In the eighteenth century, the Mercury did not shy away from reporting gruesome news, as this report of a dead child shows.
“On Monday Morning an Infant was found dead in the Church yard near the End of Wood-street, Cheapside; and though it was wrapt in a Piece of Blanket, the Raven kept in that Place had pick’t out its Eyes, and Part of the Entrails.”
Stamford Mercury 3rd March, 1723.