Preindustrial cities distributed public information orally through criers and mounted trumpeters

Evidence

The town crier [in medieval Prato] … hurried from one street corner to the next, to spread the day’s news: births and weddings, and deaths, bankruptcies and emancipations, lists of lost property and lost cattle, even applications for wet nurses-while more important official news was imparted by three trumpeters on horseback, dressed in the colours of the commune, who blew a treble blast on their trumpets before announcing the sentences of the courts of law-banishments and fines, and sometimes executions. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 197

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Lofland’s broader argument about how public space order differs when information is oral rather than printed — echoes the flâneur/civil-inattention thread the reader is tracing.