Journalism in 1900 London: The Daily Telegraph

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Arthur H. Beavan concluded his survey of London in Imperial London, published in 1901, with a look at the Daily Telegraph:

Until the London Daily Telegraph came into the possession of the Levy Lawson family, its history is hardly worth recording.

It was started originally by a Colonel Sleigh in 1855 as the Daily Telegraph and Courier, dragged on a precarious existence, and, finally, was taken over as a "bad debt" by Mr. Joseph Moses Levy, the printer and proprietor of the Sunday Times, who, in conjunction with Mr. Lionel Lawson, developed it into the success it now is - probably one of the best properties of its kind in existence.

Its advertisements - the life-blood of a newspaper - usually occupy forty-six out of a total of eighty-four columns of an ordinary twelve-paged issue; and it is an open secret that every day in the week, the trusted clerk, who, well-shadowed by a private detective, pays the cash receipts into the Bank, leaves the premises with a sum generally running into four figures.

Passing through the swinging-doors of the Daily Telegraph Office in Fleet Street, one enters the Pillar Hall, a spacious and lofty apartment, looking with its red granite columns and oak fittings very much like a Bank, and devoted to the equally lucrative business of receiving advertisements.

Fleet Street London
Courtesy of AllPosters.com

At the rear, the book-keepers and cashiers are hard at work recording the amount of grist that, year in, year out, pours into the mill of the fortunate proprietors.

Visitors to London must frequently have noticed that the offices and publishing department of the Daily Telegraph are separated, sandwich-fashion, by the Sportsman and an optician's shop, whose sites were at one time in the market at a reasonable price; but the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph did not "see their way" to purchasing them, and so lost a splendid opportunity of ensuring a handsome and very wide frontage to Fleet Street.

With the introduction of the latest improved machinery it became necesssry to reconstruct and enlarge the building in the rear; and this was effected at heavy cost, but without disturbing the ordinary routine for a single hour.

The adjoining premises of the Weekly Dispatch (a journal acquired by Sir George Newnes) in Wine Office Court having been secured, the scheme of enlargement is at rest for the present, but for how long, who can predict in these days when the circulation of a popular "Daily" grows by leaps and bounds.

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