Had the signs murdered only the king’s English, it might have been forgiven; but even the lives of his majesty’s subjects were not secure from them; for, leaving alone the complaints raised about their preventing the circulation of fresh air, a more serious charge was brought against them in 1718, when a sign in Bride’s Lane, Fleet Street, by its weight dragged down the front of the house, and in its fall killed two young ladies, the king’s jeweller, and a cobbler. A commission of inquiry into the nuisance was appointed; but, like most commissions and committees, they talked a great deal and had some dinners; in the meantime the public interest and excitement abated, and matters remained as they were.
In the year 1762 considerable attention was directed to signboards by Bonnell Thornton, a clever wag, who, to burlesque the exhibitions of the Society of Artists, got up an Exhibition of Signboards. In a preliminary advertisement, and in his published catalogue, he described it as the “EXHIBITION OF THE SOCIETY OF SIGN-PAINTERS of all the curious signs to be met with in town or country, together with such original designs as might be transmitted to them, as specimens of the native genius of the nation.” Hogarth, who understood a joke as well as any man in England, entered into the spirit of the humour, was on the _hanging committee_, and added a few touches to heighten the absurdity. The whole affair proved a great success.[37]
This comical exhibition was the greatest glory to which signboards were permitted to attain, as not more than four years after they had a fall from which they never recovered. Education had now so generally spread, that the majority of the people could read sufficiently well to decipher a name and a number. The continual exhibition of pictures in the streets and thoroughfares consequently became useless; the information they conveyed could be imparted in a more convenient and simple manner, whilst their evils could be avoided. The strong feeling of corporations, too, had set in steadily against signboards, and henceforth they were doomed.
Paris, this time, set the example: by an act of September 17, 1761, M. de Sartines, Lieutenant de Police, ordered that, in a month’s time from the publication of the act, all signboards in Paris and its suburbs were to be fixed against the walls of the houses, and not to project more than four inches, including the border, frame, or other ornaments;--also, all the signposts and sign irons were to be removed from the streets and thoroughfares, and the passage cleared.