FIRST PENNY PAPER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 January 1928, Page 8

FIRST PENNY PAPER.

HISTORY OF THE “DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

One of the oldest and most influential newspapers, the London •’Daily Telegraph,” whose change of ownership wias announced .recently, was first published on June 29,1855, as a two-penny newspapei, the proprietor being Colonel Sleigh, M.P. Colonel Sleigh soon found himself in financial difficulties, and three months Jatej- the paper was transferred to Mr. Joseph Moses; Levy, ft wias’ converted into a. four-page penny journal, the first penny newspaper produced in London. Mr. Levy's son, afterwards Sir KLl,ward Lawson, who was created JJaron 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, ami J. P. Benjamin, the distinguished Anglo-American lawyer. One of its earliest dramatic critics was E‘. L. Blanchard. Others prominently associated with the paper were W. L. Courtney, a .distinguished man of letters, E. B. Swan-Muller, and J. L. Garvin. “The Daily Telegraph,” says the “Encyclopaedia. Lritann.ica,” may he said to have Jed the, way in London journalism in capturing ,a large and important reading public from the monopoly of “The Times.” J.t became the great organ of the middle, classes, and was distinguished for its enterprise in many fields. Jn June, 1873, the “Teleua.!.u” despatched George Smith to carry out a. series of archaeological researches in Nineveh, which resulted in the discovery of the misising fragments of the Cuneiform account of the Deluge, and many other inscriptions, in cooperation with the “New York Herald” it equipped H. M. .Stanley’s great expedition to Central Africa (1875-1877). Another geographical feat with which the name of the “Daily Telegraph” is associated was the exploration of Kilimanjaro- (1884-1885), by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Harry Johnston, whose account of his work appeared an the “Daily Telegraph’ ’during 1885. Mr. Lionel Decile's march from the Cape to Cairo in 1899 and 1900 was also undertaken under the auspices, of the paper. The “Telegraph” raised many large 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 improvised people qf Paris at the close of the siege in 1871; the Prince of Wales' Hospital fund in commemoration of the jubilee of 1897; and the Shilling Fund for the soldiers’ widows and orphans in connection with the Boer War. An undertaking qf a, more festive kind was the fete given to. 30,000 London school children in Hyde Park on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1887.

In politics the “Daily Telegraph” was consistently Liberal up to 1878, when it opposed Mr. Gladstone's. speeches. Alter 1886 it represented Unionist opinions. Among special feats of which it can boast 1 was the first news it brought to England of the conclusion of peace after the Franco-German War.