'External paper-hanging', or the pasting up of advertising posters on every available square foot of space on walls, fences, hoardings, etc., reached epidemic proportions during the 1830s and 1840s, one of the things that encouraged the practice being the exemption of such posters from the tax levied on newspaper advertisements. Advertising vans, parading the streets at a walking pace, constituted a major nuisance to other traffic. W. Weir, writing a chapter on 'Advertisements' in Vol. 5 (1843) of Charles Knight's London (1841–4), comments:
Read more...
