The Dominion SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1927. PUBLIC MORBIDITY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 18, 15 October 1927, Page 10

The Dominion SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1927. PUBLIC MORBIDITY

Amongst yesterday’s Press cablegrams appeared a story of amazing scenes at the funeral of a girl typist who had been foully murdered. Some 25,000 people, we are told, crowded about the girl’s home, along the two-mile route to the cemetery and in the vicinity of the graveside. Foot and mounted police kept back “screaming and weeping women, dozens of hats being lost in the crush.”

There is nothing very unusual, for the Old Country, about this display of public morbidity. It has happened many times before. The point about such scenes is that they are an anachronism in a present-day British community. The cause is not far too seek. It could be removed if those responsible for the excitation of public morbidity over such events could be induced to refrain from promoting sensations with no other object than to make money out of them. Of the 25,000 people, who by their morbid curiosity made it necessary for a police parade to maintain order, probably not more than a hundred at the very outside had any personal acquaintance with the victim of the crime. To the remaining thousands she must have been a total stranger. To New Zealanders born 'and bred such happenings in a British community are really amazing. That they could occur in their own country is inconceivable. Yet in the Old Country it has been a growing custom for people of a certain class and temperament to flock to the scene of a crime, struggle for vantage points of view, and contend fiercely for relics. The trial of a criminal is made the occasion for a kind of Roman holiday, and is not infrequently attended by crowds of fashionable women.

The cause, of course, is the competitive yellow Press sensationalism which has been an increasing and regrettable feature of certain sections of ‘the British daily Press. Largely on account of the unwholesome activities of this section the recent restrictions on the reporting of divorce proceedings were enacted. We were told the other day that as the result of these restrictions there had been a very substantial increase in the number of divorce cases, the implication being that publicity is the best kind of deterrent. That is quite true, but only up to a point. It is not true of sensational publicity, which merely forces sensitive people to spend the rest of their lives in misery rather than face the morbid gaze of the sensation-mongers. In a more brutal age, not long distant, public hangings drew large crowds of sight-seers, who indulged in jeering remarks, directed at the unfortunate wretches who were about to die. The spirit which prompted these revolting exhibitions is precisely the same which attracted those 25,000 people to the funeral of a girl whose existence a week before had been unknown to most of them. The danger of sustaining and stimulating this kind of morbidity is that it is likely to react on weakly-balanced individuals, who may be tempted to commit crimes for the sake of mere notoriety. The power of this kind of mental suggestion is a well-known and accepted scientific fact.

We have, very fortunately, practically very little yellow Press journalism in this country, and the virtue of this wise discrimination is manifest, amongst other things, in our comparative freedom from crowd morbidity. One of the things which strike the visitor to this country from overseas is the wholesome appearance and content of our daily Press. This is due in large measure to the tradition which our newspaper pioneers inherited from the best class of British journalism. If such displays of morbid vulgar curiosity as have happened in England should ever occur in this country, it will be largely because the growth of a sensation-mongering Press has been encouraged by public support.