Then, as now, the backbone of a Newspaper was its advertisements, and then also, did each Newspaper laud itself as being the best advertising medium, owing to its superior circulation. We, who are accustomed to see huge posters setting forth sworn affidavits that the daily circulation of some London newspapers amounts to some quarter of a million if not more, will feel some surprise when we learn that the Morning Post, of June 10, 1800, the then leading paper, published a sworn return (and exulted over their number and success) of 10,807 newspapers printed in the week June 2-7, or a daily average of 1,800 copies.
The World, at one time a rival, had published its circulation when it reached 1,500 daily, and thus laid claim to be considered a good advertising medium; and this was when newspapers were selling at 3d. each. In 1800 they were 6d. each, and the extra tax had diminished the circulation of the Morning Post during the previous summer by one-third, which fall they claim to have recovered, and to have raised their circulation in five years from 400 to 1,800 daily. In June, 1796, the Times published its number; and again in 1798, when it confessed to a fall of 1,400 in its daily sale.
In 1806 there was a very pretty little war as to the circulation of rival newspapers.
The Times opened the ball on the 15th of November by inserting a paragraph, “Under the Clock”: “☞We are under the necessity of requesting our Correspondents and Advertisers not to be late in their communications, if intended for the next day’s publication; as the extraordinary Sale of THE TIMES, which is decidedly superior to that of every other Morning Paper, compels us to go to press at a very early hour.”
The Morning Post, November 17th (which number is unfortunately missing in the British Museum file), challenged the statement—to which the Times replied on the 18th: “This declaration of our Sale, a Morning Paper of yesterday has thought proper to contradict, and boldly claims the superiority. We have only to say on the subject, that, if the Paper will give an attested account of its daily Sale for the last two Months, we will willingly publish it.”
And now the strife was waxing hot, for the Morning Post on the 21st of November wrote: “We admit the sale of his Paper may, for the present, be many hundreds beyond any other, except the Morning Post, the decided superiority of which, we trust, he will no longer affect to dispute.... We pledge ourselves to Prove that the regular sale of the Morning Post is little short of a thousand per day superior to that of his paper.”
Of course the Times, of the 22nd of November, calls this a preposterous boast, and wishes statistics for the last two months.
Thus goaded, the Morning Post, of the 24th of November, issued affidavits from its printers and publisher, that its circulation, even at that dead season, was upwards of 4,000 daily, and that during the sitting of Parliament it reached, and exceeded 5,000, the editor remarking: “What is meant by regular Sale, is the Number which is daily served to Subscribers.... If those who, by the Low Expedient of selling their Papers by the noisy nuisance of Horn Boys, take into their accounts the extra Papers so sold, it is not for us to follow so unworthy an example; to such means the Morning Post never has recourse.”
The Times, November 25th, has the last of this wordy warfare, declaring that its circulation sometimes reached 7,000 or 8,000 a day: and I should not have introduced this episode, had it not have given such a perfect insight into the working of the press of that date, which would have been unobtainable but for this quarrel.