The relationship between the press and the telegraph companies in Britain was discrete. Unlike in the United States where the press was extraordinarily active in promoting telegraphy and organising news-gathering and news distribution, in Britain the press was initially cautious and then became hostile. The sole exception to this antagonism was the considerable personality of Julius Reuter.

In the period described the British press was divided between that of London and that of the Provinces. The eight or so London daily morning and evening papers were large organisations, with a variety of specialist correspondents. At first confined to the metropolis the railways had just started to distribute the London morning newspapers nationally on the day of issue, much to the detriment of local competition. However, most provincial cities and towns had their own daily paper but these lacked the resources of those in London in regard to news-acquisition.

The first telegraphic newspaper report in Britain appeared in the ‘Morning Chronicle’ in London on May 8, 1845. It was a prosaic piece recording a meeting of railway proprietors in Portsmouth.

The Intelligence Department - The Electric Telegraph Company organised the first systematic news dissemination service in 1846. This dealt with just sports (horse-racing results) and exchange (market price) news. It was subscribed to by provincial papers, news-rooms, clubs and public houses and, before public messages became popular, was the Company’s largest traffic for many years. Charles Vernon Boys, senior, had charge of the Intelligence Department of the Company, as it was called, through its entire twenty-four year existence from 1846 until 1870.

Intelligence provided subsequently, in the mid-1850s, comprised a Parliamentary Summary, Court & Society Gossip, General News, Commercial News, Sporting News, Law Reports and Weather Reports. The information was culled by the Company’s superintendent and his four news-clerks from London newspapers and foreign telegrams, and edited into bulletins, at a cost to provincial subscribers in the early years of between £150 and £250 per annum. The Company believed in volume as 4,000 words a day were supplied to newspapers, news-rooms and hotels, increasing to 6,000 words a day when Parliament was in session. The summary was sent to the provinces overnight before 7am with another bulletin at 6pm, as well as updates on prices, shipping and parliament during the day.

Regarding exchange news, the Intelligence Department provided the substantial Stock Markets in Manchester and Liverpool with the London’s noon and closing prices from 1848, and took their business numbers for the London newspapers; of importance then were those for railway shares and Government funds.

During 1851 the Liverpool Stock Market was complaining about the irregularity of the exchange intelligence it was receiving and negotiated a lower subscription. Early in 1854 the Liverpool market dropped the Electric’s exchange service for that of its competitor, the Liverpool-based Magnetic company. In April 1854, the Manchester Stock Market followed suit. It is worth noting that the railway share market on the Liverpool exchange was greater in volume at this time than London, and that Manchester was a strong third in the seven English stock and share markets.

The Electric was quoting the Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds stock market prices as well as those of London in its exchange news circulated to provincial subscribers during 1849; a service seized upon by stock speculators, creating as well a new dealing speciality, the inter-market arbitrageur.

In 1854 it was noted how the provincial daily press was served by the Electric’s Intelligence Department: “At seven in the morning the clerks are to be seen deep in the ‘Times’ and other daily papers, just hot from the press, making extracts and condensing into short paragraphs all the most important news, which are immediately transmitted to the country papers to form the second editions. Neither does the work stop there, for no sooner is a second edition published in London than its news, if of more than ordinary interest, is transmitted to the provinces”.

The busiest time was on Friday nights when the London and continental news was ‘condensed’ for the so-called ‘Saturday’ provincial papers; these weeklies had the largest circulations in the country as they were actually intended to be read on the one day-of-rest, on Sundays. The printing and distribution of papers on the Sabbath was forbidden, if not illegal.

In 1855 the Company came to an agreement with the ‘Times’ newspaper to receive its news messages from abroad without charge to the sender in exchange for rights to sell them in the provinces.

In 1858 only 163 of the 1,200 daily and weekly provincial newspapers subscribed to the Electric’s Intelligence Department, up from 120 in 1854. But it was also forwarding news to news-rooms, hotels and individual journalists. This was despite rates 25% less than ordinary messages when sent during the day and 50% less when sent at night, with a further 25% discount for delivery to additional addresses in the same town.

Newspapers in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool leased dedicated circuits at the Company’s London offices at night, when public traffic was light, by which they could send and receive their own news-copy using the Company’s clerks. In 1867 four Scottish newspapers each had a special night wire between London and Scotland; the ‘Scotsman’ and the ‘Daily Review’ in Edinburgh, and the ‘Glasgow Herald’ and the ‘Glasgow Daily Mail’, at a cost of £750 a year in rental per journal. Latterly the Scottish press preferred the Hughes printer on their circuits.

 

From March 1855 the British Telegraph Company, which was in connection with the Submarine Telegraph Company to Europe, provided a single daily Despatch of foreign news to subscribing newspapers in the north of the country.

The Magnetic Telegraph Company managed news on a different model. Firstly, it offered recognised news correspondents a day rate of 6d for nine words between any two stations or a night-message rate for long despatches of one-tenth that for the public. Secondly, it provided news by contract to newspapers and news-rooms throughout Britain and Ireland at a cost of between ¼d and ½d a line of ten words, providing daily the equivalent of two whole broadsheet newspaper columns of information. It achieved the latter through a News Exchange in Liverpool to which all the subscribers contributed and from which a consolidated, common news selection was received in return. It also had paid agents, news-collectors and parliamentary reporters. 

The Magnetic provided share, corn, cotton, coal, iron, cattle, provision and produce market prices, information on fairs, shipping arrivals, foreign and domestic news, ‘gazette’ (government and legal) news and parliamentary reports; much as the Electric’s Intelligence Department.

It was not until the anticipated demise of the telegraph companies and their news departments during 1865 did the press in Britain manage to organise their own domestic news-gathering and distribution service: the still-extant Press Association. This is surprising given that a flourishing Provincial Newspaper Society had existed since 1836 and that there were several long-established commercial agencies in London that collected foreign and metropolitan news, forwarding it to newspapers by the Post Office mails in return for advertising space which they sold on for cash to large-scale advertisers in the metropolis.

The Electric and the Magnetic combined their news operations at the latter’s new Central Station during January 1859, and contracted jointly with Julius Reuter to buy his foreign news telegrams to transmit to the provinces for £800 per annum. Reuter retained the right to despatch foreign, commercial and shipping news to the much larger and wealthier London daily and evening papers and his private subscribers within fifteen miles of London. In February 1865 the United Kingdom company joined the Intelligence Department pool; the revenues were divided up in proportion to their total public message turnover.

Charles Dickens’ magazine, ‘All the Year Round’, during 1868 reported that the Intelligence Department issued “a jumbled piecemeal of items sent from the thirty instruments of the Threadneedle Street office. No sounds heard save the intermittent click of the handles of the instruments, and the shrill, tumultuous rhythm of the bells”. Not a ringing endorsement of the companies’ news provision – but then Dickens at heart was still a journalist…

However, according to Edward Bright during 1868 the telegraph companies were supplying bulletins to about 400 subscribers; and the income to companies from these activities was over £20,000 per annum. According to government reports in 1868 the Intelligence Department sent news to 306 subscribers, including 173 newspapers, in 144 towns. 

The innovative and independent Intelligence Department, a “large and experienced staff of editors, reporters and others… for the purpose of collecting home and foreign news, political, domestic and commercial, and distributing the same to every point at which such information can afford interest”, was dissolved in 1870 at the instance of the Post Office. By this action the Press Association, the creation of the leading critics of the telegraph companies, was established as a monopoly provider of news to the provinces and began its distribution service immediately afterwards using the Post Office Telegraphs; in London it used messengers.

Foreign News Agency - Julius Reuter developed the telegraphic foreign news-agency in London from October 1851 onwards by means of a network of contacts on the Continent of Europe. A German by birth and connexion, he gained experience initially in selling twice-a-day foreign stock prices and exchange rate information in printed circulars derived from telegraphic and postal sources in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna and Athens to businesses in the ‘City’ of London. He soon realised the value of news.

Reuter opened a “Continental Telegraph Office” at Exchange Buildings in Liverpool in June 1852 in careful concert with the arrival of the Submarine telegraph connection. This offered quotation of funds and exchange, and prices of bullion from Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfort, Hamburg, Madrid, Paris, Petersburg and Vienna. To these he added the latest prices and the state of the markets of corn, metals, colonial produce, silk, cotton, tallow, political news, &c., from Alexandria, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bremen, Breslau, Calcutta, Danzig, Genoa, Hamburg, Königsberg, Leghorn, Odessa, Rio de Janeiro, St Petersburg, Stettin and Trieste.

 

In January 1854 the International Telegraph Company gave Reuter a 50% rebate on its charges for all public intelligence he sent or received.

Reuter commenced a trial scheme of national foreign news telegrams in October 1858 over the public wires. The ‘Times’ was charged 2s 6d for twenty published words with a credit, or 5s 0d if no credit was given to Reuter. Other papers in London negotiated different rates, eventually on term rather than piece prices. Reuter also sold news telegrams to the Electric for sending to the provinces, as well as selling them direct to the larger provincial papers with London offices.

During 1862 of the widely-circulated London papers, the ‘Times’ was paying £100 per month, the ‘Morning Herald’ and the ‘Daily Chronicle’ £83 6s 8d, the ‘Daily News’ £75, the ‘Daily Telegraph’ and the ‘Morning Advertiser’ £66 13s 4d, for Reuter’s foreign news messages.

In the papers Reuter’s news messages were always called telegrams, introducing that word to the public.

Reuter was one of the first users of the new Universal telegraph for internal messages between his City offices in 1860 and by the mid-1860s was using it to transmit foreign news over private wires to the offices of the major London newspapers, replacing printed circulars and manifold (carbon) copies.

His firm had a day office at Royal Exchange Buildings, open from 10am to 6pm; a night office at Finsbury Square, open from 6pm to 10am; and a West End office at Waterloo Place, midway between the City and Parliament, all connected by telegraph. 

 

By 1863 the Waterloo Place office had its own wires and instruments, provided by the Universal Private Telegraph Company, supplying foreign news, in the editor’s rooms in the main daily and evening newspapers in the Strand and Fleet Street. These eventually included the ‘Daily News’, ‘Daily Telegraph’, ‘Echo’, ‘Globe’, ‘Morning Herald’, ‘Morning Post’, ‘Morning Star’, ‘Pall Mall Gazette’, ‘Standard’, ‘Sun’ and, of course, ‘The Times’.

Reuter promoted with C W Siemens the South-Western of Ireland Telegraph Company in 1863, to connect the city of Cork with Crookhaven, on the isolated southernmost point of Ireland, where metallic containers with news-messages were collected from the Cunard steamers from America. His news agency then promoted its own cable from Lowestoft to Norderney in Hanover, with connecting land lines in Germany, in 1865 as a speculation. He leased the public traffic rights to the Electric Telegraph Company.

 

In 1865 the news agency was incorporated as a joint-stock enterprise called Reuter’s Telegram Company.

Julius Reuter also promoted and then became a director of the Société du Câble Trans-Atlantique Français, an Anglo-French intercontinental telegraph, in 1867 so that his news agency might get priority access to American news-sources.

In 1869, as the telegraph companies were being appropriated, to maintain his business Reuter contracted to provide the Press Association with foreign telegrams for exclusive use in the British Isles outside London, and to disseminate Press Association news overseas.