Read all about it...Bob’s fascinating book tells history of English newspapers until 1899 (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Read all about it...Bob’s fascinating book tells history of English newspapers until 1899

10:20am Tuesday 3rd August 2010 in

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A STAGECOACH hold-up just outside Basingstoke made the headlines back in July 1754.

But the victims on the Taunton Stage Coach, in Popham Lane, were luckier than many, as they were robbed by a ‘gentleman highwayman’ called Civil John.

The account was reported in the London Evening Post, which described the tall, raw-boned man aged about 36, as being soft in behaviour – so much so that he returned some of the money before fleeing.

The story is recounted in a fascinating and lively, if slightly scatological book, called From Grub Street to Fleet Street, written by Basingstoke historian Bob Clarke. The book charts the history of English newspapers until 1899.

Where today Fleet Street is a commonly used metonym for the British national press, Grub Street was once used to described journalists and political pamphleteers.

It was, in fact, a real place in Cripplegate, London – its name coming from a refuse ditch. And if you thought that some of today’s journalists have a bit of a reputation, it was even worse back in the 1640s, when they were seen as rather racy characters.

Samuel Pecke, who according to Bob, was perhaps the first professional newspaperman, was described as “constant in nothing but wenching, lying and drinking.”

The clearly well-researched book has drawn on Bob’s impressive collection of more than 1,000 newspapers and other publications kept at his Frances Road home.

Bob said: “When I was little, about seven or eight years old, I peeled back the lino in my bedroom and discovered all these Daily Mirrors reporting the Dunkirk evacuation during the war, and I suppose in a way that’s what got me hooked on newspapers.”

The bulk of his collection comes from the 17th and 18th centuries and shows just how salacious and macabre the newspaper reading public was back then, making modern journalism look rather sanitised and tame in comparison.

Bob said: “I started honing in more on pre-1800 newspapers, realising that 18th century newspapers are much more fun, with highwaymen, smugglers, pirates, stories about Newgate Prison and the gallows, and then there are the adverts for quack medicines, which are hilarious.”

Sifting through a pile of ancient newspapers, Bob said: “The beauty of a newspaper is that you are touching history.

“You can imagine the first person to have read them, and in there somewhere there are stories about Dick Turpin, and you could imagine somebody picking up a newspaper and thinking: ‘That Dick Turpin’s been at it again!’.”

Shedding light on the term ‘local rag’, and why many of his older newspapers are in remarkably good condition, Bob explained that the paper was made from boiled down linen rags, rather than wood pulp, which with age becomes very delicate and brittle.

During the early days of the industry, before the advent of Fleet Street’s massive printing presses, producing newspapers was a slow process.

Bob said: “They were virtually hand-made, and to produce a newspaper, I think you’d have two men on a press, who could produce 250 sides in an hour – so we are talking about very low volume in terms of how many newspapers were printed.”

It is therefore not surprising that early newspapers were expensive, made more so thanks to a stamp duty tax imposed on them.

Bob said: “A newspaper was a very expensive proposition and as time went on, Government used the tax for its wars, like the War of Independence, and then after the Napoleonic Wars they increased the taxes even more to try to keep the newspapers out of the hands of the working classes.”

Many saw newspapers as a threat to the status quo, with the likes of radical reformer William Cobbett being sent to prison for seditious libel.

Hailing from nearby Farnham, he founded the Political Register in 1802 and was known as the father of the radical press, which attacked corruption in high places.

In 1815, the stamp duty forced the price of the Political Register to one shilling and a halfpenny, making it beyond the reach of working class readers.

“So, the following year, Cobbett produced an unstamped version of the paper, called The Twopenny Trash, ‘commenting on the news, but with the news itself being omitted’.

Sales reached almost 70,000 compared to The Times selling 7,000 copies.

“I have some unstamped radical papers and they are great reads, because they are written as one would make a speech – full of fiery rhetoric – they weren’t dull,” said Bob.

Taking a leaf out of William Cobbett’s book, Bob has revised and extended the original version of his book, which was originally sold as a hardback by an academic publisher.

The new book has now been published by Revel Barker Publishing, at a more affordable price of £12.99, and is available from all good bookshops.