The authorities have always tried to regulate pavement art by any means possible; today, the high street is in danger of dying through lack of trade, and still, the artists, and buskers who bring life and vitality to our streets are having a hard time of it.
It was no different back in 1871, as this little article proves:
The wayfarer in London has doubtless occasionally noticed on the pavement some highly-coloured work of art—a mackerel, somehow or other, usually being a stock subject with the artist; and a beautifully chalked inscription, involved in some very complicated flourishes, has informed the looker-on that the accomplished artist, who crouches down behind his chef-d’oeuvre, is out of work, and has a wife and seven children; or something of that sort.
Poor fellow, the pavement artists’ occupation is gone, or going. The Metropolitan Board of Works has no feeling for such art, or for the artist; and the former is now declared a penal offence and the latter liable to punishment.
SUSPICION: Punch cartoon from 1872
At first glance this may be regretted; but if it be true, as I have heard, that man behind the pavement drawing was seldom the real artist, and that some other mendicant “did it for the trade,” why that lessens one’s regret. As for the advertisers who are henceforth forbidden to stencil their announcements on the pavement, one has no pity for them. This is not legitimate advertising. Moreover, it must be very annoying for a tradesman to have plastered all over the pavement in front of his shop the advertisements of a rival in the same trade—very!
Published in the Alnwick Mercury (Saturday 18th March 1871)
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