Penny pictures.

The New York Herald, more than any other of the penny newspapers, published topical pictures. Most of the time, the pictures were simple maps or crude portraits of people in the news. Occasionally, special events received greater pictorial coverage. But when the Herald published five detailed pictures on its cover showing New York’s 1845 funeral procession honoring Andrew Jackson—the first full-page cover devoted to pictures ever to appear in a U.S. daily newspaper—rival newspapers charged that the same engravings had been used to illustrate Queen Victoria’s coronation, William Henry Harrison’s funeral, and the celebration of the opening of the Croton reservoir. The Herald discontinued illustrating the news after 1850, leaving that task to the weekly illustrated press.

Source: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.