More news of the Hampshire Chronicle story by Barry Shurlock

THE birth of the Chronicle by an obscure schoolmaster cum printer in Southampton on August 24, 1772, was a leap in the dark by someone with a small printshop and lots of ambition. Anyone with knowledge of publishing might have given the enterprise a few weeks, or years, before its demise.

James Linden, the printer who launched the paper, had a patchy track record. Initially he set up a school in Southampton that catered for pupils with a practical bent. As well as the three R’s, including ‘arithmetic decimal and vulgar’, he offered mensuration, land-surveying, the use of globes and navigation and ‘merchants’ accompts by the Italian method’ that is, double-entry bookkeeping.

As a schoolmaster he obviously took an interest in books, so he edged into bookselling to augment his income. His next step was printing. He also dealt in quack medicines, which was standard at the time. In fact, for many years the office of the Chronicle in Winchester was the equivalent of Boots today.

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As he developed his various sidelines, he advertised them in the Salisbury Journal, which had been started in 1729 by William Collins and ‘revived’ in 1736. When he died his hotshot brother, publisher Benjamin Collins took over.  He not only was influential in Salisbury – where he later became a banker - but had a reputation in London with the likes of Dr Samuel Johnson and other literati.

More than that, Collins regarded his territory as being bigger than his native Wiltshire and definitely extending into Hampshire.  Therefore, when Linden ‘the upstart’ had the gall to publish a paper aimed at half his market, he was outraged and poured venom on the venture in the columns of the Salisbury Journal. To make the point, he even changed its title to the Salisbury & Winchester Journal!

Actually, despite Linden’s lack of experience – his only other known work had been The Southampton Guide published three years before the Chronicle – he showed a considerable flair for the business. For a start, the title The Hampshire Chronicle had a ring of authority. And its masthead subtitled, ‘Southampton, Winchester and Portsmouth Mercury’, reached out to the county’s three principal places.

He also set up a network of distributors, including many fellow booksellers, some of them advertising their wares in the paper. In fact, as the paper was as much a medium for advertising as a news-sheet (not unlike today!).

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In his low-cost operation, Linden didn’t employ an editor or journalists, as – like every other regional newspaper at the time – he lifted news from the London press. A messenger bought the London papers on a Saturday and galloped down to Southampton for copy to be put together and set, and the Chronicle appeared the following Monday.

This emphasis on national and international news continued until the middle of the 1800s, when the arrival of the railway meant that London newspapers could be bought soon after they had been published.  It was at this point that the Chronicle published more and more local news.

As it happens, Linden’s gamble did not pay off. Despite sharing the load with a number of short-term partners, after six years he was bankrupt.  His Salisbury antagonist Benjamin Collins was overjoyed and quickly did a deal with another Southampton printer, who had bought the paper from Linden. The details are not entirely clear, but Collins tried to set up Winchester printer John Wilkes as his ‘stooge’ running the paper in Winchester – though the ruse ended in court, with Wilkes the winner.

There followed a succession of printers who owned the paper for a few years, before throwing in the towel. Even for those who could read – perhaps 60% of men – it was a relatively expensive item, due to heavy taxes imposed by governments who hated a free press. Paper was taxed, advertisements were taxed, and every copy had to bear a ‘stamp’ showing that duty had been paid.

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In 1797, Joseph Bucknell, then owner of the paper, expressed his exasperation by publishing a profit and loss account. Selling 1,000 copies of each edition brought in £25, but he had to pay nearly £17 in stamp duty alone. No wonder that he was soon informing readers that he had sold the paper.

This roller coaster continued until 1805, when the paper was bought by James Robbins, as much an editor as a printer, who for eight years published the paper from premises behind the current bookshop of P & G Wells, in College Street, Winchester. It was he who took on two apprentices who were to steer the Chronicle into calmer waters.  These were William Jacob from Abbotts Ann and William Johnson from Gosport.

They had family links – Johnson married Jacob’s sister, Mary – but more than anything the partnership probably prospered because they came from opposite ends of the county: Jacob brought in the ‘county set’ to the north, whilst Johnson engaged the gritty south, where the sea ruled. Also, the paper initially had offices in both Winchester and Gosport. And they were fortunate to find a remarkable editor, George Hitchin, who served the paper for 44 years.

So it was that three generations of the families owned and ran the paper, with the Jacob line eventually ceding to the Johnsons. The death of Herbert Edward Johnson without issue in 1936 marked the end of a run of 123 years! This might have led to the sale of the paper to another publisher, but in an extraordinary act, Herbert left the paper to his head printer, Arthur Stroud, who had been a partner for 20 years.

Another legacy was the paper’s chief reporter, John Maggs – churning out copy in his 80s, but obviously unlikely to continue for long. Arthur therefore called on his daughter, Monica, who was working for a literary agency in London, after reading history at King’s College London.

It is not difficult to imagine the scene as the boss’s daughter swanned into an all-male office to be groomed for the top job, as editor.  Although she later admitted that it was ‘pure nepotism’, few people could have pulled it off. As it turned out, Monica was a remarkable journalist who only three years into the job had to take the paper through the war.

There were also personal issues. At King’s she had met Paul Woodhouse and when they married in 1939, Arthur Stroud gave them each an interest in the paper. Then Paul went off to war and Monica got into her stride as editor. It did no good to their marriage and after Arthur died in 1950 they separated and lived apart for the rest of their lives.

On Tuesday April 18 at 7 pm (7:30 pm on Zoom), Barry will be presenting a talk, 'The Hampshire Chronicle - 250 years of News', to the Friends of Winchester Cathedral in the Paul Woodhouse Suite on. To book, visit: friends@winchester-cathedral.org.uk, or call: 01962 857245 or 857244.