ABSTRACT
This newspaper began circulation in 1732, and remained the main source of local news for almost a century. Because provincial presses like the Mercury were embedded in their communities, with easy access for readers into the printing house, “readers and advertisers had the opportunity to enquire as to the veracity of information, and to influence the content of a newspaper”. 16 Thus, there is little reason to doubt this letter’s authenticity. Sergeant Thomas Morris, a memoirist of the Napoleonic Wars, wrote of a drum major whose letter home was “so pleasing” that his wife showed it to her friends. “They advised her to send it to the editor of one of the daily papers,” recollected Morris. It was “immediately” printed, “and in a very short time a copy found its way to the mess-table of the regiment to which the man belonged”. 17 This suggests that such letter-writers would be held accountable for their accuracy.
