The Star: Fifty years of London’s forgotten evening newspaper

This feature explores the rise and fall of a campaigning evening newspaper now long lost to history.

It was January 17th 1938, and one of London’s lost evening newspapers, The Star, brought out a special edition to mark its 50 year anniversary. It was a paper founded by no less a figure than T.P. (Thomas Power) O’Connor, sometime Fellow and President of the Institute of Journalists.

They were so confident that the paper would last another fifty years that H.G. Wells wrote a feature predicting what he hoped life would be like in the London of 1988. But, alas, the paper would not last that long.

Dennis Griffiths in his Encyclopedia of the British Press: 1422-1992 would write that The Star when launched on 17th January 1888 ‘was one of the great successes of the “New Journalism” and on its first day sold 142,000 copies, a world record. “TP” recruited one of the best ever teams, with such names as H.W. Massingham, Thomas Marlowe, Sir Robert Donald, W. J. Evans, Sir George Sutton, James Douglas, Charlie Hands, and George Bernard Shaw.’

O’Connor launched the Star with capital of £48,000 and as editor received £1,200 a year. He declared that he would ‘do away with the hackneyed style of obselete journalism and that there would be no place in his paper for the verbose and prolix articles’ which were so much a part of the style of newspapers at that time.

His philosophy was defined in an article for The New Review in October 1889: ‘In journalism as in life it is the personal that interests mankind.’ One of is first ‘star’ writers George Bernard Shaw explained a year earlier when writing about O’Connor and his new paper: ‘Today the journalist-in-chief must be above all things an apostle, a man of convictions, illusions, fanaticisms, everything that made a man impossible in the days when the Star was impossible … nobody hates, curses or fears you, as so many do Stead.’

The Star newspaper introduced itself to London by declaring it would be fighting for the thousands of homeless at a time when the Embankment was crowded with penniless down-
and-outs. In 1888, in the districts of East London, Battersea and Deptford, 27 out of every 100 men were out of work. There was no welfare system and no local government apart from ecclesiastical vestries, Boards of Guardians, and the Metropolitan Board of Works.

The Star also campaigned for, and secured, the establishment of an elected London County Council. Its first edition and record print-run were all produced in one day from a basement in Stonecutter Street. The Star was a halfpenny evening paper.

O’Connor’s first editorial in The Star spoke for a spirit of journalism that endures into the present day. He wrote: ‘In our view, the effect of every policy must first be regarded from the standpoint of the workers of the Nation, and of the poorest and most helpless among them. The charwoman who lives in St Giles’, the seamstress who is sweated in Whitechapel, the labourer who stands begging for work outside the dockyard gates in St George’s-in-the- East. These are the persons
by whose conditions we shall judge the policy of the different political parties, and as it relieves or injures or leaves unhelped their position shall the policy by us be praised or condemned,
helped or resisted.’

The Insulin Campaign

In 1932, the paper began a campaign against the tax duty imposed on insulin which it described as ‘a tax on life itself.’

At the time one person in every 250 in the country was a sufferer from diabetes and insulin was their life saver as it is now. Many of the victims were very poor and The Star raised its voice in an indignant and vigorous protest against the 33 and 1/3 per cent duty which was condemned as ‘blood money wrung from the miseries of stricken human beings.’

The campaign ran for two years and in May 1934 it was crowned with success when the duty was removed. Tributes were paid in the House of Commons to the role of The Star in the fight for justice for people with diabetes.

The campaign had drawn support from all political parties and Sir Percy Harris, the Chief Whip of the Liberal Party said: ‘It is due more to your paper’s lead than to anything else that the duty has been removed.’

Sir Walter Layton wrote: ‘To achieve a victory of that kind more than compensates for the strains and disillusions of Fleet Street. It makes men doubly proud of their craft.’

In the 1930s The Star‘s fairness in political analysis and reporting was given a graceful tribute at a time with the leader of the Conservatives Stanley Baldwin made his famous speech about ‘Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.’

He was being pummelled and vilified by the most powerful newspaper groups and press barons; particularly Beaverbrook and Rothermere.

Baldwin had quoted The Star favourably in his Epsom Speech and this inspired the following rhymed comment from Punch magazine:

‘My faith is of the Baldwin mint

And I grow hot with shame

To find no ‘Tory’ evening print

That’s loyal to his name;

False friends that deal a traitor’s blow

I am resolved to bar;

Give me for choice an honest foe-

Give me, in fact “The Star”‘

This charming graphic ‘Who is the Man in the Street’ represented The Star‘s view of itself as the evening paper in London giving voice to vox populi though the metapor clearly excludes women. ‘Who is the Man in the Street’ was also a popular newspaper style competition of the time when a mystery male representative of a paper would visit a town or district and a reader recognising him would win a cash prize.

Predatory Takeovers

The Star eventually became part of a liberal group that included the national News Chronicle owned by the Cadburys chocolate family. They would sell out to Daily Mail Associated Newspapers in 1960. The news vendor’s cry of ‘Star, News, Standard!’ would be shortened by one syllable.

The Star had merged with Associated Newspapers’ own London Evening News and the national News Chronicle with the Daily Mail. In truth it was no ‘merger.’

They promptly shut them down to remove competitors from the market and sacked most of the journalists working for the papers they were absorbing.

Though two years later the merged evening papers were still being marketed as the ‘News & Star’ and this continued until 1968.

People at the steps to Piccadilly Circus underground station on a rainy day in August 1962 with an Evening News & Star stand announcing a Marilyn Monroe suicide inquiry

Not even the London Evening News would make it to 1988. That closed in 1980. Unlike The Star, the editor and journalists at The Evening News did have the chance to say ‘Goodbye London’ properly on 31st October of that year.

In August 2023, Press Gazette reported losses for the Evening Standard up by 14% in 2022, marking its sixth consecutive year in the red and adding another £16.4 million to the accumulated debt.

The year 1938 was a good one for the British press industry. It would see the launch of Picture Post and Reader’s Digest. But at the time Wickham Steed, a former editor of The Times, complained that like British democracy itself, the press was unable to help the British people withstand the rising tide of totalitarianism.

There were too few newspapers challenging and questioning the terrible events in Germany, Italy and Spain, and Japan’s military expansionism in the Far East. There was too much consensus around appeasement and keeping the peace.

The BBC’s Director-General, John Reith, actually admired the Continental dictators, and many in the British establishment believed in parleying with Hitler and Mussolini. The BBC then was at the very beginning of developing its news gathering service. It did not send anyone to report on the Spanish Civil War until Richard Dimbleby covered the refugee crisis on the border with France when it was all over in 1939.

The sixteen pages of the half century commemorative edition of The Star.

Defunct

Bouverie Street, like Fleet Street, was home to resonant though now defunct titles in the UK’s journalism newspaper industry. The only indication of this now is a mural on the side of a block at the junction of Fleet Street bearing the names: The Republican, Pall Mall Gazette, The Morning Post, News Chronicle, and The Daily Herald. But, strangely, not The Star. What an appalling omission.

On the front page for the paper on that Monday evening in January 1938 were stories about Princess Juliana of Holland being about to give birth, 22 seamen perishing in a collision between ships in the Irish Sea with bodies washing up on the Ayrshire and South Wales coasts, and an RAF aircraftman falling to his death from a bomber in Oxfordshire. (He fell 50 feet to the ground and it was thought the aeroplane “may have suddenly ‘bumped’ in the air while he was leaning out.”)

An abnormally high tide that afternoon had many parts of London only two inches from the danger of flooding with a photograph of the water of the River Thames level with the veranda of the Angel Inn in Bermondsey. Meanwhile, there was political turmoil in France. The Popular Front (left-wing) Premier who resigned three days before had been asked to become Premier again.

An early BBC disc jockey was so enraptured with the popular record tunes he was playing, his programme over-ran by seven minutes. The main court story was an award of damages to the Markova-Dolin Ballet company against a London laundry which had shrunk their tights so much they were too tight to be worn for their performances.

Brentford FC fans would be chuffed to know that the main sports story was Brentford being the leaders of the First Division and the paper included a picture of the whole squad.

The Star sent special gifts of silver Jubilee spoons to mothers whose babies were born in London’s maternity hospitals between “midnight last night and midnight tonight.”

An editorial said The Star was looking forward to the next fifty years and explained: “The Star was begun on January 17, 1888 by T P O’Conner and a group of young men, who were very hopeful about the future. They hated tyranny, injustice and cruelty, whether perpetrated by a king abroad or a squire at home. They valued freedom and tolerance above their own comfort. They believed that progress was as inevitable as the march of the sun across the sky.

“Their faith in the natural goodness of man – once he was freed from the shackles of ignorance and fear – was so strong that they looked ahead to a time within their own span of life when the scourge of war and the worst evils of poverty would pass away. They pictured the world in 1938 as a much happier, healthier, sunnier place than the world in 1888. For them there was always sunlight on the farther peaks.”

In looking forward to the next half- century, The Star said: “It takes heart of grace from multiplying signs that the forces of good sense and good will in the world are gathering strength.”

The newspaper added to its celebrations with a sumptuous banquet at the Savoy Hotel on 21st January 1938 attended by most of the Metropolitan Mayors and MPs in its circulation area of Greater London. There was also the publication of the book The Story of the Star, 1888-1938: Fifty Years of Progress and Achievement written by Sir Walter Layton.

Edwardian newspaper sellers in London indicating a highly competitive evening newspaper market which included other titles apart from the News, Star, Standard‘, such as the Pall Mall Gazette, Evening Mail, Globe and Westminster Gazette. (Images George Bain news agency, US Library of Congress public domain and probably dated to May 1910 when the then Bishop of London had his speech on divorce reported in the press.)

What can we say about this spirit of optimism expressed so hopefully by the Star in 1938 when the world would soon turn so dark with a world war so cruel and destructive? And what does it say about the longevity and endurance of journalism that this happy, positive and campaigning newspaper would be snuffed out of existence a mere 22 years later?

The 50 year commemorative edition contained a special supplement titled ‘The Romance of the Star’ and in high resolution photographs told the story of the paper’s production from reporting to type-setting and printing.

Sanguine

H.G. Wells was rather more sanguine about the future concluding his article on his prediction for the next fifty years with the observation about 1988 London man: “He will thank his lucky stars that at any rate he isn’t going to live in 2038, when the next crop of inventions comes home.

He will look back with tender envy to the dear, romantic Dickens days, to Oliver Twist and dear, dear Little Nell, to the Jellabys and Fagin and the magic of the slums. He will lament the exquisite richness of the social life preserved for him by Defoe and Fanny Burney and Fielding. Trust him.”

The irascible George Bernard Shaw was a journalist on The Star right at the start and explained in the intro of his article: “I greatly object to The Star’s making a fuss about being fifty years old, for it reminds me that I am over eighty and ought to be dead, like so many of my fellow Star-men. Yet to me the birth of The Star seems an event of the day before yesterday.”

Shaw’s article made it clear that The Star was not all about men and that women writers were as important to its history. He profiled ‘Mrs Tay Pay’- as the American wife of the founding editor T.P. O’Connor was known. She “was let loose in a column headed Mainly About People. She opened with the unforgettable paragraph ‘Lady Colin Campbell is the only woman in London who has her feet manicured.’ ”

The American Mrs T P O’Connor- journalist and columnist– Images by the George Bain news agency USA.

Shaw did not mince his words and explained that O’Connor’s marriage to the very clever and attractive Mrs T.P. “was not a success; the top flat with its fire escape was abandoned; and the two parted, leaving Mainly About People less surprising.”

The great playwright continued: “T.P’s editorship was rather like his marriage. He started the paper with great vigour and all possible éclat; but when it came to carrying it on he was hampered by the fact that his political outlook had become fixed in Ireland in the 1860s, and was thenceforth a stopped clock.”

Shaw had affectionate words for The Star but made it clear he left after T.P. reproached him for being a political renegade and others offered to pay him much more. The Star was in fact one of the great successes of a late Victorian campaigning style of reporting called ‘New Journalism’. On its first day it sold 142,600 copies which was a world record.

‘TP’ recruited a brilliant team of journalists who included H.W. Massingham, Thomas Marlowe, Sir Robert Donald, W.J . Evans, Sir George Sutton, James Douglas, Charlie Hands and, of course, the inimitable George Bernard Shaw.

But within a few years O’Connor had left, selling his interest for £17,000 in order to edit The Sun in 1893. He later said it was “The greatest mistake I ever made.”

T.P. O’Connor continued embarking on entrepreneurial journalism adventures, launching new titles and actively pursuing his political career in Parliament. At one point he even had the chance to buy the London Evening News from the Harmsworths though he did not take up the offer. Below he is photographed in 1913 with Lady Henry looking over a children’s garden in London and distributing cabbages to the children.

Future editors of the Star included: H.W. Massingham (1890-91); Ernest Parke (1891-1908); James Douglas (1908-20); Wilson Pope (1920-30); Edward Chattaway (1930-36); R.J. Cruickshank (1936-41); A.L. Cranfield and Ralph McCarthy.

The commemorative book celebrating 50 years of publication and sumptuously illustrated included black and white plates of many of the men then judged to have been the ‘captains’ of the newspaper’s history and development over those five decades. ‘Mrs T Pay’ was not included and it is a wholly male dominated and patronymic parade of an industry and profession lacking gender equality as was the case with so many aspects of British society at that time.

In 1938 the special Star history book did devote one and a half pages to its women journalists and the roles they had were very female gender defined. This was combined with art deco style caricatures of Alison Settle, Hilda M.K Neild, and Elsa Black.

As contemporary historians have highlighted, there were and had been many women pioneers challenging stereotypes and taking on men in their domination of the roles of foreign and war correspondent and editor. One notable example was Rachel Beer (née Sassoon; 7 April 1858 – 29 April 1927) editor-in-chief of The Observer and The Sunday Times.

At page 75, Sir Walter Layton wrote in a section subtitled ‘Catering For Women’:

‘To dip at random into the heavy daily postbag which comes from women readers of the paper, is to obtain a graphic illustration of how widely “The Star” caters for women. It is very different to-day from the birth time of the paper, though even then “The Star” was progressive, and by the “Mainly About People” column, contributed by the dynamic Mrs. T.P. O’Connor, made recognition of the fact that newspaper readers were not all men. To-day there is a staff of experts at the service of women readers, excelled by that of no other newspaper.

Alison Settle, former editor of “Vogue” and the world’s most famous fashion writer, writes twice weekly about the trend and facts of fashion. She is always the first to disclose the dress secrets of to-morrow and first to reveal where the high leads of great designers can be found in West End stores.

Elsa Black, health and beauty expert, has helped thousands of women to face the world with better looks and more cheerful souls, and increased the number of her reader friends each week. Her individual mail bag is one of the largest in Fleet Street.

Every Friday, Jane Grey tells about new ideas for home and house and personal needs. She is in regular touch with manufacturers and the stores about all the latest novelties and gadgets.

Child welfare is dealt with by a trained nurse, and some of London’s best known decorative experts keep readers informed of up-to-date methods of furnishing and design.

The “Women of To-day” column which appears every Thursday by Hilda M.K. Nield, Woman’s Editor of “The Star” is full of factual information about women in the world’s news and the work which they are doing.’

Two graphics on The Star’s history between 1888 and 1938 with the backdrop of a Victorian Fleet Street and a 1930s Bouverie Street crammed with lorries delivering newsprint.

The Cadburys family bought the paper in 1912 as a companion ‘liberal’ paper to what would later become the News Chronicle and the Cadbury family would continue to run it until the fateful takeover by Associated Newspapers in October 1960.

The loss of the Star and the News Chronicle was regarded as a ‘murder’ in Fleet Street largely because the quality of the content and their writing journalists were so respected.

Edward Martell and Ewan Butler wrote a pamphlet published within a month of the closure actually called The Murder of the News Chronicle and The Star and arguing they had been ‘Killed by Trades Union Restrictive Practices.’

News Chronicle journalists George Glenton and William Pattinson also wrote The Last Chronicle of Bouverie Street publishd in 1963 though the narrative centred more on the impact and shock of closure on those writing and producing the News Chronicle.

For over 90 years the special bust to T P O’Connor, along with the iconic elegy “His pen could lay bare the bones of a book or the soul of a statesman in a few vivid lines” had graced the Chronicle Building in Fleet Street until 2021 when it was pulled down for a new Justice Centre development.

By being available at street level to generations of Fleet Street journalists by the entrance to numbers 72 to 78 Fleet Street it had served as a source for inspiration and pride.

The bust and quotation was first unveiled on 30th June 1936. The quotation about ‘T.P’ was written by an editor of the Daily Express R. Blumenfeld.

It is such a shame that the campaign by the Chartered Institute of Journalists for the monument’s preservation did not receive the necessary support from the rest of the industry, politicians and the City of London Corporation. Not even the trade online magazine Press Gazette was able to cover or report on the CIoJ’s efforts.

These are bad times when not enough leaders of the profession can bring themselves to fully respect the memory of its history, legacy and past.

However, the CIoJ President Gerald Bowey in 2024 has been able to establish from the Justice Centre developers that the bust of T.P. O’Connor is safe and well.

It has been preserved and in safe keeping until the developers make a decision on where to remount and position it on the new buildings. I would recommend it returns to its original street level where number 72 -78 used to be.

London’s long-forgotten evening Star also made a very significant contribution to the popular development of the newspaper short story and fictional serial and this heritage has been superbly researched and written about online by Richard Simms who writes: ‘The Star had a long tradition of publishing short stories and serials, with many well-known authors contributing their work to the paper down the years. Famous writers whose stories appeared in The Star include Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Arthur Conan Doyle, Israel Zangwill, Emile Zola, Walter de la Mare, Katharine Tynan, Ursula Bloom and Richmal Crompton.’

Richard profiles and indexes in detail the work of F.W. (Frederick William) Thomas who between 1912 and 1945 forged a prolific and highly successful career bridging the factual and fictional in popular journalism through articles, short stories and poems.

It seems fitting to leave our remembrance of London’s The Star with a short extract from the poetry of T.S. Eliot – “The Waste Land, Part III – The Fire Sermon” which the newspaper ran so eloquently on page 5 of its fiftieth anniversary edition:

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street

O City city, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street.

The pleasant whining of a mandoline

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold

The magnificent new building for the Star’s offices being constructed in 1938 has in fact survived to the present day, but it bears no evidence of its exciting creation by the liberal newspaper owning chocolate making Cadbury family.

The Star‘s building as it is today (11th May 2024). It bears the name ‘Harmsworth House’ after the family dynasty which owns Associated Newspapers which gobbled it up by takeover in 1960.

A version of this article first appeared in The Journal– the magazine and periodical published twice yearly by the Chartered Institute of Journalists.

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