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Yet their prosperous, middle-class readers were avid for crime stories.On a random day in the month of Weare’s murder, the four pages of
The Times
consisted of two pages of advertisements, two columns of news, a few letters, some birth and death announcements; and the rest of the paper was entirely given over to police, trial and magistrates’ court reports. The
Morning Chronicle
similarly gave the majority of its editorial space to crime on a regular basis, continuing a long tradition of prurient upper-middle-class love of crime: the
Gentleman’s Magazine
had, between 1731 and 1818, reported on 1,172 murders – over one a month for nearly a century.
    Pierce Egan, one of the most famous journalists of the day, claimed to have interviewed Thurtell as he awaited trial. Egan had started as a sporting journalist, writing
Boxiana, or, Sketches of ancient and modern pugilism
in 1812. In 1821 his
Life in London, or, The day and night scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom,
illustrated by the Cruikshank brothers, a comic story of two young swells on the razzle, was wildly popular. Imitations and even outright plagiarisms quickly appeared, as well as several stage versions. As a member – albeit a more respectable one – of the fancy, Egan dealt with Thurtell’s story as sympathetically as possible, while still maintaining an appropriately shocked tone. * His piece was very much for slightly raffish men about town, presenting Thurtell as a ‘foolish young [man] from the country’ whom the professional gamblers had ‘picked up as a
good flat
[an easy dupe]; and the rolls of country
flim-seys
[banknotes] which he brought with him to town, were soon reduced … The
Swell Yokel
as he was first termed … was hailed as a rare customer; and numbers were on the look out to have a
slice
of his
blunt
[piece of his money]…Mr. Weare was one of this number: (he was what is termed in the sporting world a dead nail [a crook]), a complete sharper [swindler].’
    Thurtell in this version is not only naíve, but even cowardly. Egan gives a history of incidents where Thurtell had issued challenges, or pretended to, but was not actually willing to fight. This is all done very delicately, by imputation rather than outright statement. After telling the history of the fire and the arson trial, Egan concludes, ‘It is decidedly the opinion of Thurtell’s most intimate friends, that his conduct for the last two years, had been more like that of a madman than of a rational being.’
    This seems kind when compared to the newspapers. Long before the trial began,
The Times
printed a stream of vitriolic – and completely unsubstantiated – stories. On 6 November it told its readers that ‘Thurtell is reported to have been with Wellington’s troops at the siege of San Sebastián, where he lurked behind the lines to murder and rob a fallen officer,’ and he was reported as saying of this victim, ‘I thought by the look of him that he was a nob, and must have some blunt about him; so I just tucked my sword in his ribs, and settled him; and I found a hundred and forty doubloons in his pocket!’ This was one of the few stories that was denied in print, as commentators noted that 140 doubloons would be so heavy the possessor would not have been able to walk. Nothing daunted, that same day there was another story about Thurtell, saying that in his lodgings the police had found an air-gun in the shape of a walking stick, cunningly painted to look like wood, although nothing more was ever heard of it. Four days later, a story appeared about one James Wood, Thurtell’s supposed rival for the supposed charms of Miss Caroline Noyes, Mrs Probert’s sister. Wood was said to have been decoyed into an ambush in a tenement, where he was attacked by Thurtell with a pair of dumbbells.
The Times
added, as proof of this remarkable story, that a search of the building had produced a set of dumbbells. And on the same day the paper