FREEMAN’S JOURNAL

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 9 January 1925, Page 7

FREEMAN’S JOURNAL

ITS TEMPESTUOUS HISTORY

DEATH AFTER IGI YEARS

LONDON, Dec. 19.; Despite the hopes that the Official Receiver would find a purchaser, Freeman’s Journal, the Dublin organ of the Irish National Party, announces that it is closing down to-day, after 161 tempestuous years. The final issue records the military suppression of the newspaper in 191 J. It gives an amazing diary of the imprisonment of the proprietors and editors, the burning and bombing of the offices. Black and Tan raids, attacks by Irregulars, and the holding tip of the staff, who. were handcuffed at revolver point while the raiders'destroyed the plant with sledge hammers. During these troublous times it was a commonplace for the sub-editorial staff to crawl out of the room on hands and knees to escape the bullets. Letters to the personnel, threatening death and banishment, were frequent. Newsvendors and customers were terrorised, vans were destroyed, bundles of papers were burnt, and pot shots were taken at the employees. An editorial rather naively attributes the paper’s declining fortunes to these events.

The premises and machinery may yet find a purchaser, and the journalistic stormy petrel may become a Phoenix, even though, to use an Hibernianism, it has just sung its swansong.