[arista]

Fleet Street 1915


[A rainy day on Fleet Street in October 1915
is depicted in this picture.
Discussing the presence of advertising
on the streets of London, Ackroyd
writes that by the middle of the
19th century, London's business premises
had 'a variety of papier-mache ornaments
or paintings to denote the trade of the occupant'.
'Many coffee houses had a symbol of a loaf
and cheese together with a cup... the destruction
of Pompeii seemed a fitting advertisement for
a patent cockroach exterminator,' the book says.
By the end of the 19th century,
the ground-floor shops of the city provided
'bursts of colour and variety' with their signs]