The maintenance and transmission of memory through media : a murder in broadside ballads, news periodicals, and oral tradition

Abstract

This study uses a 1907 quadruple homicide to present the different ways that information was presented by broadside ballads, news periodicals, and the oral tradition. Broadside ballads, which were akin to tabloid journalism and commemorated important events as one-page hard-copies of song lyrics, were losing popularity at the time, and news periodicals, like newspapers and magazines, represented the most accessible source of information for the broader social strata. Both helped to transmit and, later, maintain the memory of the infamous crime. This text focuses on similarities and differences in the reporting, including the choice of topic, sourcing, transmission of information, work with audiences, and authorship. Drawing on primary sources and present-day recapitulations, it analyses the ways in which memory was maintained (and not maintained) through these media. In addition, the study analyses the passage of information through oral folk tradition and collective and community memory, and their mutual influences.