The Times

The Times was founded by editor and publisher John Walter. He had bought the patent for a faster new typographical process, and opened his own printing house. The first number of the newspaper was on 1 January 1785, as The Daily Universal Register; it did not become The Times until 1788. Walter’s pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news helped build the paper’s reputation among policy makers and financiers, even though sixteen months of his editorship were based in Newgate Prison, where he had been committed for libel. The Times’ reputation was based on significant contributions from figures in politics, science, literature, and the arts to build its reputation.

We have extracted passages relating to Epsom and Ewell from the first hundred years of the Times. They are given here, by decade:

• 1780
• 1790
• 1800
• 1810
• 1820
• 1830
• 1840
• 1850
• 1860
• 1870
• 1880

In 1803, Walter handed the business over to his son, also John Walter. Fourteen years later, Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor and the great days of the newspaper began. Barnes was a champion of freedom of the press, a sharp critic of parliamentary hypocrisy, and a campaigner for change who supported first the Reform Bill and then Catholic Emancipation in Ireland. In 1834 at the heart of the Reform Crisis he was described by the Lord Chancellor, no less, as ‘the most powerful man in the country’.

The Times was the first truly national newspaper, using the new railway network to make deliveries to towns throughout the country. It was printed on a revolutionary new steam-driven cylinder press and had a previously unequalled circulation. So economies of scale made for large profits, while competition from other newspapers was minimal. This mean that the Times could pay writers much more than any of its rivals were offering. Under the control of Barnes and his successor John Thadeus Delane (editor 1841–77) the influence of The Times rose to great heights, especially in politics and the City. After 1829, when an editorial opened ‘We thundered out the other day…’, the paper became known as the Thunderer. It was a mocking nickname: but the English like making jokes about those they respect.

John Thadeus Delane
Image courtesy of Bourne Hall Museum

Such was the national standing of the Times that the goodwill of its editor was courted anxiously by statesmen, and a regular run of supportive editorials seemed necessary to any party’s domestic and national policies. But what did this mean at local level, to the Epsom businessmen and traders who leafed through its pages looking at sales particulars and the verdicts of the Assize? The Times was a campaigning paper. It stood for the ideas which underlay the reforms of the 1830s and 40s: effective management of public business, answerable to the scrutiny of government and the press; honest, unbiased and professional public services; and law without ambiguity or obfuscation. When Epsom slowly acquired its Victorian machinery of public affairs – the workhouse, Board of Health, magistrates’ courts, board schools – this was a fulfilment of what the Times had been calling for.

The Thunderer cartoon
Image courtesy of Bourne Hall Museum

The Letters page was one of Barnes’ most important innovations: anyone who felt that something was being done wrong, or who had a piece of good advice to give, had only to life a pen and begin ‘Sir,’ (assuming, of course, that the correspondent was a member of the middle classes, property-owning, and male). Following the death of Catherine Bailey in 1826, a correspondent writes in with rulings which should be implemented by stagecoach companies for the health and safety of passengers. After the 1846 Derby, a correspondent writes to protest at the scrums around railway carriages, and suggests that his countrymen should adopt the Continental habit of queueing.

The widening sphere of concern among the property-owning classes found its reflection in the Times. Local input in the first thirty years is largely confined to advertisements for houses and commercial opportunities. After that  the coverage of criminal cases becomes more conspicuous – not necessarily for their own sake, but because they highlighted some failure on the part of the authorities to act, like the parish constable in 1829 who ‘did not see the outrage committed, and therefore could not act; and besides had to look to his own safety from such a set of desperate villains’. The legal reports, usually given in great detail, touch on points which were of common interest, such as the right of the parish vestry to levy a rate on the new Grandstand.

It was not until 1838, almost the fiftieth anniversary of the race, that we find the Derby being reported as a social event, and not just a chance for vice to gather its forces on Epsom Downs. (Following our usual rule with newspapers and journals, we have copied out extracts about the Derby as a popular event, but not the reports on horses and owners from the sporting pages).

The Times archive is available online at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/archive/. Thanks to Philip Weatheritt, who searched through a hundred years of papers looking for the local material, and Sheila Ross who typed them all up.

Jeremy Harte