success of a business organization, in which individual views on affairs
played a comparatively minor part.
The halfpenny Daily Express, founded by Mr Cyril Arthur Pearson
(b. 1866) on the lines of the Daily Mail, first appeared in 1900, and
soon won a large clientele. With R. D. Blumenfeld as
editor (from 1904) it worked strenuously for Tariff Reform.
The Daily Mirror, started by Mr Harmsworth as a
women’s penny daily in 1904, failed to attract in its original form
Daily Express.
Daily Mirror.
and was quickly changed into a halfpenny general daily, relying as
a novelty on the presentation of news by photographic
pictures of current events. This new feature soon obtained
for it a large circulation under the enterprising
management of Mr Kennedy Jones (b. 1865), who was already known
for his successful conduct of the Evening News and his share in the
business of the Daily Mail.
The Globe (founded Jan. 1st., 1803), the oldest of existing London evening papers, owed its origin to the desire of the booksellers or publishers of the day for an advertising medium, at a moment when the Morning Post gave them the cold shoulder. A syndicate of publishers started a morning paper, the British Press (which had only a short career), to combat the Globe. Post, and the Globe as a rival to the Courier (see above), which, like the Post, was under Daniel Stuart’s control. George Lane, previously Stuart’s chief assistant, was the editor. From 1815 a prominent member of the staff was Mr (afterwards vice-chancellor Sir James) Bacon. After swallowing up some other journals, in 1823 it absorbed the property and title of the Traveller, controlled by Colonel Torrens, who in the reorganization became principal proprietor and brought over Walter Coulson as the editor. John Wilson succeeded as editor in 1834, efficiently seconded by Mr Moran; Thomas Love Peacock and R. H. Barham (“Ingoldsby”) being famous contributors during his regime. For some time the Globe was the principal Whig organ, and Mr (afterwards Deputy judge Advocate Sir James) O’Dowd its political inspirer. Mahony (“Father Prout”) was its Paris correspondent. In 1842 the Courier was incorporated, but a gradual decline in the fortunes of the paper, and Colonel Torrens’s death in 1864, brought about a reorganization in 1866, when a small Conservative syndicate, including Sir Stafford Northcote, bought it and converted the Globe into a Conservative organ. In 1868 the pink colour since associated with the paper was started. In 1869 its price (originally sixpence) was lowered to a penny. Mr W. T. Madge (b. 1845), whose vigorous management was afterwards so valuable, and who in 1881 started with Captain Armstrong the People, a popular Sunday journal for the masses, joined the paper in 1866; and after brief periods of editorship by Messrs Westcomb, R. H. Patterson, H. N. Barnett and Marwood Tucker (1868), in 1871 Captain George C. H. Armstrong (1836–1907), who in 1892 was created a baronet, was put in control; he edited the paper for some years, and then it became his property. The editorial chair was filled in succession by Mr Ponsonby Ogle, Mr Algernon Locker (1891), and the proprietor’s son and heir Lieut. G. E. Armstrong, R.N. (1895), until in June 1907, after Sir G. Armstrong’s death, the paper was sold to Mr Hildebrand Harmsworth. The Globe “Turnovers” (miscellaneous articles, turning over from the first to the second page) began in 1871, and became famous for variety and humour. The jocular “By the Way” column, another characteristic feature, was started in 1881, and owed much to Mr Kay Robinson and Mr C. L. Graves. In the history of the Globe one of the best-known incidents is its publication of the Salisbury-Schuvaloff treaty of 1878. It was the first London daily to use the linotype composing-machine (1892).
A new period of evening journalism, characteristic of the later 19th century, opened with the founding of the Pall Mall Gazette. The first number (at twopence) was issued on 7th February 1865 from Salisbury Street, Strand. Mr George Smith, of the publishing firm of Smith and Elder, was its first proprietor; Mr Frederick Greenwood (q.v.), its first editor, took the Pall Mall Gazette. Anti-Jacobin for his model; the paper was intended to realize Thackeray’s picture (in Pendennis) of one “written by gentlemen for gentlemen.” Its political attitude was to be independent, and much space was to be given to literature and non-political matter. It had brilliant supporters, such as Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen as writer of leading articles (replaced to a certain extent, after 1869, by Sir Henry Maine), R. H. Hutton, Matthew James Higgins (“Jacob Omnium”), James Hannay, and George Henry Lewes, with George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Charles Reade, and Thomas Hughes as occasional contributors; but the paper failed to attract the general public until, in the following year, Mr Greenwood’s brother, James, furnished it with three articles on “A Night in a Workhouse: by an Amateur Casual.” A morning edition had already been tried and dropped, and so was a distinct morning paper attempted in 1870. In 1867 new premises were taken in Northumberland Street, Strand. Three years later the Pall Mall Gazette was the first to announce the surrender of Napoleon III. at Sedan. Matthew Arnold contributed his famous “Arminius” letters (“Friendship’s Garland”) in 1871, and Richard Jefferies contributed “The Gamekeeper at Home” in 1876 and onwards. Mr Greenwood made the paper unflinchingly Conservative and strongly adherent to Lord Beaconsfield’s foreign policy. In 1880, however, Mr Smith handed over the Pall Mall Gazette to his son-in-law, Mr Henry Yates Thompson, who turned it into a Liberal journal. Mr Greenwood then retired from the editorship and shortly afterwards started the St James’s Gazette; Mr John (afterwards Viscount) Morley became editor of the Pall Mall, with Mr W. T. Stead (b. 1849) as assistant-editor. The price was reduced in 1882 to one penny. Many of the old contributors remained, and they were reinforced by Robert Louis Stevenson. who wrote some “Letters from Davos,” Professor Tyndall, Professor Freeman, James Payn and Mrs Humphry Ward. When Mr Morley exchanged journalism for politics in 1883, he was succeeded by Mr W. T. Stead (q.v.), with Mr Alfred Milner, afterwards Lord Milner, as his assistant. Adopting an adventurous policy, Mr Stead imported the “interview” from America, and a report of General Gordon’s opinion was believed to have been the cause of his ill-fated mission to Khartum. A series of articles called “The Truth about the Navy” (1884) had considerable influence in causing the Admiralty to lay down more ships next year. But Mr Stead’s career as the editor came to an end in 1889, in consequence of his publishing a series of articles called “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” purporting to further the Criminal Law Amendment Bill. Mr Stead had made a feature of reprints called “extras”; and, edited by Mr Charles Morley, the Pall Mall Budget became an illustrated weekly. Mr Stead was replaced in 1889 by E. T. Cook, who had become assistant-editor in succession to Milner. The Pall Mall Gazette was now steadily Liberal and a strong advocate of Irish Home Rule. On its staff were Edmund Garrett (a gifted writer who became editor of the Cape Times in South Africa, and died prematurely in 1907), F. C. Gould the caricaturist, and J. Alfred Spender (b. 1862). Mr Cook resigned in 1892, on the sale of the paper to Mr William Waldorf Astor, the American millionaire, who turned it again into a Conservative organ, and also changed its shape, abandoning the old small pages for a larger sheet; and he and his assistant Mr Spender continued the Liberalism of the Pall Mall in the Westminster Gazette (see below). Mr Henry Cust, M.P., was appointed editor, with Mr E. B. Iwan-Müller as assistant-editor. Mr Cust (b. 1861), who was Lord Brownlow’s heir, and came fresh to editorship with enthusiasms acquired from his experiences in parliament and in society, made the columns of the Pall Mall very lively for the next couple of years. It became well known for its “booms,” and its “smartness” generally. Some papers contributed to it by Sir Charles Dilke and Mr Spenser Wilkinson resulted in the establishment of the Navy League in 1894. The paper had, too, the first news of Mr Gladstone’s resignation and the appointment of Lord Rosebery to succeed him. But though the Pall Mall under Mr Cust had outshone all its competitors, its independence of those business considerations which ultimately appeal to most proprietors hardly represented a durable state of affairs; and eventually the relations between proprietor and editor became strained. In February 1896 Mr Cust and Mr Iwan-Müller were succeeded respectively by Sir Douglas Straight and Mr Lloyd Sanders, the latter of whom retired in 1902. Sir Douglas Straight (b. 1844) had been in early days a well-known London barrister, and from 1879 to 1892 was a judge in India. Sir Douglas Straight remained editor till the end of 1908, when he was succeeded by Mr Higginbottom.
Founded in 1880 by Mr H. Hucks Gibbs (afterwards Lord Aldenham), for Mr Frederick Greenwood to edit when he had left the Pall Mall, the St James’s Gazette represented the more intellectual and literary side of Tory journalism in opposition to the new Liberalism of Mr Greenwood’s former organ; it was in fact meant to carry on the idea of the St James’s Gazette. original Pall Mall as Mr Greenwood had conceived it, and was (like it) more of a daily review than a chronicle of news. In 1888 the paper having then been sold to Mr E. Steinkopff, Mr Greenwood retired and was succeeded as editor (1888–1897) by Mr Sidney Low, subsequently author of The Governance of England and other able works, who had as his chief assistant-editors Mr S. H. Jeyes (till 1891), and Mr Hugh Chisholm (1892–1897), the latter succeeding him as editor (1897–1900). In those days mere news was not considered the important feature; or rather, original and sagacious views were identified with a sort of novelty such a paper could best promulgate. The St James’s was for many years conspicuous for its literary character, and for the number of distinguished literary men who wrote for it, some of whom first became known to the public by means of its columns. Its interest in newspaper history is really that of a paper which appealed to and influenced a comparatively small circle of cultured readers, a “superior” function more and more difficult to reconcile with business considerations. It was one of the earliest supporters of the Imperialist movement, and between 1895 and 1899 was the chief advocate in the Press of resistance to the foreign bounties on sugar which were ruining the West Indies, thus giving an early impetus to the movement for Tariff Reform and Colonial Preference. During the years immediately following 1892, when the Pall Mall Gazette again became Conservative, the competition between Conservative evening papers became acute, because the Globe and Evening Standard were also penny Conservative journals; and it was increasingly difficult to carry on the St James’s on its old lines so as to secure a profit to the proprietor; by degrees modifications were made in the general character of the paper, with a view to its containing more news and less purely literary matter. But it retained its original shape: with sixteen (after 1897, twenty) small pages, a form which the
