian" does not appear notes Marr, who adds that today's reader would demand Mary's side of the story. In 1829, however, the age of the interviewing journalist equipped with shorthand had not yet arrived.