Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper

Placard announcing signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Sunday 29 June 1919

Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper was an early Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Founding

The paper was launched by Edward Lloyd in 1842 as Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper, following the success of his Lloyd's Penny Weekly Miscellany. The new paper was intended as a rival for the Illustrated London News. It sold for two pence, a third the price of the Illustrated, and offered eight pages of news with woodcut illustrations.[1]

Under Edward Lloyd

For seven weeks, Lloyd published the newspaper while illegally avoiding stamp duty. He was forced to relaunch the publication as Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper and to increase the price to cover the duty.[1] This developed as one of the first mass market newspapers, soon followed by the News of the World and Reynold's Weekly Newspaper.[2] In 1849, it was renamed Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.[3]

In 1852, Douglas William Jerrold was appointed as editor, on a salary of £1,000 a year,[4] and by 1853, he had increased circulation to 90,000 copies a week.[5] He was succeeded in 1857 by his son, William Blanchard Jerrold, who served until his death in 1884.[6] He in turn was succeeded by his son, Evelyn as editor.[7]

When stamp duty was removed in 1860, the newspaper immediately dropped its price to one penny.[8] This allowed circulation to rise rapidly, to 500,000 copies in 1872, and in 1896 it became the first newspaper to regularly sell 1,000,000 copies an issue. By this period, the newspaper was so well known that music hall singer Marie Lloyd took her stage name from it.[9]

Lloyd used the newspaper to promote moderate liberal politics, and it was usually supportive of William Ewart Gladstone. He also spent large amounts of time promoting the newspaper,[9] and paid his staff with coins embossed with its name, although this was stopped on the grounds that this constituted defacement and was a criminal offence under the Coinage Offences Act 1861.[10] In 1876, Lloyd purchased the Daily Chronicle as a companion to his Sunday newspaper.[9]

Later years

Lloyd died in 1890, leaving the newspaper business to his son Frank.[9] Robert Donald, editor of the Chronicle, also edited Lloyd's Weekly from 1906. He enjoyed a friendly relationship with Prime Minister David Lloyd George but, during 1918, Donald questioned many of Lloyd George's decisions, prompting Lloyd George to gather together a consortium led by Henry Dalziel to purchase the newspapers under the name United Newspapers.[11] Donald immediately resigned, complaining that Lloyd George was trying to "corner public opinion"[12]

Under new ownership, the paper was renamed Lloyd's Sunday News, then in 1924 this was shortened to the Sunday News.[13] United Newspapers suffered a financial crisis in 1929, leading to the merger of the Chronicle with The Daily News to form the News Chronicle.[14] They sold the Sunday News to Edgar Wallace, who edited it for six months before its final collapse in August 1931, whereupon it was merged with the Sunday Graphic.[15]

Editors

1842: Edward Lloyd
1852: Douglas William Jerrold
1857: William Blanchard Jerrold
1884: Thomas Catling
1906: Robert Donald
1919: William Sugden Robinson
1924: Ernest Perris
1931: Edgar Wallace

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 C. F. Williamson, "The Illustrated London News and Its Rivals - Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper, The Pictorial Times, and The Illustrated Times"
  2. ↑ Andrew King and John Plunkett, Victorian Print Media, p.339
  3. ↑ British Library 19th-century newspapers, Joint Information Systems Committee
  4. ↑ "Jerrold, Douglas William", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  5. ↑ H. I. Dutton and John Edward King, Ten per cent and no surrender, p.167
  6. ↑ "Jerrold, William Blanchard", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  7. ↑ "Literary Gossip". The Week : a Canadian journal of politics, literature, science and arts 1 (17): 270. 27 Mar 1884. Retrieved 30 April 2013.
  8. ↑ George Boyce, James Curran and Pauline Wingate, Newspaper history from the seventeenth century to the present day, p.249
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 "Lloyd, Edward", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  10. ↑ Maurice Rickards and Michael Twyman, The encyclopedia of ephemera, p.102
  11. ↑ "Donald, Sir Robert", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  12. ↑ Donald; Sir; Robert (1860-1933); Journalist, www.parliament.uk
  13. ↑ James Willing, Willing's press guide (1927)
  14. ↑ "United Newspapers Ltd", Competition Commission
  15. ↑ "The Press: Odds & Ends: Aug. 31, 1931", TIME Magazine

External links

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