AS A COMIC AUTHOR
Returning to Keighley, I turned my pen to writing for a comic annual, which I had brought out under the title of “The Haworth, Cowenheead, and Bogthorn Almenak.” This I produced for several years, its contents consisting of rhymes and local dialect sketches. I also started a monthly paper called, “The Keighley Investigator.” After the first issue I enrolled on my staff Theophilus Hayes, a gentleman well known in the town, who assumed the editorship of the journal. He wrote the leading articles, while I supplied the comic matter, satires, dialect letters, &c. The periodical had enjoyed an eight months’ existence when, unfortunately, my worthy friend, Mr Hayes, was served with a writ for libel. He was summoned to Leeds Assizes, and although the paper engaged eminent counsel (Mr Wheelhouse, Q.C., M.P.), we lost our case, and had to pay a fine of £50 and costs. Mr Hayes underwent a night’s incarceration in Armley Gaol, but next morning I managed to secure his release by paying the fine and all costs. The libel action was, I must say, taken with an object by a party of Liberals, through a certain auctioneer in the town. The fact was that the paper was too “hot” to live amongst the mighty men of Keighley. These times were very eventful ones to the town in many ways, particularly in regard to libel actions, for at each of five or six successive Assizes there was a libel case from Keighley—a circumstance which caused the Judge to remark on one occasion that Keighley ought to be called “The City of Libels.” I next turned my attention to writing my celebrated work, “T’History o’th’ Haworth Railway.” I say “celebrated” because the pamphlet ran through so many editions, about 100,000 copies in all, being sold. With the returns I was placed in clover; and now that I look back to the time, I appeared to have money for any purpose except saving it. In collaboration with a young man named Benjamin Hopkinson, son of the late Mr Barber Hopkinson, surveyor of this town, I subsequently undertook the production of “The Keighley Spectator.” The paper went on nicely for eleven months, its circulation and our revenue increasing greatly. We had for some time received articles for insertion from a Nonconformist parson in the town, the Rev Mr Gray. The contributions, being on subjects foreign to our non-political and non-sectarian principles, had almost invariably been rejected, until the writer appealed to the printer, who was the proprietor of the paper, and happened to be one of the parson’s “flock.” The proprietor told Ben and I it was no use—we must insert the Rev Mr Gray’s articles. Now, Ben and I were convinced that to publish that gentleman’s contributions would be to kill the journal, but the proprietor was firm, and so, as a protest, we resigned our positions as joint-editors. The parson was put in to edit the paper, and when the next number, under his hand, was issued, it was seen that the paper had travelled from Africa to Iceland, as it were—its contents were so cold and watery. This, the first under the Rev. Mr Gray’s editorship, proved the last issue of the “Spectator.”