FIRST PENNY PAPER

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 5, 7 January 1928, Page 22

FIRST PENNY PAPER

HISTORY OF THE "DAILY TELEGRAPH." One of the oldest and most influential newspapers, the "London Daily Telegraph," whose change of ownership was announced in the cable columns of "The Post" recently, was first published on 29th June, 1855, us a twopenny newspaper, tho proprietor being Colonel Sleigh, M.P. Colonel Sleigh soon found himself in financial difficulties, and three months later the paper was transferred to Mr. Joseph Moses Levy. It was converted into a four-page penny journal, the first peuny newspaper produced in London. Mr. Levy's son, afterwards Sir Edward Lawson, who was created Baron Burnham in 1904, subsequently became editor, a post he held until 1885, when he became managing proprietor, and sole director. The contributors to the paper included men of great literary ability, including Thornton Hunt, Geoffrey Prowse, George Hooper, Sir Edwin Arnold, and J. P. Benjamin, the distingusihed Anglo-American lawyer. One of its earliest dramatic critics was E. L. Blanchard. Others prominently associated with the paper wore W. L. Courtney, a distinguished man of letters, E. B. Swan-Muller, and J. L. Garvin. „ "Tho Daily Telegraph," says the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," may be said to. have led the way in LJmdon journalism in capturing a large and important reading public from the monopoly of "The Times." It became the great organ of tho middle classes, and was distinguished for its enterprise iv many fields. In June, 1873, tho "Telegraph" dispatched George Smith to carry out a series of archaeological researches in Ninevah, which resulted in the discovery of the missing fragments of the Cuneiform account of the Deluge, and many other inscription,*. In co-operation with the "New York Herald" it equipped. 11. 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 tho • exploration of Kilimanjaro (1884-1885), by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Harry Johnston, whose account of his work appeared in the "Daily Telegraph" during 1885. Mr. Lionel Decle's march from the Cape to Cairo in 1899 and 1900 was also undertake)1! under the auspices of the paper. The "Telegraph" raised many largo 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 peoplo of Paris at the close of the siege in 1871; the Prince of Wales's Hospital fund in commemoration of tho jubilee of 1897; and the Shilling Fund for the soldiers' widows and orphans in connection with the Boer War. An undertaking of a more festive kind was the fete given to 30,----000 London school children in Hyde Park on the occasions of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in ISB7. Iv politics tho "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 it brought to Englrmd of the conclusion of peace after the Franco-Ger-man War.