Horrible Murder Committed at Enfield Chase, upon the Body of Mr Benjamin Danby, a young Man, aged 24. With the Apprehension and Committal of the Murderers

Crime broadside printed with an account of the murder of Benjamin Couch Danby aged 24 on 19th December 1832 at Enfield Chase. Printed by James Catnach the broadside includes a woodcut engraving depicting the murder and concludes with verses. The broadside notes that Danby was stabbed to death, the motive being robbery. William Johnson was subsequently convicted of the murder of Danby and publicly executed at Newgate on 7th January 1833.

Broadsides recounting particularly gruesome and scandalous crimes and murders were mass printed and cheaply sold to Londoners by street hawkers and travelling pedlars. Primarily published by a small number of printers many of whom, such as Thomas Birt, James Catnach and James Pitts were based around the Seven Dials area of London the spelling and grammar was often poor and the details not always accurate. This broadside was printed by James Catnach, the most famous of the Seven Dials jobbing printers who opened his printing business in Monmouth Court in 1813. On Catnach's death in 1842, the business was continued by his sister and her children. Up to 250,000 copies of such broadsides were quickly run off the printing presses to satisfy the public's appetite for sensation. Woodcuts and type-faces were used so often that they were often ' worn to a degree of indecipherability that hid their almost complete irrelevance to the text they were supposed to illustrate.'