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The Treatment of the News in mid-Victorian Newspapers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Lucy Brown
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Extract

This paper is concerned with the way in which news was handled by the four main London dailies, The Times, the Daily News, the Daily Telegraph and the Standard which, by the late 1870s, enjoyed the largest circulations. They differed from each other considerably in character and history, and in the kind of historical record which they have left behind. Much more is known about The Times than about any of the others. In the 1860s it was a 16-page paper, costing 3d, with a circulation declining slowly from 65,000 to 60,000. The fact that it could maintain this circulation, when it was three times as expensive as its main rivals, is by itself evidence of the value that contemporaries placed upon it. It had far greater assets than any of its rivals, and the Walter family were willing to invest heavily in the paper as and when funds were needed. Its greater resources were shown, partly in its technical equipment, and partly in the range and quality of writing in the paper itself. The Times had more correspondents reporting more frequently and fully from more European capitals than its rivals, and much of its prestige had been derived from that fact. It also employed in London a staff of educated writers such as George Brodrick and Robert Lowe. Unlike its rivals it could afford to pay salaries which enabled it to impose on its writers the condition that they wrote for it exclusively. (The lives of a number of notable late nineteenth-century journalists show that they tried to make up income by writing too much simultaneously, for too many different publications.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 27 , December 1977 , pp. 23 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1977

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References

1 The History of the Times, ii, The Tradition Established, 1841–1884 (London, 1939), PP. 345–57Google Scholar.

2 These working conditions are made clear in the correspondence of Chenery, Thomas, editor of The Times 1877–84Google Scholar, and of Mudford, William with Escort, T. H. S., Escort papers B.L. Add. MS 58,777, letter dated 3 Nov. 1882, and 58,787, fos 66–69Google Scholar. For the volume of work undertaken by journalists, see for example Lucy, Henry,Sixty Years in the Wilderness (London, 1909), pp. 111Google Scholar ff., or The life and adventures of George Augustus Sala, written by himself (London, 1896), pp. 346Google Scholar ff. The Escort papers, taken as a whole, tell much the same story: Escort, a journalist who was writing for the Standard and the World at the same time as he was editing the Fortnightly Review, appears to have collapsed from overwork.

3 Pearson, Hesketh, Labby: the life and character of Henry Labouchere (London, 1936), pp. 68–69Google Scholar.

4 This can be seen in the correspondence of the editor, Frank Harrison Hill, with Dilke, B.L. Add. MS. 43,898 passim, and in the letters of Labouchere to Herbert Gladstone, ibid., 46,015–16, passim.

5 History of the Times, ii, p. 298.

6 See the Disraeli papers at Hughenden, Box 88, for the correspondence of Hamber and Disraeli in the 1860s.

7 The history of the Standard is given by Hatton, Joseph, Journalistic London (London, 1882), pp. 143Google Scholar ff. and by Escott, T. H. S., Masters of English Journalism (London, 1911), pp. 201Google Scholar ff. Both authors had worked for the paper.

8 Escott papers, B.L. Add. MS. 58,795, Robert Wilson to T. H. S. Escott, 26 September 1882.

9 The Times, 20 October 1916.

10 Howe, Ellic, Newspaper Printing in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1943), pp. 25Google Scholar ff. The Printer's Register, a London trade paper, contains a great deal of detailed information on newspaper production.

11 The telegraph plays a central part in the plot of Jules Verne's Round the World in Eighty Days, first published in 1874.

12 This is described in the History of the Times, ii, ch. IV.

13 Escott papers, B.L. Add. MS. 58,795, Robert Wilson to T. H. S. Escott, 26 September 1882. This is not out of line with some other sales figures: it was reported that the Manchester Examiner and Times sold over 192,000 copies on 23 September 1867, the day after the execution of three Fenians at Manchester—its normal circulation must have been about 30–40,000 (Printer's Register, March 1869).

14 Daily Telegraph, 9 March 1863.

15 History of the Times, ii, p. 358.

16 A good general description of the life and working conditions of a war correspondent is given in by Fenn, G. Manville, George Alfred Henty, the Story of an Active life (London, 1907)Google Scholar. Henty was employed as a special correspondent by the Standard between 1866 and 1878. He used his experiences as the basis for many of his boys' stories.

17 Forbes, Archibald, Memories and Studies of War and Peace (London, 1895)Google Scholar, gives many examples of the practical difficulties experienced by correspondents in despatching their reports, both in 1870–71 and after.

18 The Times, 14 September 1870.

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21 Daily News, 28 October and 2 December, 1870.

22 Op. cit., p. 225.

23 Wright, E. M., The life of Joseph Wright (London, 1932), i, pp. 36–37Google Scholar. It is fair to add that the author goes on to say that after this Wright never took in a paper until he was 40.

24 19 January 1871.

25 See advertisements in Daily News, 31 January, 21 March and 31 March 1871.

26 History of the Times, ii, pp. 357–58.

27 Information on circulations is summarized by Wadsworth, A. P., Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society (1954–1955), PP. 18Google Scholar ff.

28 Mitchell's Newspaper Press Directory, edns. of 1872 and 1873.

29 27 March to 8 April 1872. See also Disraeli's comments, ibid., 5 April 1872.

30 Lucy, , op. cit., p. 102Google Scholar.

31 Shannon, R. T., Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 1876 (London, 1963), pp. 38Google Scholar ff.

32 See the entry for Smith in D.N.B.

33 The Times, 29 January 1874.

34 Thorold, Algar, The Life of Henry Labouchère (London, 1913), p. 106Google Scholar, quoting Truth of 23 October 1884.

35 13 February 1874.

36 Standard, 23 January 1874.

37 The Times, 13 and 14 January 1874.

38 Daily Telegraph, Daily News, 16 January 1874.

39 Select Committee on the Post Office (Telegraph Department) H.C. 1876 XIII, qn. 3372.

40 Printer's Register, December 1878.

41 Hatton, Joseph, op cit., p. 144Google Scholar.

42 Printer's Register, July 1879.

43 Wolseley papers, Hove Public Library, especially letters from G. A. Henty (Standard) and the Hon. F. C. Lawley (Daily Telegraph).

44 Russell, William Howard, My Diary During the Last Great War (London, 1874), p. 211Google Scholar.

45 Select Committee on the Post Office (Telegraph Department) H.C. 1876 XIII, evidence of John C. Macdonald, manager of The Times.