OFFER ACCEPTED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1937, Page 9

OFFER ACCEPTED

SALE OF "MORNING POST"

(British Official' Wireless.) RUGBY, July 28. . The following announcement appears in the "Morning Post" and the "Daily Telegraph" today:— "The directors of.the 'Morning Post' announce that the shareholders of the 'Morning, Post,' Limited, have accepted the offer for their holdings made by Lord'Camrose. The date for completion of the arrangements has been fixed for August 27, and the paper will meantime be carried on under the present control.1 Lord Camrose will in due course make an announcement of his policy and intentions-for the 'Morning Post' and of his plans for its future conduct." * ', Not only is the "Morning Post" the oldest daily newspaper in London, but in the British Empire. It was established on November 2, 1772, the seventeenth birthday of Marie Antoinette., George 111 had then been twelve years on the Throne of England, and the American War of Independence had ( not commenced. The next oldest daily journal is "The Times," which was first published on January 1, 1785, under the name of the "Daily Universal Register.".' That name was changed to "The Times" on January 1. 1788. The "Morning Post" was first published as the "Morning Post and Daily Advertising Pamphlet"—an eight-page paper. It was mostly an advertising sheet, including State lotteries, which were legal and popular at that time. It developed into a national newspaper under the ownership of Messrs. Peter and Daniel Stuart after 1795, and attracted a wonderful galaxy of writers, including Sir James Mackintosh. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Routhcy, Arthur Young, the poets Moore and Wordsworth, and Charles Lamb. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the circulation of the paper was 4000 a day. After 1832, under Algernon Borthwick, the "Morning Post" became the leading society paper, and its fashionable characteristics often made it the butt of Thackeray's satirical pen. During Lord Palmerston'si term at the Foreign Office the paper was always regarded as his especial organ, and even in those days it was distinguished for its robust Imperialism in foreign affairs. In 1877 Mr. Borthwick became sole owner oC the "Morning Post," and four years later he reduced the price from 3d to Id, at which it stood until the Great War, when it was raised to 2d, being again reduced to Id in 1927. Mr. Bcrthwick became a knight, then a baronet, and was raised.to the peerage' as Lord Glenash in 1895. ' When he died in 1908 the ownership passed to his only surviving child, Countess Bathurst. She disposed of. the paper in 1923 to. a grdup headed by the Duke nf Northumberland. Lord. Camrose won lame in the [newspaper field as William Ewert Berry. His barony dates from 1929. Thirty-six years ago he founded the •'Advertising World," and from that beginning has advanced until he is now the principal proprietor of the "Daily Telegraph," which he. has rehabilitated since he took it over, and became edi-tor-in-chief and joint proprietor of the "Financial Times." A cablegram received last January announced that he was extending his interests in the "Daily Telegraph" and retiring from Allied Newspapers, Ltd.