Urban modernity: cultural innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution

Levin, Miriam R.; Forgan, Sophie; Heßler, Martina; Kargon, Robert H.; Low, Morris

doi:10.5860/choice.48-4017

Cited by 5 publications

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“A Fascinating Show for John Citizen and his Wife”: Advertising Exhibitions in Early Twentieth-Century London

Taylor¹

2017

Journal of Social History

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One late November morning in 1920 crowds began to gather outside White City in Shepherd's Bush, lured by what had been billed as "London's brightest event this winter." 1 At noon, with what the Daily News reporter thought must be "among the longest queues ever seen even in London" assembling outside, a speech by President of the Board of Trade, Sir Robert Horne, opened the International Advertising Exhibition. 2 Nine thousand people passed through the turnstiles in the first hour, keen to experience a range of attractions including a model Shopping Street, a Poster Street featuring a collection of the best examples of the art, and a lucky dip competition with 100,000 prizes. The press described it as "one of the jolliest shows that has ever been held at Shepherd's Bush." 3 This exhibition was the largest in a succession of shows beginning in 1899 designed to improve the reputation of advertising, enhance the collective identity of the industry, and drum up business. 4 Tackling the public image of advertising became a pressing need from the late Victorian years. Facing an organized pressure group, the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising, formed in 1893 to secure legislation protecting the environment from advertising, and a public discourse in which advertising was frequently cast as vulgar, dishonest, and wasteful, advertisers began to coordinate a response. 5 Taking the lead were advertising agents, who were growing in number and importance in the late

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