(at first on Fridays), is printed in a different form, and separately
paged. In 1904 a “Financial and Commercial Supplement” (at
first on Mondays, and later on Fridays) was added; in 1905 an
“Engineering Supplement” (Wednesdays), and in 1910 a “Woman’s
supplement.”
The publishing department of The Times also invaded several new fields of enterprise. The Times Atlas was first published in 1895. and this publication was supplemented by that of The Times (previously Longmans’) Gazetteer. A much larger and more important venture was the issue in 1898 of a reprint of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica at less than half the original price, on a new system of terms (known as The Times system) that enabled the purchaser to receive the whole work at once and to pay for it by a series of equal monthly payments. This was followed by a similar sale of the Century Dictionary and of a reprint of the first fifty years of Punch; and eleven new volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, supplementing the ninth edition, and forming with it the tenth edition, were issued by The Times in 1902 on similar terms (see Encyclopaedia).
In 1895 The Times, through its Vienna correspondent, purchased from Dr Moritz Busch the MS. and entire copyright of his journals, containing a very minute record of his intimate relations with Bismarck. It was stipulated in the contract that these were not to be published until after the death of the prince. That event occurred on the 30th July 1898, and on the 12th September of the same year The Times published through Messrs Macmillan (in 3 vols.) Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, by Dr Moritz Busch.
The Times History of the War in South Africa arose out of a desire to preserve in a more readable form the excellent work done by the numerous Times correspondents in South Africa. When originally projected in the early days of 1900 it was hoped that the war would be of short duration, and that the history of it could be rapidly completed. The length of the war naturally upset all these calculations, and eventually the sixth and last volume was only issued in 1909.
For a long period after the establishment of The Times, no effort to found a new daily London morning newspaper was ever conspicuously successful. Among unfruitful attempts were—(1) the New Times, started by Dr (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart, upon his departure from Printing-House Square; (2) the Representative (1824), established by John Murray, under circumstances which seemed at the outset exceptionally promising; (3) the Constitutional, begun in 1836 and carried on for eight months by a joint-stock company, exceptionally favoured in having for editor and subeditor Laman Blanchard and Thornton Hunt, with a staff of contributors which included Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold and Bulwer; (4) the Morning Star, founded in 1856, and kept afloat until 1870, when it was merged in the Daily News; (5) in 1867, the Day, for six weeks only; (6) in 1873 the Hour, for three years; (7) in 1878, the Daily Express, which soon failed.
A measure of greater success followed the establishment (1794) of the Morning Advertiser, under special circumstances. It was the joint-stock venture of a large society of licensed victuallers, amongst whom subscription to the paper was the condition of membership. For nearly sixty years its circulation lay almost entirely in public-houses and coffee-houses, but “Morning Advertiser.” amongst them it sold nearly 5000 copies daily, and it yielded a steady profit of about £6000 a year. Then, by the ability and enterprise of an experienced editor, James Grant (1802–1879), it was within four years raised to a circulation of nearly 8000, and to an aggregate profit of £12,000 a year. In 1891 its price was reduced from threepence to a penny.
The history of the Daily News, founded in 1846, has been told by Mr Justin McCarthy and Sir John R. Robinson in a volume of “political and social retrospect” published in 1896 on the occasion of its jubilee. It could boast of having continuously been the champion of Liberal ideas and principles—of what (so long as Mr Gladstone lived) might be called “Daily News.” official Liberalism at home and of liberty abroad. It became a penny paper in 1868. Its only rival in the history of Liberal journalism in London for many years was the Morning Star, which in 1870 it absorbed. Notably, it led British public opinion in foreign affairs as champion of the North in the American Civil War, of the cause of Italy, of the emancipation of Bulgaria from the Turk and of Armenia. Its early editors were Charles Dickens (21st January–March 1846), John Forster (March–October 1846), E. E. Crowe (1847–1851), F. K. Hunt (1851–1854), W. Weir (1854–1858), T. Walker (1858–1869). In 1868 the price was reduced to a penny, and it came under the management of Mr (afterwards Sir) John R. Robinson (1828–1903), who only retired in 1901. Its later editors included (1868–1886) Mr F. H. Hill (the brilliant author of Political Portraits), and subsequently Sir John Robinson, as managing editor, in conjunction with Mr P. W. Clayden (1827–1902), the author of Life of Samuel Rogers, England under the Coalition and other able works, as political and literary editor, down to 1896, and Mr E. T. Cook from 1896 to 1901. Mr Cook, during the negotiations with the Boer government in 1899, strongly supported Sir Alfred Milner; and under him the Daily News, as an exponent of Lord Rosebery’s Liberal Imperialism, gave no countenance to the pro-Boer views of some of the more active members of the Liberal party. In 1901, however, the proprietary changed, and Mr George Cadbury became chief owner of the paper. Mr E. T. Cook, who had shown brilliant ability as a publicist, but whose views on the Boer War were not shared by the new proprietor, retired, subsequently joining the staff of the Daily Chronicle; the journal then became an organ of the anti-imperialist section of the Liberal party. Mr A. G. Gardiner became editor in 1902; and in 1904 considerable changes were made in the style of the paper, which was reduced in price to a halfpenny. The influence of Mr Cadbury, and of the group of Quaker families—largely associated with the manufacture of cocoa—who followed his example in promoting the publication of Liberal and Free Trade newspapers, led in later years to somewhat violent attacks from political opponents on the so-called “Cocoa Press,” with the Daily News at its head.
The first number of the Daily Telegraph was published on 29th June 1855, as a twopenny newspaper. Its proprietor was Colonel Sleigh. This gentleman soon found himself in pecuniary straits, and in satisfaction of the debt for the printing of the paper it was transferred to Mr Joseph Moses Levy in the following September. On 17th September Mr Levy “Daily Telegraph.” published it as a four-paged penny journal, the first penny newspaper produced in London. His son, afterwards Sir Edward Lawson (b. 1833), who was created Baron Burnham in 1904, immediately entered the office, and after a short time became editor, a post which he only abandoned in 1885, when he became managing proprietor and sole director. From the outset Mr Levy gathered round him a staff of high literary skill and reputation. Among the first were Thornton Hunt, Geoffrey Prowse, George Hooper and Sir Edwin Arnold. E. L. Blanchard was among the earliest of the dramatic critics, and Alexander Harper the City editor. Later there came George Augustus Sala (q.v.), then one of Charles Dickens’s young men; Clement Scott (1841–1904), at one time a clerk in the War Office; and Edward Dicey (b. 1832), then fresh from Cambridge. The Hon. Frank Lawley turned to journalism from official life; and among the most remarkable of the early contributors to the paper was J. P. Benjamin, the great Anglo-American lawyer. H. D. Traill was a leader-writer for well-nigh a quarter of a century. J. M. Le Sage (b. 1837), for many years the managing editor, began his connexion with the paper under Mr Levy. Others prominently associated with the paper have been W. L. Courtney (b. 1850), a distinguished man of letters who, after several years of work as tutor at New College, Oxford, joined the staff in 1890, and in 1894 also became editor of the Fortnightly Review; E. B. Iwan-Müller (d. 1910) and J. L. Garvin (from 1899), afterwards (1904) editor of the Observer. After 1890 Mr H. W. L. Lawson, Lord Burnham’s eldest son and heir, assisted his father in the general control of the paper.
The Daily Telegraph may be said to have led the way in London journalism in capturing a large and important reading-public from the monopoly of The Times. It became the great organ of the middle classes, and was distinguished for its enterprise in many fields. In June 1873 the Telegraph despatched George Smith to carry out a series of archaeological researches in Nineveh, which resulted in the discovery of the missing fragments of the cuneiform account of the Deluge, and many other inscriptions. In co-operation with the New York Herald it equipped H. M. Stanley’s second great expedition to Central Africa (1875–1877). Another geographical feat with which the name of the Daily Telegraph is associated was the exploration of Kilimanjaro (1884–1885) by Mr (afterwards Sir) Harry Johnston, whose account of his work appeared in the Daily Telegraph during 1885. And Mr Lionel Decle’s march from the Cape to Cairo, in 1899 and 1900, was also undertaken under the auspices of the paper. The Telegraph raised many large funds for public purposes. Almost the first was the subscription for the relief of the sufferers by the cotton famine in Lancashire, in the winter of 1862–1863; the fund in aid of the starving and impoverished people of Paris at the close of the siege in 1871; the prince of Wales’s Hospital Fund in commemoration of the jubilee of 1897; and the Shilling Fund for the soldiers’ widows and orphans in connexion with the Boer War. An undertaking of a more festive kind was the fête given to 30,000 London school children in Hyde Park on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887.
In politics the Daily Telegraph was consistently Liberal up to 1878, when it opposed Mr Gladstone’s foreign policy as explained in his Midlothian speeches. After 1886 it represented Unionist opinions. Among special feats of which it can boast was the first news brought to England of the conclusion of peace after the Franco-German War.
Prior to 1874 the Daily Telegraph was printed by eight- and ten-feeder machines, through which every sheet had to be passed twice to complete the impression. Under these conditions it was necessary to start printing one side of the paper as early as ten or eleven o’clock. The handicap which this imposed on the satisfactory production of a newspaper was removed by the introduction of Hoe’s web machines at the end of 1874. No further change took place until 1891, when they were superseded by others built by the same makers capable of printing a 12-page paper at the rate of about 24,000 an hour, cut, folded, delivered and counted in quires. In 1896 they were modified so as to be suitable for turning out an 8-, 10-, 12-, 14- or 16-page paper. Up to 1894 the setting of type had been done entirely by hand, but in that year the linotype, after an experimental trial, was introduced on a large scale.
