Page 120 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

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horse. One reader who wrote to the editor claimed to be quoting “a knot of
children who had just then gathered round the little paper and were reading
and looking at it.” Their response alarmed the correspondent: “It is a nasty
looking thing, a miserable concern…What is the use of putting such things
into this darling Well-Spring?” The writer agreed with the children:

The picture is a vulgar thing. Not one redeeming quality in it. The moral
attempted to be drawn from it is lost totally. The picture nauseates
and unfits the mind for receiving any good moral impression from the
reflections which are printed under it.
(Anon. 1861a: 60)

Bullard replied to the letter, countering that, in his view, the illustration
was “in the main, an accurate and very life-like representation of the scene,
the dead horse and all.” He asked readers to reexamine the picture in order
that “they may judge of the correctness of the above criticisms?” (Anon.
1861a: 60).
Letters followed Bullard’s request. One objected to the children calling
the picture “by such ugly names” and insisted that the image was well
executed. However, the writer then turned to criticize the newspaper for
publishing two other offensive images, one of them depicting “a crocodile
with a little black child dangling between its jaws, just ready to be swallowed
by the voracious reptile” (Anon. 1861b: 86). The picture in question likely
resembled the one reproduced here, which was used in other Evangelical
publications at the time (My Picture-Book, Anon. 1863: 46). The writer
complained that the images exerted a negative effect, threatening to “haunt
them in their night visions.” The problem with images was that they turned
the mind into a brain, a body, a tissue whose surface received the material
impress of the image, and forgot the immaterial soul in the process:

There is a sort of fascination about such things in the impressible minds
of children. They like to hear bear stories and see crocodile pictures, and
yet will be afraid afterwards to go down cellar alone, or go to bed in the
dark. Therefore, we say keep away from the vivid imaginations of children
whatever tends to terrify them, or to harden their sensitive natures.
(Anon. 1861b: 86)

However, others argued for the utility of such images. Medical missionary
Dr. John Scudder wrote in his Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen
that a girl had been galvanized in her decision to become a missionary to
Africa by the sight of “a picture of a heathen mother throwing her child
into the mouth of a crocodile” (Scudder 1853: 201). The image played to