Mrs Georgina Weldon (1837-1914) took many different types of revenge on the men who had plotted to have her unjustifiably certified insane. One of her funniest coups was to hire sandwich-board men to parade up and down all day outside the West End home of Dr Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow, lunacy specialist and private asylum proprietor. Emblazoned on their boards were the words “Body Snatcher”. Much hilarity resulted. And then she sued him.

At 2s and 6d a day, sandwich men were a relatively expensive way to advertise, or to publicise the  wrongs committed against you, as Mrs Weldon did. The men themselves didn’t see much of the money, though, as this 1872 interview with “an animated sandwich” (as they were also known) reveals. The sandwich told this tale to the holy man who interviewed him (though I do suspect there is some “added colour” to the testimony):

“You see as how sandwiches never can get on, ’cos we’re a broke-down lot. Why you should see us affor’ we starts with our boards, all a rubbin’ our rheumatisms or a coughin’, so as it is wonderful how we gets on. But lots of us is respectable, though we ain’t always honest, as we get into a public house instead of crawling, and there we enjoys our pipes and talks. Why, one on us is a queer old man what had a good business in the muffin line, and it’udd make you stare if you heard the poetry he makes up, and then you would laugh, and then your eyes would water like.

“Well, today he brings in a new song all by hisself, and it all ends with what is called, ‘The man what walks in the gutters’. And it’s a correct account of how we are looked down on, and shows that none of our old pals will shake our paws, as it’s awkward like when your harms pop out of your side like serampores at the railway; and then it shows that it’s no good to police the men what gets drunk, and fine ’em five shillings, the correct thing being to make ’em sandwiches for a week with ’vertisements about them teetotal meetings. And then nobs would mayhaps have to do the boards, which would helewate the perfession, as all what they does helewates.”

Source: The Man With the Book; or, The Bible Among the People by John Matthias Weylland, 1872.

 Below: images of animated sandwiches in London in the 1870s.