ABSTRACT
Throughout our period newspapers were becoming increasingly profitable. In London during the 1770s and 1780s annual profits were generally between £1,500 and £2,000, but by around 1820 Perry’s Morning Chronicle was making £12,000 a year, whilst the Morning Herald and the Star brought in £6,000–8,000 each. 1 With rising profits, the value of newspapers also increased. In the 1780s, most London papers were valued at under £10,000. 2 In 1803, Daniel Stuart sold the Morning Post for £25,000, having turned the paper’s fortunes around in the previous eight years. 3 The tremendous success of The Times meant that the paper was valued at almost £45,000 in 1819. 4 Its owner, John Walter II, retired from newspaper work in 1816 to live the life of a country squire and MP. 5 Similarly fortunate was James Harmer, who was said to have made over £300,000 by 1853, largely from his ownership of Bell’s Weekly Dispatch. 6 As the scale of production increased and profits rose, the cost of launching a daily paper also increased. In the early 96nineteenth century the sum involved could be as little as £2,000, but by the 1830s this figure had multiplied ten-fold. 7
