‘Grand Old Lady’ lives on

Press, 17 March 1987, Page 15

‘Grand Old Lady’ lives on

By

CHRIS WHITBURN

The “Grand Old Lady of Donegall Street,” reputed to be the oldest daily newspaper in the British Isles, this year celebrates her 250th anniversary.

The Belfast “News Letter” is one of Ulster’s leading morning newspapers, similar in format and style to Britain’s “Daily Mirror” and printed on tabloidsize pages.

To capture the mood of the depth of history covered by the paper during its years of publication, a facsimile of the earliest copy of the “News Letter” known to exist, dated Tuesday, March 6, 1738, made up the outside four pages of this year’s first edition. “A newspaper is one of the few creations of man which can grow old and yet remain vigorous and young, keeping abreast — and ahead — of the times,” says the article which launched the anniversary celebrations. “The paper has been deeply involved in the political, industrial, and cultural life of the community,” writes the chairman of Century Newspapers, Ltd, Captain 0. W. J. Henderson, whose family has owned the "News Letter” for the last 192 years.

For courageously upholding the union of Britain and Northern Ireland during the recent years of political destabilisation and terrorist activities, the “editors and their staffs may enjoy no greater public memorial than the pages of history they have written and printed,” Captain Henderson adds.

The paper’s founder was Francis Joy, known as the “father of Ulster publishing.” The first edition of the “Belfast News-Letter and General Advertiser” appeared on September 1, 1737, and consisted of one

sheet of paper, 37cm long by 22cm wide, printed in three columns on each side. The newspaper was published at first on Tuesdays and Fridays. Belfast, with a population of only 7000 people, was at that time just one of a number of rival towns in Ulster. Many of its older citizens would have been able to remember the events which surrounded the coming of Schomberg and William of Orange, and the Battle of the Boyne.

The paper has witnessed the passage of seven kings and two queens on the British throne, and reported as well many events which have “shaped the course of history.”

A quick scoop, when a sailing ship arrived at the port of Londonderry, made the paper the first on the eastern side of the Atlantic to publish the news and text, on August 27, 1776, of the American Declaration of Independence.

When reports came in of revolution sweeping across France the paper was already 56 years old, and 68 when Nelson gained his victory at Trafalgar. Its first illustrations, “a pictorial inset with woodcuts,” depicted the State funeral of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. However, the most distressing events the paper had to report at that time were of the suffering caused by the Irish potato famine during the 1840 s.

Many large firms began to establish head offices in Belfast throughout the nineteenth century. The towm rapidly became an industrial centre and an important market for agricultural produce.

The first ship from William Ritchie’s yard was launched in 1792, and after the establishment of Harland’s yard in 1858, Harland and Wolff grew to become the biggest shipbuilders in the world.

The paper moved from handset type in 1893 when it installed the first linotype machines in Ireland. This facilitated the production of supplements, one of which, an industrial supplement in 1912, was 32 pages long and had over 100 illustrations.

The “News Letter” kept pace with the steady modernisation

which occurred after the First World War, including new technology and changes in the life of the community.

By the time the first Parliament was opened in Northern Ireland in 1921, Belfast had already become a social and commercial capital. The paper survived the bombing blitz of the Second World War virtually unscathed but, like most industries and services in Ulster since 1968, has experienced its share of the campaign of destabilisation. Nine bombings have taken place in the premises

of the newspaper itself, some causing a lot of suffering and damage.

In spite of the setbacks, the paper has kept up with advances in production methods, becoming in 1972 the first newspaper in Ireland to use computerised phototypesetting equipment. However, as the paper itself said, the “News Letter” may owe “some of its capacity to survive to the fact that it has served a region a little away from the more destructive and central events” of the last 250 years.