THE MORNING POST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19147, 15 April 1924, Page 7

THE MORNING POST

AN OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT. PURCHASED BY UNIONISTS, Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, April 13. It is officially announced that Countess Bathurst is disposing of the control of the Morning Post to a body of influential Conservatives, with whom the Duke ot Northumberland is associated. The purchasers are determined to maintain the paper’s traditions and policy, but they will introduce more modem methods. A. and N.Z. Cable. It was reported on December 12 of last year on the authority of the Daily Herald that the Conservative Party organisation had purchased the Morning Post at a price which would astonish those accustomed to handling newspaper property. Unionist officials, however, issued a prompt den’al of the report. Some weeks previously it was stated that the Yorkshire Post had been negotiating for the purchase of the Morning Post. The Morning Post is the oldest of ixmdon’s daily newspapers, dating from 1772. In 1795 it was sold for £6OO to Peter and Daniel Stuart, who quickly raised its position by enlisting Sir James Mackintosh and the poet Coleridge in its service. Many of the. lyrics of Moore and some of the noblest sonnets of Wordsworth were first published in the Post. In 1850 it was heavily in debt and was taken over by Messrs J. and T. B. Compton, the paper manufacturers, who entrusted the manabement to Peter Borthwick, a Scotsman. Borthwick died two years later, but his son, Algernon Borthwick, later Lord Glcnesk, succeeded him, and under his management prosperity returned. Borthwick, who became solo proprietor in 1877, gave the Post a strong political colour as Conservative, Imperialist, and Protectionist —which it still retains nndimmed. In 1887 Borthwick was raised to the peerage as Lord Olenesk and on his death in 1805 the proprietorship of the Post passed to bis only surviving child, a daughter, who married the seventh Earl of Bathurst, and who was described by the late I/ord Northchffe as the most influential woman in Britain.