Thames Tunnel Paper, 1843 (engraving on paper)

By John Vandenburg Quick (1792-1858) The Thames Tunnel Paper showing Interior view of Thames Tunnel and account of the event. ‘Printed By Authority 76ft. Below High-Water Mark. To commemorate the day of the opening of the Tunnel as a Thoroughfare for Foot Passengers, March 25, 1843.' The engraver/printer John Vandenburg Quick (1792-1858) had a stall within the Tunnel with a printing press, where Quick produced paper toys and puzzles, paper peepshows and other optical toys. What has survived in largest quantity of his production is the broadsheet named Thames Tunnel Newspaper or The Royal Thames Tunnel Paper, commemorating the Tunnel’s opening, and subsequent visit of Queen Victoria in July 1843. By using the term newspaper and stressing in his broadsheet that it was printed ’76 feet below high-water mark’, Quick emphasised the sense of immediacy and first-hand experience of the Tunnel. Quick was descended from a long line of Dutch and Flemish printers. Quick had established his own publishing business by 1823 and would spend the next thirty years producing materials such as paper toys, ballad-sheets, broadsides, and penny dreadfuls. When the Thames Tunnel opened in 1843 he took out a lease on one of the concession stands located inside the tunnel, set up a printing press down there and began publishing a novelty newspaper whose publication line boasted that it was “printed by authority, 76 feet below the high-water mark.” Quick’s subterranean premises also did a roaring trade in pop-up peep shows of the Thames Tunnel which were sold to thousands of sightseers who flocked through it every day. The tunnel peep shows were said to have made Quick a fortune. The Tunnel’s construction started in 1825 and, after various flood accidents and a long period of suspension of work between 1828 and 1835, the Tunnel finally opened to the public on 25 March 1843. It was received with great excitement both during and immediately after its construction. However, in 1865 it was sold to the East London Railway Company and converted into a railway tunnel in 1869.