Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a pamphlet or broadsheet sold in the streets and detailing a lurid, if imaginary, murder.

1761		O. Goldsmith in Irving Goldmsith (1849) 1 120: You know already by the title that it [i.e. his Mémoires de M. Voltaire] is no more than a catchpenny. However, I spent but four weeks on the whole performance, for which I received twenty pound.
1784		Derby Mercury 5 Feb. 3/1: A very pert and pretty Ballad Singer sung [...] the following Song: A new song, call’d the catch-penny.
[1785, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) n.p.: Catch penny, Any temporary contrivance to raise a contribution on the public].
[1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1818		Staffs. Advertiser 1 Aug. 3/1: [of poems] ‘Trifles, trifles indeed, mere bagatelles [...] a catchpenny, no doubt.’ [...] ‘No catchpenny, Sir; they are my own composition, and were never sold, but printed for a few friends’.
1832		Poor Man’s Guardian 7 Apr. 7/1: My friend’s cheap publication was nothing but a most sretched catch-penny.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 262/1: I apply the same observations to persons who bandy about the expressions ‘gift of the gab,’ ‘catch-penny,’ &c.
1871		C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. n.p.: Division I A Collection of ‘Cocks’ or ‘Catchpennies’, Street Drolleries, Squibs, Histories, Comic Tales in Prose and Verse.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 67/2: Catch-penny (Street). Gutter Ballads.
1973		L. Shepard Hist. of Street Lit. 74: The term ‘catchpenny’ was actually in use as early as 1759, and it was used by Edmond Malone in a letter to the great balladist Bishop Percy, describing an incorrect and hasty biography got up for quick sale as ‘a mere catchpenny’.

2. a cheap theatre or music-hall.

1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 19: CATCH-PENNY, any temporary contrivance to obtain money from the public, penny shows, or cheap exhibitions.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. [as cit. 1859].