The history of Fleet Street is full of startups and failures, mergers and takeovers. An East Ender back in 1960 could have picked up long-gone dailies such as the Daily Sketch, the News Chronicle and the Sporting Life. Unthinkable today, they would have had a choice of three paid-for London evening papers (with several editions a day).
But just as evening the biggest titles swiftly fade from the memory (how many now remember the Daily Herald, which peaked in 1933 with sales of two million, making it the biggest selling paper on the planet) so do even the biggest press barons.
Edward Lloyd was the Rupert Murdoch of the mid 19th century. From his Bow printing works, on the banks of the River Lea, he ran two of the greatest titles of the Victorian age. Ducking and diving, and on occasions simply breaking the law, he built a press empire that set the template for the mass circulation newspapers of a half century later, such as the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and Daily Express.
Lloyd had ink and newsprint in his blood. In an era when many newspapers were the mouthpieces of rich men, used as propaganda tools to get their political points across (which may sound familiar today), he was a working class lad made good.
He had trained as a compositor at the London Mechanics Institute (which today forms part of Birkbeck, University of London) and so learned, literally, how newspapers were put together. The ‘comps’ were the men who assembled the metal type into page ‘formes’ from which the news pages were printed. Edward soon saw the potential of mass publishing for making his fortune. He was an entrepreneur by instinct but his training was in printing rather than journalism.
His first venture was Lloyds Stenography, a shorthand system in which Edward wrote the characters himself. It proved a useful if not spectacular seller to reporters and secretaries in London offices. Next off the presses at his River Lea paper mill was a series of popular songbooks, followed by The Penny Pickwick. This abridged collection of the works of Charles Dickens (writing as Boz) with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) was a hit, but it seemed the Bow printer had been rather lax about copyright clearance. Dickens sued, but without success, and the men would go on to become firm friends.
The tireless Edward then launched Lloyd’s Weekly Miscellany (news from around Britain) and followed it with Lloyd’s Weekly Atlas (stories from around the world). Both sold well around the East End and the rest of London, but Lloyd had bigger plans. In 1840 he launched the Penny People’s Gazette and in 1842 was inspired by the launch of one of the great publishing successes of the 19th century. The Illustrated London News quickly became a huge success simply by the novelty of including pictures.
The canny cockney swiftly followed suit with Lloyd’s Illustrated London Newspaper, priced at tuppence (a third the price of his rival) and illustrated with woodcut illustrations. Alas, it quickly became apparent how Edward had managed to sell so cheaply: he was dodging the stamp duty that had to be paid on newspapers. He was forced to fold and relaunch it as Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper (Lloyd was never the snappiest at names for papers) and the Bow printer at last had a hit on his hands.
It was the accession to the editor’s chair of Douglas Jerrold in 1852 (at the princely salary of £1000 a year) that saw Lloyd’s Weekly News, as it was now called, hit its stride. In September 1852, the Duke of Wellington died. The most famous Englishman of his day, the hero of Waterloo and a former prime minister, he had lived to 83. The scale of his state funeral was comparable to that of Winston Churchill a century or so later. Thousands thronged the London streets, and those who couldn’t get there wanted to read about it and see pictures in the papers.
Lloyd’s paper sold 150,000 in the week of the funeral. The proprietor had installed a new rotary printing press at the Bow works – the first in England. He even set up his own esparto grass estate in Algeria, harvesting the raw materials for the Lea Valley works. In his spare hours, Edward and his subordinates would tour the country, spying unused advertising hoardings and snapping up cheap space to advertise his papers.
Edward had illegally dodged stamp duty when he began, and when the tax was finally scrapped in 1860 he took full advantage. He dropped the price of the ‘News’ to a penny and circulation soared to 500,000 a week.
Now he expanded, buying the Daily Chronicle in 1876 for £30,000, and setting himself the task of transforming a small local daily into a national newspaper. £150,000 was invested in that dream. The former Clerkenwell News soared from 8,000 to 140,000 copies a day, and by 1914 its sales would beat the combined circulations of The Times, Daily Telegraph, Morning Post, Evening Standard and the Daily Graphic.
Lloyd had set himself the goal of reaching sales of one million for Lloyd’s Weekly and died in 1890, at 75, with the magical figure almost in his grasp. As press barons do, he kept it in the family, son Frank serving his apprenticeship at Bow before taking over. The Daily Chronicle and Lloyd’s News went from strength to strength, and in 1896 Edward’s flagship title sold a million copies for the first time. The little East End title was now the country’s biggest selling newspaper. So famous was it that when East Ender and aspiring music hall performer Matilda Wood was looking for a stage name she took it from her favourite weekly read – becoming Marie Lloyd.
Things have a habit of coming full circle. In 1930, with the Lloyds a memory as proprietors, the Chronicle was merged with the Daily News ( itself founded by Charles Dickens 74 years before). The left of centre paper published daily until 1960, when it was swallowed by the Daily Mail.
The first million-selling paper, meanwhile, went into steady decline as the new popular dailies stole its sales. In August 1931, under the editorship of Edgar Wallace, it was merged with the Sunday Graphic. And on 4 December 1960, 51 years ago this week, the final Graphic rolled off the presses. The story of the East End press baron came to a close.