The Westminster Gazette- London’s lost evening and the ‘pea-green incorruptible’

If the decline in reading newspapers could be reversed by printing on green, surely the London Standard would have tried this before becoming a weekly.

Between 1893 and 1921, London’s Westminster Gazette did exactly that with a liberal hubris.

Francis Carruthers Gould was one of the paper’s assistant editors and cartoonists and self-styled the evening as the ‘pea-green incorruptible.’

In reality, it was more ‘sea-green’ and vintage copies now have the yellowish hue of a desiccated leek.

The Victorian Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone liked the green. There is no evidence he was rolling spinach onto his fork while approving its editorial line.

Slideshow of William Ewart Gladstone and George Orwell. Images 1892 and 1943.

George Orwell in his essay ‘My Country Right or Wrong’ recalled a childhood memory of ‘the pile of peagreen papers’ to capture the idea of London’s evening newspapers long past.

The Westminster Gazette was the only one.  The US George Bain news agency has in its archives a photograph of a wizened woman newspaper seller in London with a crumpled Westminster Gazette banner poster declaring: ‘Bishop of London on Divorce.’

We can put the green in the black and white photograph by dating it to the edition for 25^th May 1910 when the Gazette reported a speech in which the Bishop of London did indeed rail against divorce.

He condemned it as ‘a curse to society, a menace to the home, an incitement to married unhappiness, an evil thing for men, and a still more hideous evil for women.’

Origin and competition

The Westminster Gazette was competing in the London evening paper market with the Evening Standard, the Globe, the Pall Mall Gazette, the Evening News and the Star. It was third and not so badly placed in the advertising columns league table.

The paper was founded by Liberal publisher George Newnes and when it first appeared on 31^st January 1893 the decision to go ‘green’ was to make it easier to read for commuters peering at their evening papers under the dull gas and electrical light of Southern Region railway carriages, London underground trains and red double-decker buses.

Newnes said: ‘Evening papers are largely read by people going home in badly lighted railway carriages, omnibuses etc. White paper and black ink may do very well for a reader sitting at home on a steady floor and with sufficient light; but to try and read by the gloomy thing in the roof which railway companies are pleased to call a light while jolted about in a railway carriage is very injurious to the eyesight.’

When the paper became a daily in November 1921 it decided to appear on white newsprint coincidentally only a few weeks before the Financial Times turned to ‘FT peach.’

Late Extra Edtion for 11th Novembr 1918- Armistice Day

The Institute has acquired the Westminster Gazette’s historic edition for armistice day 11^th November 1918 with its front-page headline ‘The End And The Beginning.’

The copy we have is folded, creased and rolled up as though it remained in the coat pocket of its buyer since that momentous day 106 years ago.

Had its owner been among the crowds in front of Buckingham Palace cheering King George V and the royal family celebrating the end of such a terrible war on their famous balcony?

The late extra edition cost two old pennies and was adorned with adverts for ‘Duco Leaf Spring Gaiters’, ‘Piccadilly Virginia Cigarettes’, and ‘Burrow’s Malvern Waters.’

Selfridges took out an advert promoting the sale of books such as The Echoes of the War and The Love of an Unknown Soldier.

The paper carried no photographs, only illustrations for adverts including for the West End Scala theatre putting on ‘The Purple Mask.’

The end of a world war which in its last year had taken more lives of British service people than any other was reported economically but evocatively.

The Gazette’s journalists had been in the Law Courts and the West End to see how London reacted. In the Court of Criminal Appeal when Mr Justice Darling read out the Prime Minister Lloyd George’s announcement, everyone in court applauded enthusiastically.

Mr Justice Bailhache in the King’s Bench Division presided over a more solemn gathering where calmness prevailed and when completing the announcement added: ‘If I may venture to say so, “Thank God!”

Gazette reporters outside on the streets were having more fun: ‘Something very much like mafficking is proceeding in earnest in the West End. The favourite form of rejoicing seems to be to mount motor vehicles of all descriptions, and to proceed wildly cheering, with flags, bells, hooters, trumpets, and indeed with anything that will make a noise.’

The intransitive verb ‘mafficking’ originated from ‘Mafeking Night’ 18 years before when there were wild and boisterous celebrations after the lifting of the siege of Mafeking during the South African (Boer) War. 

The paper reported that ‘Young people are having the time of their lives’ and in another report ‘Let There Be Light’ there was news that the Home Office had relaxed restrictions on the masking of street lights and use of fireworks and bonfires.

London had experienced a First World War ‘Blitz’ of air raids and just under one and a half thousand people had been killed from bombs dropped by Zeppelins and long-range bombers. This was the reason for ‘the black-out.’

There was also a General Election going on.

This became known as the ‘Khaki election’ because so many of the voters were still in uniform, but there was a ban on officers, non-commissioned officers, or privates from appearing ‘in uniform as candidates, agents, members of election committees, or canvassers.’

The War Cabinet was determined to enforce ‘King’s Regulations’ though officers or soldiers on leave and stationed at home could attend election hustings in their uniform.

My favourite one line report in this historical edition is: ‘Eggs were sold at Reading on Saturday at the record price of ninepence each.’

Westminster Gazette culture and longest serving editor

The Westminster Gazette was a significant promoter of literature in terms of short stories and serials and in its short history the authors D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Raymond Chandler, and Saki graced its pages. It even commissioned travel writing by the poet Rupert Brooke.

The Gazette’s most famous and long-standing editor was John Alfred (J.A.) Spender from 1896 to 1922.

He will be remembered for immortalising the most poignant quotation of the dread and madness that the Great War would bring.

In August 1914, he stood before the large window of the Foreign Office in the company of Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey.

As they watched the sun set on St James’s Park and the lamps being lit in the streets below, Spender scribbled down in shorthand Grey’s lamentation: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’

The Gazette‘s Armistice day edition carries a poem ‘To The Givers Of The Conquering Dead August 1914- November 1918.’ The author is not fully indentified apart from the letter ‘H.’

So many of the conquering dead had been Londoners.

The newspaper’s transformation from London evening to national daily between 1921 and 1928 proved to be a huge commercial and circulation success. Circulation expanded from 20,000 to 300,000.

Mystery man Lobby Lud competition

One of the successful drivers of marketing was the ‘Lobby Lud’ competition where it was announced that a member of the Gazette‘s staff would be travelling to a particular town somewhere in Britain and readers would win a prize by identifying him.

It might be argued that the penchant for newspapers putting up rewards for missing characters had some inspiration from the disappearance and frenzied search for the missing author Agathe Christie in 1926.

The journalist Trevor Allen would latter describe for BBC Radio how he was employed as the escorting reporter for the Westminster Gazette created ‘Lobby Lud’ in 1927:

‘I never thought I would be touring our seaside resorts day after day for two months for a mystery man huge crowds were hunting. It happened in 1927 when I was a reporter on the morning Westminster Gazette.

A man wanted for a serious crime had been at large a long time. A detailed description of his appearance had been circulated and people wondered how he had been able to avoid detection. The paper thought it would be a good idea to have a missing man of their own touring the summer’s resorts with a £50 prize on his head and see how long he could escape detection.

If he wasn’t caught in the first week, it went up to a hundred in the second, a hundred and fifty in the third and so on. The man chosen for the job was a canny little chap from Cardiff. Then working obscurely in the circulation department.

The kind of fellow who would pass easily in any crowd. We published a faithful photograph of him in profile with a description. Height 5 feet three and a half inches.  Age 35. Clean-shaven. Dark hair. Mole on right cheek. Ring on left hand.

We also published a detailed programme of his movements morning and afternoon.

For example, between 12 and 12.30 he would be within fifty yards of the pier entrance or even on the pier itself. Furthermore, he would do something, buy something, talk to someone, produce evidence to prove that he was there. You had to spot him, present a copy of the paper and say “You are Mr Lobby Lud, I claim the Westminster Gazette prize.’

My job was to tour with him, follow his programme, and standby to interview the winner should he be caught, rendez-vous with him at the end of his day, get his story and phone it to the paper.

He was too fagged to write his own account after being hunted all day by circling crowds and obviously you couldn’t have him phoning it himself. It would give him away. His real name was W T Chin. The name he made famous was Lobby Lud- so-called because the telegraphic address of the Westminster Gazette was  LobbyludLondon. Lobby for Westminster, Lud for Ludgate.

Chin should really have been Cheek. For he had plenty and took audacious risks.

We kicked off at Great Yarmouth. While the whole front’s warm with people hunting him, he went up to a beach photographer called Smiler, stuck his head through a hole in the screen, and had himself snapped as the boy who didn’t want to be washed.

A girl watching remarked: “Fancy having no one in the other hole. Silly isn’t it?” This is for a special reason said Smiler. “Oh is it?” she retorted. “I’d like to know it. Perhaps it’s one of those mystery chaps?”

Without batting an eyelid, Lobby paid his two and six for six prints and sloped off.

Clacton. He went for a trip in a motorboat and saw a woman passenger challenging another man aboard ignoring him.

Southend Golden Mile. He had his palm read by Madam Marie who told him not inaptly, “Your nerve line is raised.” While his left hand was being read, he held a handbill with his photograph and description in his right.

“You are too-much inclined to act on impulse and should try to curb it” she added.

In Folkestone, he went into a barbers in the High Street for a shave and a trim, and left on the seat a copy of the paper with his picture autographed.

At Brighton station crowded with trippers, he asked porter 8706 to take to the Matron of the East Sussex Hospital a bag of eggs and fruit he had bought in Western Road.

The porter charged him three bob [three old shillings, now 15 pence] and went off laughing to his mates about it.

Maybe he felt like crying when he read next day he could have charged a hundred pounds for the job.

The time we tried in the Isle of Wight, the prize was a hundred and fifty pounds.

At a given time he had to be within so many yards of the new pavilion in the Eastern Gardens.

He found there was nothing in the stipulated area, but grass and sleuths. 

So decided to dare the Devil, flew into the Pavilion, and order a soft drink and snack.

We were sitting at a table trying to look non-committal when a quiet looking fellow came in, stared hard at Lobby, thrust a paper under his nose and gave the correct challenge.

He was an out of work house decorator from Rocksall, father of three.  He’d borrowed the fare to come to Ryde, and walked off with a hundred and fifty pounds.

No one was gladder than Lobby.

By the end of the season, over eleven hundred pounds had been given away in prize money and Lobby was about all in.

We had to sneak in and out of resorts like crooks to avoid attracting notice, put up in obscure hotels, listen to folk at adjoining tables discussing him, finding fun in the hunt, challenging each other right and left.

How did he get away with it for weeks on end? Well, he looked like everyone else, holiday clothes, open-neck shirt,  pretty girl on his arm, the job’s only perquisite. 

He also did the daring thing and hunted himself by challenging someone when he saw he was going to be challenged to put them off. I’ve never known a nicer little guy. Patient, resourceful, unflappable with acute Welsh humour.

At the start of the tour he was a non-drinker. At the end he was a two stouts a night man and he needed them. He made Lobby Lud and his paper a byword in the land.’

Lobby Lud continues in the News Chronicle

On the 31st March 1934, you would find a continuation of the ‘Lobby Lud’ competition in the News Chronicle and there were many imitators in other national and regional titles.

The mysterious News Chronicle man is pictured with fedora and most of his face obscured as he is reading the paper:

Lobby Lud at Brighton on Monday. £10 for correct challenge.

The long holiday season has commenced with an early Easter. Already thousands have trekked to the nearer seaside resorts to snatch a few days of spring sunshine. Lobby Lud, the popular “News Chronicle” mystery man will begin his summer activities at Britighton on Easter Monday.

10s Clues

He will leave clues, very valuable ones, and they will each be worth 10s. When you evenually track him down and give the correct challenge you will receive a reward of £10. Full details, together with Lobby Lud’s itenerary, will be published in Monday’s “News Chronicle.”‘

Merger and future

In 1928 mergers and consolidation was all the rage in Britain’s newspaper industry and the Westminster Gazette combined with the Daily News adding 300,000 readers to 600,000 with no subsequent loss of readership.

The binding together of the country’s liberal papers continued in 1930 when the paper absorbed the Daily Chronicle to become the News Chronicle.

The future for evening newspapers in London is certainly not in green newsprint, though it may well be digital.

The contraction of the Standard into one giveaway weekly almost magazine format has left a vacuum where there are now digital online news titles competing in an online market with titles such as The Londoner, London Centric and London Spy.

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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