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The Morning Chronicle was first established by William Woodfall in 1769. It became a more successful newspaper after it was acquired by James Perry in 1789. Perry, a supporter of the Whigs, recruited well known radicals such as Richard Sheridan and Henry Brougham to write for the newspaper.

Perry's support for parliamentary reform brought him into conflict with the authorities and in 1793 was charged with seditious libel. Defended by Thomas Erskine, the jury decided that he was "guilty of publishing, but with no malicious intent". The judge refused to accept the verdict and after another day's discussion, decided he was "not guilty". Perry and Gray were less fortunate in 1798 when they were found guilty of libelling the House of Lords and sentenced to three months in Newgate Prison.

Sales of the Morning Chronicle gradually increased and by 1810 the newspaper had a circulation of 7,000. Perry was now able to recruit Britain's best radical journalists, including William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. Perry continued to be hounded by the government and in February 1818 was charged with Leigh Hunt and The Examiner for criticizing King George III. Perry defended himself well in court and was found not guilty.

James Perry was succeeded by John Black who employed Henry Mayhew, John Stuart Mill and Charles Dickens. on the newspaper. Dickens first began writing for the Morning Chronicle in 1834. Using the pen-name of 'Boz', Dickens also began contributing short stories to the newspaper. These stories were so popular that they were collected together and published as a book entitled Sketches by Boz (1836).

In 1849 Henry Mayhew suggested to the editor, John Douglas Cook, that the newspaper should carry out an investigation into the condition of the labouring classes in England and Wales. Cook agreed and recruited a team that included Mayhew, Angus Reach, Shirley Brooks and Charles Mackay.

It was the first time in history that a project like this was undertaken by a newspaper. The country was divided into six broad areas and writers were sent to investigate. This included Henry Mayhew (London), Charles Mackay (Birmingham and Liverpool), Angus Reach (Manufacturing Districts) and Shirley Brooks (Agricultural Districts). It is not known the names of the journalists who wrote about the other two areas: the Mining and Manufacturing Districts of South Wales and North Wales.

The Morning Chronicle ceased publication in 1862.

 

 

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(1) Editorial in the Morning Chronicle (9th October, 1849)

The primary cause of the pestilence is to be found in the filth and squalor of the poor. We, the richest nation on the face of the earth, have allowed our fellow-creatures to "fust" in styles, reeking with filth, such as farmers, now-a-days, know that swine would pine and dwindle in. We have allowed them to quench their thirst and cook their food with water poisoned with their own excretions.

 

(2) Henry Mayhew, Morning Chronicle (19th October 1849)

The city of London, within the walls, occupies a space of only 370 acres, and is but the hundred and fortieth part of the extent covered by the whole metropolis. Nevertheless, it is the parent of a mass of united and far spreading tenements, stretching from Hammersmith to Blackwell, from Holloway to Camberwell.

By the last census return (1841) the metropolis covered an extent of nearly 45,000 acres, and contained upwards of two hundred and sixty thousand houses, occupied by one million eight hundred and twenty thousand souls, constituting not only the densest, but the busiest hive, the most wondrous workshop, and the richest bank in the world. A strange incongruous chaos of wealth and want - of ambition and despair - of the brightest charity and the darkest crime, where there is more feasting and more starvation, than on any other spot on earth - and all grouped round the one giant centre, the huge black dome, with its ball of gold looming through the smoke and marking out the capital, no matter from what quarter the traveller may come.

In the hope of obtaining a bird's-eye view of the port, I went up to the Golden Gallery that is immediately below the ball of St. Paul's. It was noon, and an exquisitely bright and clear spring day; but the view was smudgy and smeared with smoke. Clumps of building and snatches of parks looked through the clouds like dim islands rising out of the sea of smoke. It was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the city began; and as you peered into the thick haze you could, after a time, make out the dusky figures of tall factory chimneys plumed with black smoke; while spires and turrets seemed to hang midway between you and the earth, as if poised in the thick grey air.

 

(3) Henry Mayhew, Morning Chronicle (23rd October 1849)

Thomas Heath, a weaver of 8 Pedley Street, Spitalfields, gave me a detailed account of all his earnings for 430 weeks. The sum of the gross earnings for 430 weeks is £322 3s. 4d., being about 15s. a week. He estimates his weaving expenses at 4s., which would 11s. net wages. He states his wife's earnings at about 3s. a week. He gives the following remarkable evidence:

"Have you any children?"

"No; I had two, but they are both dead, thanks to be God!"

"Do you express satisfaction at the death of your children?"

I do! I thank God for it. I am relieved from the burden of maintaining them, and they, poor dear creatures, are relieved from the troubles of the mortal life."

 

(4) Douglas Jerrold, letter to Mrs. Cowden Clarke (February 1850)

Do you read the Morning Chronicle? Do you devour those marvellous revelations of the inferno of misery, of wretchedness, that is smouldering under our feet? We live in a mockery of Christianity that, with the thought of its hypocrisy, makes me sick. We know nothing of this terrible life that is about us - us, in our smug respectability. To read of the sufferings of one class, and the avarice, the tyranny, the pocket cannibalism of the other, makes one almost wonder that the world should go on. And when we see the spires of pleasant churches pointing to Heaven, and are told - paying thousands to Bishops for the glad intelligence - that we are Christians!. The cant of this country is enough to poison the atmosphere.

I think you will agree to be one of the most beautiful records of the nobility of the poor; of those whom our jaunty legislators know nothing. I am very proud to say that these papers of Labour and the Poor were projected by Henry Mayhew, who married my girl. For comprehensiveness of purpose and minuteness of detail they have never been approached. He will cut his name deep.

 

 

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