Write up by Robert Heron

 THE TIMES-IN ITS ORIGINAL 4 PAGE 4 COLUMN FORMAT

 John Walter was born in London in 1739, the son of a successful coal merchant. He was educated at Merchant Taylor’s School. He succeeded his father in business and in about 1755 played a leading part in the establishment of the Coal Market and Coal Exchange in the City of London, where he made a considerable fortune.

From his involvement in shipping he became a marine underwriter and eventually gave up the coal business in 1781 in favour of more speculative investments, becoming a member of Lloyds. However, claims arising from the American War of Independence proved ruinous and in 1782 he was made bankrupt.

Seemingly undeterred, later that same year this 43 year old 18^th Century entrepreneur bought from one Henry Johnson a patent for a new method of printing from logotypes (i.e. founts of words or portions of words, instead of single letters, which it was thought would speed up the laborious business of setting type); and made some improvements to the process.

In 1784 he acquired an old printing office in Blackfriars by the River Thames, which formed the nucleus of the Printing House Square of a later date, and established there his ‘Logographic’ printing office. At first he only undertook the printing of books, but on January 1^st 1785 he started his own paper called The Daily Universal Register which proudly announced under its title – ‘Printed Logographically’.

This four-page, four columns 19 inch by 13 inch journal was at the start largely a ‘register’ of goods and services for sale. Its sixteen columns contained just three columns of intelligence (a 17^th century word for news), three columns of proprietorial puff and ten columns of advertising: priced at 2 ½ d to undercut rival London dailies.

Perhaps Walter hoped that buyers would simply shorten his rather clumsy title to ‘The Register’, but there were several other popular publications using the word ‘register’ in their title so that in 1788 Walter changed the title of his newspaper first to The Universal Daily Register or The Times and then finally at it’s 940^th issue, just to The Times.

Like many contemporary editors, John Walter received a ‘political pension’ of £300 every year to maintain control over what he printed. Despite his general compliance with Government wishes, on July 11^th 1789 he was convicted of a libel on the Duke of York and was sentenced to a fine of £50 and a year’s imprisonment in Newgate: for further libels the fine was increased by £100 and the imprisonment by a second year. However, on March 9^th 1791 he was freed at the request of the Prince of Wales.

Four years later John Walter retired and handed over the running of the business to his eldest son. In 1795, before retiring, and perhaps provoked by his treatment at the hands of the authorities, he did one very significant service for the future freedom of the press. Taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the French Revolution, he set up his own foreign news service in defiance of the established Post Office monopoly on gathering and providing news from abroad.

Following John Walter’s retirement, from 1795 to 1802 The Times was run by William Walter, his academic eldest son. The paper’s political pension was withdrawn in 1799 and rising costs and falling circulation forced William into premature retirement and made his father turn to his energetic younger brother John Walter II. It was from this point with circulation around 1000 issues daily, still laboriously hand-printed on durable hand-made rag paper on presses that had hardly changed from the 17^th Century, that the 26 year old made The Times into the most powerful voice in the land.

In 1801, John Walter gave his younger son a one sixteenth share in The Times and its sister evening paper the Evening Mail. Even when he became sole manager of all activities in Printing House Square in 1803, his share in the newspapers remained a marginal two sixteenth rising to three-sixteenths in 1810. During this time he saved the paper from collapse doubled circulation (they printed 2500 copies for the much copied Death of Nelson issue of November 7^, 1805), introduced illustrations and expanded The Times to five columns.

In 1812, when John Walter gained sole ownership of the printing business, his small share in the profits of the papers led him to look for greater efficiencies and profits in production. This brought a giant leap forward for newspaper printing technology with the introduction of the Koenig steam press on November 29^th 1814 that raised The Times production rate from 250 copies an hour to 1,100 and helped improve circulation from 2,000 to 4,500 daily. This gave The Times a valuable lead in new technology: next they needed a star editor.

Thomas Barnes, the son of a lawyer, was born in Tenterden, Kent in the same year that John Walter started The Daily Universal Register. After obtaining a degree at Cambridge in 1808 he moved to London intending to become a lawyer. However, after making friends with a group of writers that included William Hazlitt, Henry Brougham, Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb, he decided to be a journalist.

In 1809, Barnes met John Walter II, and began contributing articles on legal matters but later that year became the newspaper’s drama critic. The following year Dr. John Stoddart, the editor of The Times, appointed Barnes as the newspaper’s parliamentary correspondent.

In 1817, Stoddart retired and Thomas Barnes became the new editor of The Times. When Barnes took over as editor it was selling around 7,000 copies a day. The Walter family still held most of the shares, but by 1819 Thomas Barnes had sought and obtained full control over the editorial content of the newspaper.

The combination of new printing technology and the outstanding editor of the age led The Times to a pre-eminent position amongst its rival papers, and despite being at first sceptical of the Reform movement, Barnes’ growing support led Sir Robert Peel (Tory PM from 1834-1835) to say in the House of Commons in March 1832 that The Times was the ‘principal and most powerful advocate of Reform’ in Britain.

Under Barnes’ editorship The Times circulation grew to 30,000 copies by 1839. In 1841, Barnes was succeeded by John Thadeus Delane, under whose leadership the influence of The Times as the world’s ‘newspaper of record’ rose to even greater heights and it acquired the nickname ‘The Thunderer’. It is said that when Abraham Lincoln wanted to know what was really going on in the American Civil War, he relied on the reports of The Times ground-breaking war correspondent, William Howard Russell.

In summary these early 4 page, 4 column original issues of the The Times, hand printed on robust rag paper, were produced in very limited numbers varying from 1000 to 2500 per day. As to the current rarity of those original issues 200 years after they were printed, it is interesting to note that the ‘Death of Nelson’ issue of November 7^th 1805 (production 2500) is one of the rarest and most copied historic issues of any newspaper.

As a general comment on the likely rarity of these 4 page, 4 column original issues of The Times, it is worth noting that as archivist to The Press Club in London for 9 years and a collector of early newspapers, news-books and news-sheets for over 30 years, I have only ever seen one original issue of the much copied Times ‘Death of Nelson issue.

After the introduction of the steam press in 1814, the enlargement to the six column paper of the Victorian era, and the final abolition of the tax stamp in 1855, many libraries and institutions kept runs of The Times before swapping them for microfilm in the 1980s and 1990s. However, there were and are very few collections of the original late 18^th century and early 19^th century 4 page, 4 column issues of The Times, making them rarer and much more collectable.

Copyright - Robert Heron – June 2007

David Godfrey E & OE