“We have received expresses from the Celestial Empire”: breaking news from China in nineteenth-century Punch

On 22 August 1841, The Sunday Times called out The Times for calling out The Morning Chronicle for publishing fake news. The Sunday Times noted that The Times had not only also published the same news that The Morning Chronicle had published, but that The Times did so in two different sections of the same paper, once in a “City-article,” where the news was identified “as ‘a hoax’ and, as such, ‘believed everywhere’” and again in a section with news from Paris where it was “the prominent feature” and reported “as if it were gospel” (“The Times and the Herald,” 1841). The news was about an imperial edict issued by the Emperor of China banning the export of tea and rhubarb. The news was published in The Times a day after The Spectator had been careful to question “the authenticity of the intelligence” (“Postscript,” 1841), and, in fact, The Times had also speculated that the story may have been planted “for the sake of immediate return” in the Parisian press by “Mincing-lane,” which was the center of the tea and spice trade, a suggestion that led The Sunday Times to quip that The Times was “skilled in the mystery of concocting news for special purposes” (“The Times and the Herald,” 1841). The Sunday Times, notably, also pointed out that The Times had first reported the ban on 3 August 1841 and was, therefore, a potential source for the original story published in The Morning Chronicle. On 28 August 1841, one week after The Sunday Times called out The Times, Punch, or The London Charivari also reported on “the last order of the government, prohibiting the exportation of tea and rhubarb” in “Important News from China. Arrival of the Overland Mail!” (74), the firstever article about China to appear in the periodical (74). Unlike The Times, The Sunday Times, The Morning Chronicle, and The Spectator, Punch sourced the news about the export ban to “expresses” that came directly “from the Celestial Empire” by way of Punch’s “own private electro-galvanic communication” (74). Punch further asserted that this “rapid means of transmission” carried “dispatches so fast that” the writers for Punch “generally get them before they are written” (74). Reports about the export ban appeared in newspapers throughout August of 1841 and provided Punch with the perfect opportunity to play the foil. Not only did the news involve an empire with which the British Empire was at war, but the story also displayed an absurdist wit that aroused uncertainties associated with the presence of China in the lives of the British: what was British culture in the nineteenth century without things