other by Parker of Salisbury Street. There were also three weekly papers issued at a halfpenny a copy. The tax, after several reductions, was finally repealed on 15th June 1855, and a rush of cheap papers immediately followed. A penny became the usual price for London daily papers, with the exception of The Times, and halfpenny papers soon became common.
The growth of the cheap newspaper has since been practically a simultaneous one throughout the civilized World. This has been notably the case in the United States, France and Great Britain. The general tendency in newspaper production, as in all other branches of industry, has in recent times been towards the lowering of prices while maintaining excellence of quality, experience having proved the advantage of large sales with a small margin of profit over a limited circulation with a higher rate of profit. The development—and indeed the possibility—of the cheap daily paper was due to a number of causes operating together during the latter half of the 19th century. Among these, the first place must undoubtedly be given to the cheapening of paper, through the introduction of wood pulp and the perfecting of the machinery used in the manufacture. From 1875 to 1885 paper cheapened rapidly, and it has been estimated that the introduction of wood pulp trebled the circulation of newspapers in England. Keen competition in the paper trade also did much to lower prices. At the same time the prime cost of newspaper production was increased by the introduction of improved machinery into the printing office. The growth of advertisements must also be taken into account in considering the evolution of the halfpenny journal. The income from this source alone made it possible to embark upon journalistic enterprises which would otherwise have been simply to court disaster. The popular journal of the present day does not, however, owe its existence and success merely to questions of diminished cost and improved methods of production. A change has come over the public mind. The modern reader likes his news in a brief, handy form, so that he can see at a glance the main facts without the task of reading through wordy articles. This is especially the case with the man of business, who desires to master the news of the past twenty-four hours as he travels to his office in the morning. It is to economize time rather than money that the modern reader would often prefer a halfpenny paper; while the man of leisure, who likes to peruse leading articles and full descriptive accounts, finds what he needs in the more highly priced journals. The halfpenny paper in England has not had to contend with the opposition that the penny newspaper met from its threepenny contemporaries in the ’fifties and ’sixties. This is largely due to the fact that in most cases the contributors, paper, printing and general arrangement of the cheaper journal do not leave much room for criticism. Mr G. A. Sala once complained that the reporters of the older papers objected to work side by side with him when he represented the first penny London daily (the Daily Telegraph), through fear of losing caste, but this does not now apply, for in the United Kingdom, France and the United States the cheap journals, owing to their vast circulation, are able to offer the best rates of remuneration, and can thus command the services of some of the best men in all the various departments of journalism. (N.)
Another aspect of the newspaper which may here be considered is the introduction of pictorial illustrations (see also Illustration). The earliest attempts at popular illustration of news events took the form in England of “broadsides.” One broadside dated 1587 recounted the Valiant Exploits of Sir Francis Drake; another dated 1607 Illustrated papers. gave an account of A wonderful flood in Somersetshire and Norfolk. The series of murder broadsides which lasted almost to our own time commenced in 1613 with one that gave an account of the murder of Mr William Storre, a clergyman of Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire, by Francis Cartwright. Early in the reign of Charles I. there appeared a broadside which described a fall of meteors in Berkshire. A little later—in 1683—the Weekly News came out with the picture of an island which was supposed to have risen from the sea on the French coast. The execution of Strafford in 1641 was made the subject of a picture pamphlet that is to be seen in the British Museum, and in 1642 the first attempt to portray the House of Commons appeared in A Perfect Diurnall of the Passages in Parliament. In 1643 a pamphlet was published, called The Bloody Prince; or a Declaration of the Most Cruel Practices of Prince Rupert and the rest of the Cavaliers in fighting against God and the True Ministers of His Church. This contains a woodcut representation of Prince Rupert on his charger, one of the first attempts at providing the public with a portrait of a contemporary celebrity.
Soon after this there appeared a journal, entitled Mercurius Civicus, which frequently gave illustrations, and, allowing for the Weekly News with its one attempt at an illustration above mentioned, must be counted the first illustrated paper. Mercurius Civicus, however, only gave portraits; it published Charles I. and his queen, Prince Rupert, Sir Thomas Fairfax and all the leading men on both sides in the Civil War. Perhaps the most interesting illustration of the next four years was that contained in a tract intended to evoke sympathy for the conquered and captured king. It represented Charles in Carisbrooke Castle in 1648. There were many later attempts to depict the tragedy of Charles I.’s execution, and several woodcuts present to us also the execution of the regicides after Charles II. came to the throne. A broadside of the reign of the second Charles shows the Frost Fair on the Thames in 1683, and with a broadside describing Great Britain’s Lamentations, or the Funeral Obsequies of that most incomparable Protestant Princess—Queen Mary, the wife of William III., in 1695—we close the illustrated journalism of the 17th century.
Curiously enough, the 18th century, so rich in journalistic enterprise and initiative so far as the printed page was concerned, did less than the previous century to illustrate news. In 1731, however, in the Grub Street Journal, there appeared the first illustration of the Lord Mayor’s procession. In 1740 another journal, the Daily Post, gave an illustration of Admiral Vernon’s attack on Porto Bello. The narrative was introduced by the editor with the information that the letter that he is printing is from a friend who witnessed the conflict between the English and the Spaniards. The writer of the letter, who must be put on record as the father of war correspondents, signed himself “William Richardson.”
There were some interesting efforts to illustrate magazines about this time. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1746 there was a lengthy account of the famous rising of 1745, and a map was given of the country round Carlisle, showing the route of the Scottish rebels; and in the same volume there was a portrait of the duke of Cumberland. In 1747 the Gentleman’s gave a bird’s-eye view of the city of Genoa, illustrating the account of the insurrection there, and so on year by year there were further pictures. In 1751 an obituary notice was illustrated by a portrait of a certain Edward Bright of Maldon, Essex. Mr Bright died at the age of thirty, and his interest to the public was that he weighed 4212 stones. There were a number of magazines besides the Gentleman’s that came out about this time and continued well into the next century. In the Thespian Magazine for 1793, for example, there is an illustration of a new theatre at Birmingham. Then there were the English Magazine, the Macaroni Magazine, the Monstrous Magazine. Every one of these contained illustrations on copper, more or less topical.
William Clement, the proprietor of the Observer, the first number of which was published in 1791, was the first real pioneer of illustrated journalism, although his ideals fell short in this particular, that he was never prepared to face the illustration of news systematically; he only attempted to illustrate events when there was a great crisis in public affairs. In 1818 Abraham Thornton, who was tried for murder, appealed to the wager of battle, which after long arguments before judges was proved to be still in accordance with statute law, and he escaped hanging in consequence. Thornton’s portrait appeared in the Observer. Clement owned for some time Bell’s Life and the Morning Chronicle. All his journals contained occasional topical illustrations. The Observer’s illustration of the house where the Cato Street conspirators met is really sufficiently
