3-034-868 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Newsboys with latest accounts of the Prince of Wales, 1871. The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) suffered - and survived - an attack of typhoid fever (the illness of which his father had died 10 years earlier) while at his home at Sandringham in Norfolk. 'The medical bulletins issued by the physicians of his Royal Highness three or four times a day were instantly telegraphed to London, there being a private telegraph office in Sandringham House, and inquiries as to the Prince's condition were promptly answered by the same means...We in London shall not easily forget the intense eagerness of all classes of our population, last week, to get the morning, mid-day, and evening news from Sandringham. The sale of the Echo, Globe, and other papers in the afternoon by the active little boys who are so busy at certain hours in the Strand was a scene of excitement that must have struck the attention of every passenger. It was not the less brisk for the opportunity of reading copies of the medical bulletins displayed in many parts of the City, at the police-stations, the post-offices, and in shop-windows, or behind the railings of courts and gardens'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.