ADVERTISING IN LONDONNEWSPAPERS, 1650-1750

by R. B. WALKER

SOME regard is likewise to be paid to posterity. There are men of diligence andcuriosity who treastire up the Papers of the Day merely because othersneglect them, and in time they will be scarce. When these collections shall be

read in another century, how will numberless contradictions be reconciled, andhow shall Fame be possibly distributed among the Tailors and Boddice-makers ofthe present age.'

Dr Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 20 January 1759

The history of advertising in London newspapers between 1650 and 1750may be approached from at least three directions. First, there is the history ofadvertising per se; in this respect subsequent general histories have made littleadvance on Henry Sampson's pioneering work published almost a century ago.iBlanche B. Elhott in A History of English Advertising (London, 1962) has coveredfresh ground in her examination of the advertisement sheets in the late seventeenthcentury, but has barely touched upon the much larger subject of advertising innewspapers proper during the period tinder review. Nor are there many specia-lized studies relating to this period. The historians have concentrated somewhatsuperficially on the evident humour, quaintness, and evocativeness of many of theadvertisements and have almost entirely neglected any quantitative analysis.Secondly, advertising may be considered as part of the history of journalism - alegitimate approach when one appreciates that by 1750 75 per cent of space insome daihes was being devoted to advertisements. Here however a gap in modernhistoriography opens between 1660 and 1772.2 While the eighteenth centuryprovincial Press recently has received admirable scholarly treatment,'* for thehistory of the London Press there are only the outdated nineteenth century worksby James Grant, H. R. Fox Bourne and others. Thirdly, the advertisements maybe studied as a source for literary, economic, and social history. In this respectthey have been most fxilly utilized for the history of the London stage and still

1 H. Sampson, A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times (London, 1874); Frank Presbrey, The Historyand Development of Advertising (New York, 1929); J. P. Wood, The Story of Advertising (New York, 1958);E. S. Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising (London, 1965).

2 Lawrence Lewis, The Advertisements of the Spectator (London, 1909); C. J. S. Thompson, The Quacks ofOld London {London, ig2S).

3 Joseph Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, 1620-1660 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961); LucyleWerkmeister, The London Daily Press, 1772-1792, (Lincoln Nebraska, 1963) especially 445-48- R. L. Haig, TheGazetteer, 1735-1795 (Carbondale, i960) is a scholarly contribntion. Laurence Hanson, Government and thePress, 1695-1763 (London, 1936), and F. S. Siebert, Freedom of the Press in England, 1476-1776 (Urbana, 1962),are valuable works but not general histories of tbe Press.

1 G. A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700-1760 (Oxford, 1962), andR. M. Wiles,Freshest Advices, Early Provincial Newspapers in England (Ohio, 1965).

5 W. Van Lennep, ed.. The London Stage, 1660-1800, Parts 1-3, (Carbondale, i960).

ADVER TISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS - 1650-1750 113

remain an underexploited mine for bibliographical studies and social 1 and economichistory. This article will touch on, but not exhaust, all three of these aspects.

The first advertisement had appeared in an English newsbook in 1624 but itwas not till 1648 that a newsbook regularly included advertisements. 2 Untilafter the Restoration the word 'advertisement' still had the more general meaningof 'notice' and the words 'advice' and 'siquis' were used where we should sayadvertisement. After 1660 the practice of placing newspaper advertisements in aseparate section went hand in hand with a narrower definition of the term. In1653 the Perfect Diurnall usually had half a dozen advertisements at one shillingeach; when Marchamont Nedham secured a Press monoipoly in 1655 he raisedthe price to 2s. 6d. This reduced drastically the number of advertisements andin 1658 the average number in an issue of the Mercurius Publicus was less than three.Henry Muddiman's similar twin monopoly in 1662 (the Kingdom's Intelligencerand th.e Mercurius Puhlicus) averaged about five in each issue; under L'Estrange'smonopoly in 1665 (the Intelligencer and the Newes) it averaged about seven; inMuddiman's newsbooks 'lost or stolen' notices had become numerous; now inL'Estrange's the advertisements for doctors and medicines assiimed a relativeimportance that was to characterise advertising for more than a century.'* Butwhen in November 1665 the Oxford (later London) Gazette was established as anofficial newspaper it contained no advertisements, excluding them as 'not properlythe business of a Paper of Intelligence'. From this ban however official announce-ments and the notices of courtiers for the return of their lost falcons and grey-hounds were excepted. In 1688 the Gazette unbent so far as to allow occasionalinsertions by the less exalted - a physician, a city grocer, a bookseller.^ As amonopoly newspaper from 1666 to 1679 it must have been under some pressureto admit advertisements by private persons; in the first quarter of 1672 it pub-lished twenty-one, in the first quarter of 1680 ninety-nine.

The restricted outlet offered by newspapers indirectly encouraged thepublication of advertising sheets associated with an 'office of intelligence' actingas an agency for real estate, employment, loan brokerage and other matters. In1649 Henry Walker had established such an 'Office of Entries' but the 'Office ofPublick Advice' in 1657 appears to have been the first to pubHsh a weekly sheet -the Publick Adviser.'' Unlike the usual later practice of estate agencies in 1657the Office did not make itself an essential intermediary between buyer and sellerby concealing the identity of one from the other, but was content with the fees itcharged for a minimiim of four advertisements in its sheet. These varied according

' Donald Wing, The Short Title Catalogue, 1641-1700 (New York, 1945) is a catalogue of existing books,not a list of books known or believed to have been published such as might be collected from the advertisements.

2J. Frank, op. cit., 11, 146, 172, 182.3 ibid., 246.* Out of 166 advertisements in the first 24 issues of the Intelligencer and Newes in 1665 there were 53 for

books, 52 medical, and 31 'lost or stolen'.5 London Gazette, 18 June 1666.* ibid., 12 March, 18 May, i June 1668.' J. B. Williams (J. G. Muddiman), A History of English fournalism to the Foundation of the Gazette (London,

1908), 162; J. G. Muddiman, 'The Early History of London Advertising', Nineteenth Gentury, Vol. 62 (1907),797-

114 BUSINESS HISTORY

to the goods or services advertised. Later, for the convenience of clients, theOffice offered itself as an intermediary, i Meanwhile Oliver Wilhams, who hadpurchased the patent issued to Captain Innes in 1637 for an office of intelhgencefrom his rival agency, published his Weekly Information.^ Judging from thecatalogue of the Thomason collection the first issue of this weekly was also thelast, probably because Nedham had sufficient influence to protect this monopolyof publishing. In more orthodox fashion Williams required enquiries for thehouses and lands he advertised to be made at his office.

By his grant of appointment in 1663 as Surveyor of the Press L'Estrangehad the monopoly of printing newspapers and advertising matter, and byvirtue of his licence on 25 June 1666 there appeared a four-page advertising sheetcalled Publick Advertisements. Whether further issues were ever pubhshed is notknown; it appears to have been sold to accommodate a large variety of advertise-ments rather than to function as part of an office of intelligence. Whether a noticein the London Gazette of 11 October 1666, a month after the Great Fire, tellingpeople to take their advertisements to an office in Bloomsbury, referred to itcannot now be known.

Again with the assent of L'Estrange, a Mercury was published in 1667, thistime including prices, shipping and commercial news as well as advertisements.Its entrepreneur, Thomas Bromhall, as Clerk and Registrar ofthe Passes, was in agood position to learn of London and provincial prices, and he also conducted anemployment agency but did not, so far as we can judge from surviving issues,make much use ofthe Mercury to pioiaote it.-* In eleven issues from 22 Augustto 24 October 1667 Bromhall published seventy-two advertisements, of whichtwenty-four were for medicines, twenty-two for lost or stolen property, eightfor books, and only two for situations vacant. Bromhall entered into a contractwith John Piercy, servant to the Queen Dowager and seller of divers medicinesand lozenges and antidotes to the plague through thirteen London and six pro-vincial outlets, to publish his advertisements regularly every week at 2s. 6d.each. 5 This was an early example of the newspaper advertising of widely soldbranded medicines. How long the Mercury continued after its last extant issue(31 October 1667)* is uncertain.

In November 1675 L'Estrange and other tinnamed persons, probably includ-ing Oliver Williams, started a weekly City Mercury available nominally at 4s.per annum to subscribers but actually distributed gratis by the London parishclerks. The claimed circulation of 8,000 was indeed very large, but the Companyof parish clerks, which by its charter of 1639 had jurisdiction over 129 parishesinside and without the city, was well organized and had the experience gained in

' Publick Adviser, 2jime 1657.2 Weekly Information, 20 July 1657.3 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1663-64, 240; George Kitchin, Sir Roger L'Estrange (London, 1913),

150-51.^ London Gazette, 27 May 1667; City Mercury, 24 October 1667.5 Agreement between John Piercy and Thomas Bromhall, 26 May 1667, P.R.O., S.P.29/450, £92;

Country Mercury, 2 September 1667.6 There is a copy of this date in P.R.O., S.P.9/251, f.146.

ADVERTISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS - 1650-1750 ns

collecting data for and publishing the weekly Bills of Mortality. 1 There was anassociated office of intelligence but the advertiser was not forced to use it as anintermediary. In May 1676 the free issue of the Mercury was discontinued withthe unfortunate result tloat the thrifty reader whose papers eventually came torest in the 'Nichols Newspapers' in the Bodleian Library ceased to take it. Howeverit continued publication until 24 March 1680, and from 1.2 May 1680 was fusedwith the Mercurius Civicus: or. The City Mercury which continued its numera-tion. The Mercurius Civicus for some time evaded or ignored the ban which aproclamation of May 1680 had imposed on unlicensed newspapers (it was strictlyan advertising sheet) but did suspend publication in July. Reappearing in Septem-ber as the City Mercury, it preceded by several months the re-emergence ofnewspapers proper in December. In the following year however it provedimpossible for an advertising sheet at id. to compete against newspapers selling atthe same price and the City Mercury disappeared in August.

The spate of unlicensed newspapers had begun in July 1679 with the publica-tion of the Domestick Intelligence by Benjamin Harris, a Baptist bookseller anddetermined Whig. Harris like many other booksellers stocked an array of medi-cines — his second issue advertised his own 'Admirable and Effectual Water forthe Griping of the Guts''* - and his and other newspapers (at least five existed inMay 1680) greatly increased the outlet for advertisements. In the first quarter of1680 the London Gazette had ninety-nine and the Domestick Intelligence, which wasalso bi-weekly, 135 advertisements. Harris's paper excelled in advertisements forbooks and pamphlets (forty compared with thirty), medical remedies (twenty-eight to one) and urban real estate (thirteen to two) but was inferior in the 'lost ofstolen' category (twenty-eight to thirty-nine). It seems likely that the DomestickIntelligence was read by the middling and poorer sort in London and the Gazetteby a socially superior, more dispersed, readership.

From 1683 to the expiry of the Licensing Act in 1695 the Gazette regainedits near monopoly of newspaper publishing and advertising, for the Ohservator(1681-87) and the short-lived unlicensed Press of the Glorious Revolution(December 1688 - March 1689) published few advertisements. Once againopportunity offered for an advertising sheet and a City Mercury, apparently onlyloosely associated with an office of intelligence, is known to have been publishedfrom 1693 to 1694.5 Howkins the publisher claimed that over a thousand copies'weic distributed gratis in London and the provinces. But the most remarkableadverd'sing medium of the period was John Houghton's trade paper Collectionfor Improvement of Husbandry and Trade (1692-1703). Houghton was an apothecary

1 R. H. Adams, The Parish Clerks of London (Chichester, 1971), 43, 55.2 Copies for 30 May and 4 July 1678 are in P.R.O. S.P.9/251, ff.138, 149; see F. C. Francis, ed., Narcissus

LuttreU's Popish Plot Catalogues (Oxford, 1956), 21.3 Blanche B. Elliott, op. cit., 68.* Domestick Intelligence, 10 July 1679.5 The City Mercury of 20 March 1693 advertised an office of intelligence held in the mornings at the Ship,

George Yard. As Howkins lived in George Yard this may have been his business, but most advertisementsinserted were for books and medicines (sold by Howkins inter alios) not for the ofEce of intelligence.

ii6 BUSINESS HISTORY

who sold tea, coffee, and chocolate, an industrious statistician, a zealous agriculturalreformer, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and not least (in Henry Sampson'swords) 'the father of English advertising', i

This last claim is merited by Houghton's perception of the commercialutility of advertising and his attempts, not all successful, to extend the range ofgoods and services advertised. He saw that advertising could help to overcomethe problems arising from the growth and complexity of the metropolis and hepublished lists of the names and addresses of the members of various trades andprofessions. 'I believe some Advertisements about Bark and Timber might be ofuse both to Buyer and Seller' was a characteristic proposal^ and as his publicationof grain and produce prices attracted overseas readers he pointed out the value ofhis paper for the advertising of books relating to other countries. He publishedan index not only of the news contents but also of the advertisements and inJuly 1693, in the beHef that the new advertisers would increase the vent of hispaper, introduced a regular two extra pages of book advertisements. 'I shallreceive all sorts of Advertisements', he announced on 28 July, 'but shall answerfor the reasonableness of none, unless I give thereof a particular Character, onwhich (as I shall give it) may be dependence but no argixment that others deservenot as weir. However it was not till November that he started to accept advertise-ments of quack medicines, and then with a warning:

^ _ ^ Pray mind the Preface to this half Sheet. Like Lawyers I take all Causes I^ ^ may fairly; who likes not may stop here.''

By 1695 the admirable Houghton's own manifold business as estate andemployment agent, broker for loans, offices, advowsons and marriages,^ andvendor of chocolate, sago, and 'German Spaw water', led to his own noticesdisplacing the advertisements of others, but by this time fresh advertising channelshad appeared. The establishment of three tri-weekly newspapers in May 1695(the Post Boy, Post Man, and Flying Post) marks an important stage in the historyof journalism; henceforward the non-official Press would have a continuousexistence in England. The table on page 117 analyses the number of advertisementsin several papers in the first quarter of several years.*

The London Gazette printed 7,000 to 8,000 copies in 1693'' and over 11,000in late 1705, of which 950 w ere given away and over 8,000 sold.* Its totalcirculation of about 9,000 was then more than double that of its nearest competi-tors, the Post Man (3,800) and the Post Boy (3,000),» and its rate of ios. od. peradvertisement greatly exceeded the standard charge of 2s. od. or 2s. 6d. Apparently

1 H. Sampson, op. cit, 479,2 Collection, 8 June 1694.3 ibid., II August n593.••ibid., 17 November 1693.5 ibid., 29 November 1695.6'Medical' includes medicines, medicinal cosmetics, surgical appliances, and doctors; 'goods for sale'

excludes auctioned goods; 'bankruptcy' means proceedings by commissioners in bankruptcy.' Collection, 28 July 1693.8 H. L. Snyder, 'The Circulation of Newspapers in the Reign of Queen Anne', Library, Fifth Series, Vol.

XXIII (1968), 226.« J. M. Price, 'A Note on the Circulation ofthe London Press, I'jo^.-i'jn',Bulletin of the Institute of Historical

Research, Vol. XXXI (1958), 217. The Post Man and Post Boy figures are estimates in 1704.

ADVER TISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS - 1650-1750 117

Issues

BooksMedicalLost or stolenRunawaysLotteriesReal EstateGoods for saleAuctionsBankruptcyMiscellaneous

London Gazette1695

13

5422

5817

02 12 0

02 0

2 0 2

169613

563

5015

0I I

I

465

16

203

170013

792

4317

0

14I I

144218

240

Post Boy1696

39

983

19I

40633I

13

187

170039

2 0 0

24356

2 1

1918I I

0

36

360

Flying Post1696

39

50I I

152

1554

150

9

126

170039

17857289

2 06

3352

37

375

the Gazette excluded in principle quack advertisements and all advertisements forprivate lotteries. Its wide distribution made it a favoured medium in which tooffer rewards for the return of lost or stolen goods and straying animals, and forthe apprehension of military deserters, missing persons, eloping daughters, andabsconding apprentices who vanished suddenly, usually with a portion of theirmasters' goods. As it had many wealthy readers, it was a good place in which toadvertise auctions of luxury articles, books, pictures, and French wines. But thexmofficial newspapers at the same time were establishing themselves as mediarestrained by fewer inhibitions. For them the craze for more or less fraudulentprivate lotteries was a boon. Former Acts proving ineffective, it was not till24 June 1712 that the advertising of such lotteries was effectually suppressed. 1

Examination of the accounts of the Gazette shows that it had casual saleswhich shot up by several hundreds when news of special interest was included,such as for instance victories abroad, the prorogation of Parliament, and theappointment of Assize judges. 2 Nevertheless the pre-eininence of the Gazette wassteadily eroded in the early eighteenth century, as it failed to make the changesnecessary to resist increasing competition. Not till June 1709 did it become atri-weekly, by which time however a daily (the Daily Courant, 1703-35) hadlong been in existence. In late 1713 the Gazette sold about 5,100 copies comparedwith not more than 4,450 by the Post Boy, its nearest rival; by 1717 sales had fallento under 2,500.3

Official policy and constraint required the Gazette to print boringly repeti-tious addresses and innumerable legal notices, inserted as advertisements, inenlarged issues for which the reader had to pay extra. Nor did the Gazette'sscrupulous payment of the stamp tax imposed in 1712 help it to compete with

1 Acts were passed in 1699 (10 and 11 William III, c. 17), 1710 (9 Anne c.6), and 1711 (10 Anne, c.26);John Ashton, A History of English Lotteries (London, 1893), 45-59.

2 London Gazette, 7 February, 21 March, 25 and 29 April 1706, 13 February 1707; accounts in H. L. Snyder,he. cit., 226-29.

3 J. R. Sutherland, 'The Circulation of Newspapers and Literary Periodicals, 1700-30', Library, FourthSeries, Vol. XV (i934-35), 114-15.

118 B USINESS HIS TORY

newspapers which paid only the minimum halfpenny despite their larger size, iAbove all, the gazetteer enjoying a fixed salary (and in the case of Sam Buckleyfrom 1717 a life office) had little incentive to do better. 2 The Gazette's columnswere increasingly filled with petitions for the relief of insolvent debtors, com-missions of bankruptcy, and notices inserted by the court of Chancery; as thegeneral reader dwindled away, so did advertisements for real estate, books, andother matters. 3

The thriving existence of several newspapers made it harder but by nomeans impossible after 1695 to publish an advertising sheet.'* A London Mercuryassociated with an office of intelligence is known to have been publishing inDecember 1695 and June 1697 (its lifespan is otherwise conjectural) and in March1707 the Generous Advertiser was established as a bi-weekly with a claimeddistribution of 4,000 free copies in London and the provinces, but it appears tohave soon foundered. From the advertisement rates it announced it may becalculated that the issue of 11 April 1707 would have returned less than ^ 5 ^° ^^publisher, allowing no more than one-third of a penny to be spent on producingand distributing each copy. As the contem.porary General Remark on Trade waspaying its newsboys one farthing for each copy sold, it may be suspected that theGenerous Advertiser was too generous to be profitable. In content its advertise-ments, mainly books and medicines, closely resembled those of the tri-weeklies.However in 1711 a gratis bi-weekly advertising sheet, the Useful Intelligencer forpromoting of Trade and Gommerce was pubhshed at least over a period of severalmonths.'

The General Remark on Trade was the characteristically original invention ofCharles Povey, philanthropist and projector, who had established a 'Traders'Exchange House' in 1705 as an employment, estate, and hfe assurance agency.The profits of the General Remark on Trade., which was distributed gratis to policyholders in London, were designed to build a 'College' for 100 necessitous policyholders and to maintain and educate twenty poor boys, but it seems that only thelatter object was achieved.* The holders are thought to have been Londonartisans and small traders and evidently they and other readers formed a suitablemarket for the advertisements of situations vacant or wanted and of urban propertyfor lease or sale. In 1708 the paper promoted Povey's new venture for fire insur-ance of goods and houses, and when two years later he sold out to the Companyof London Insurers (the Sun Insurance Office) the newspaper was also transferred

' No stamp can be seen on many newspapers in the British Museum and Bodleian collections, but it mayhave been destroyed or concealed by the work of the bookbinder. The Gazette appears to have been the onlyLondon paper to carry more than a halfpenny stamp before 1757.

2 P. M. Handover, A History of the London Gazette (London, 1965), 49.3 Out of 87 advertisements in the Gazette in January 1731 there were only three for real estate, one for a

book, and none for goods or auctions." M. D. George, 'The Early History of Registry Offices', Economic History, Vol. I (1929), 578, wrongly

asserts that the advertising sheets disappeared after 1695.5 The British Museum has copies for 10 July (No. 39) and 21 August 1711." General Remark on Trade, 11 and 18 July, 12 September 1707; P. G. M. Dickson, The Sun Insurance

Office, 1710-1960 (London, i960), 15-24.

ADVER TISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS -1650-1750 119

and renamed the British Mercury. As such it lacked the previously numerousadvertisements and having ceased in 1711 to be distributed gratis 1 came to anend in 1714. After this, fire insurance companies were occasional rather thanregular advertisers in the London Press.

In 1704 an anonymous writer had suggested to the Treasury the impositionof a tax on newspapers, adding:

If all Advertisements, Play House Bills, Quacks Bills, were to be printedon stamp Paper, or else in some News Papers, it would encourage thePublication of 'em. Because upon that account News Papers would becomemore useful if not Necessary.

However the Act that taxed newspapers as from i August 1712 laid a is.od.impost on advertisements in them but not on other kinds of advertising.^ Themain aim of the government, to attack the financial viability and thereby theindependence of Sie Press so as to check political criticism by it, succeeded inkilling half a dozen papers immediately, but it did not stifle all criticism norreverse the long-term growth of the Press.* The Daily Courant, which had toraise its price from id. to ijd. and add is. od. to its advertising rates, published105 advertisements in the week before the tax and only sixty-nine in the followingweek. The following table shows how some other newspapers were affected:

Issues

BooksMedicalLost or stolenRimawaysTheatresReal EstateGoods for saleAuctionsBankruptcyInsolvent debtorsRace meetingsMiscellaneous

LondonJuly

13

93960860

84791335

GazetteAugust

13

I2I

70

300

66301

71 0

Post BoyJuly

14

8742183I

23322I0

32 2

August14

26281890

I I30'I I00

419

SpectatorJuly August

27

896220

276

3914000

14

27

1629I02 1I

717000

3

262 398 234 156 253 98

The Gazette's figures were inflated by the result of a recent Act (10 Anne,C.20) which caused imprisoned debtors to publicize their applications for release.The Gazette had already lost before the tax its previous superiority in most

1 British Mercury, 17 January 1711.2 P.R.O., T/129/4, £148.3 10 Anne c.l8, art. cxiii, cxxx, cxxl.•• F. S. Siebert, op. cit., 322; H. L. Snyder, loc. cit., 208-10.5 To equalize the number of issues counted the London Gazette (which from 2 August reverted from tri-

to bi-weekly) was taken from 2 August to 13 September, and the tri-weckly Post Boy to 2 September.

120 BUSINESS HISTORY

advertising fields. Auctions and theatres were most often advertised in the dailies -the Daily Gourant and the Spectator. Steele kept the theatre advertisements untilthe Spectator expired in December, but the advertisements for books and medicinesfell off sharply. Probably the total decrease for the Spectator was greater thanthat of the Post Boy because the former doubled its price and lost half its circulationwhile the Post Boy merely added ^d. and after i August still had a circulation of3,000.1 The table also clearly exposes the advertising profile of these journals:the Spectator, a literary daily, strong in books and playbills; the Gazette consultedby the country gentry for its notices of race meetings but increasingly a receptaclefor legal notices; and the less specialized Post Boy where the middling sort wouldadvertise for the return of their stolen goods and wonder whether they mightbuy the stationery, gowns, silks, wine, tea, and snuff that they saw advertised.

Some time after the Act was passed it was discovered that newspapersprinted on a sheet and a half of paper might be classified as pamphlets and therebyenjoy a much lighter tax; Professor Aspinall's assertion that the advertisements insuch publications escaped the advertisement tax appears to be incorrect. 2 Until25 April 1725, when an amending Act removed this tax anomaly,^ the un-stamped six-page weeklies selHng at id. or i^d. had a considerable advantage.Five of them were being published in early 1725 and in two of them, Peele'sLondon Journal (which received a government subsidy) and Mist's Weekly Journaladvertisements occupied nearly half the space. The two most successftd wereprobably the unsubsidised weeklies published by the Whig Read and the ToryApplebee, for these kept their price at i^d. after the Act instead of increasing it to2d. like the others; they also had only a small proportion of space given toadvertisements both before and after the tax, presumably on account of editorialpolicy rather than lack of would-be advertisers.

A step below the above-mentioned weeklies were the id. papers, also ofsix pages, but crudely printed on coarse paper; they were said to be sold byhawkers to the inferior sort of person, not to gentlemen.'* One of them, Parker'sLondon News, a tri-weekly, usually consisted of a serial story, some foreign anddomestic news (especially crime reports and Tyburn confessions) and a fewadvertisements. Like the weeklies in late April it changed from a six-page foliointo a cramped four-page quarto in order to keep the tax payable down to theminimum (id.).^ The following table shows the effect of the tax on it andReid's Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer and Mist's Weekly Journal, or Saturday'sPost:^

1 J. R. Sutherland, loc. cit., I i8; H. L. Snyder, loc. cit., 209.2 A. Aspinall, 'Statistical Accounts of the London Newspapers in the Eighteenth Century', English His-

torical Review, Vol. CCXLVI (1948), 201-32; a petition of five printers of unstamped newspapers in 1725 saysthat they did pay the advertisement tax; see Parker's London News, 17 March 1725.

3 II George I, c. 8.•t Parker's London News, 17 March, 14 and 21 April 1725.5 It was renamed Parker's Penny Post; see also Stanley Morison, The English Newspaper (Cambridge, 1932),

103.<> Figures are for the first quarter of the year except that Mist's in 1726 refer to the last quarter of the year

as the journal for the first quarter was not available to the writer.

ADVER TISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS -1650-1750 121

Issues

BooksMedicalLost or stolenRunawaysReal estateGoods for saleMiscellaneous

Parker's1725

39

2261652

123

172639

57

1353

134

Reid's1725

13

1713

002

154

172613

618

I4I2I

Mist1725

13

51n o

666

247

s1726

13

I I I1872418304327

66 50 51 33 210 442

Parker's halfpenny readers were by no means literary in their tastes (the twobook advertisements were for a cookbook) and were not housebuyers (the fewreal estate advertisements chiefly were for urban property to let) but evidentlythey were thought to like soap, tobacco, canaries and cheap brandy. The dis-proportionate number of'lost or stolen'notices, higher than that of other contem-porary newspapers, suggests that the paper may have been read in Alsatia andother rookeries of crime. This category of advertisement had bulked large inearly newspapers but had since decreased absolutely and relatively. In the firstquarter in 1680 for instance thirty-nine of the ninety-nine advertisements in theGazette had been of this kind; in 1695 fifty-eight out of 202; in 1700 forty-threeout of 240; in July 1712 only nine out of 262. An Act of 1717 (4 George I, c. 11,art. iv) had made it a felony to accept a reward for the return of stolen goodsunless the beneficiary strove to apprehend the thief and to give evidence againsthim, but not until 1752 did it become an offence to offer a reward 'with noquestions asked'. Jonathan Wild, 'Thief-Catcher General of Great Britain andIreland' for long evaded the law by receiving 'gifts' rather than rewards untilfinally on 15 May 1725 he was sentenced under the Act and hanged at Tyburnnine days later.'

The figures for Reid's and Mist's papers show ttiat the imposition of anewspaper tax did not arrest the growing spate of advertisements for quackmedicines. It has been suggested that Mist's readers were mainly working-class, but the advertisements for country estates, farms, inns to let, and for the sale ofministers' gowns, books, and tulip bulbs, indicate that at least some ofthe readerswere better-off.

In contrast to the halfpenny papers and unstamped weekhes the eveningpapers were intended for a socially superior class. The Evening Post, first publishedin 1706 and resumed in 1709, was sold at some ofthe most select coffee housesincluding Tom's and Will's at Covent Garden, Tom's without Temple Bar(frequented by lawyers and clergy) and St James's (the resort of Jonathan Swift). 3

' W. R. Irwin, The Making of Jonathan Wild (New York, 1941), 4-11.2 James Sutherland, Daniel Defoe, A Critical Study (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971), 85.3 Evening Post, 6 September 1709; A. Ellis, The Penny Universities (London, 1956), and B. LiUywhite,

London Coffee Houses (London, 1963).

122 BUSINESS HISTORY

The advertisement in these papers of goods only on sale in London indicates alocal readership, but there is evidence that the papers, regularly published anddispatched to the provinces on the three postdays, were bought by countrygentry; even the bucolic Squire Western read the London Evening News.^ TheSt James's Evening Post of 5 July 1718 contains a long advertisement inserted bythe Northamptonshire quarter Sessions to apprise other magistrates of its viewsconcerning illegal passes and the law of settlement. Many advertisements relatedto country estates for sale, race meetings, and expensive books. 2 Countrygentlemen and clergy having read these book advertisements (which affordedonly the barest bibliographical data) used to send off their orders to their Londonbook factors. 3

In 1725 the amending Act had taxed 'every Journal, Mercury, or otherpublick News-paper', but it is not clear whether a purely advertising sheet wouldhave to pay stam.p tax as being a 'Metcxary'. In appearing at first unstamped inFebruary 1731 the Daily Advertiser assumed that it did not. However, as it includedsome news in the shape of stockprices, course of exchange, and bankruptcy lists,its case was weakened considerably, and from 27 February it was publishedstamped at a cost of i^d. with a short selection of general news. The preface ofthe first Daily Advertiser on 3 February said it would present a comprehensivecoverage of advertisements so that the reader would not require (as at present) toconsult several papers to read them and that it would be posted up in variouspublic places. Of ninety-six advertisements published in the first half-dozenissues, twenty-one related to books, seventeen to goods, fourteen to real estate,and thirteen to remedies; later by including theatre advertisements the DailyAdvertiser would be more truly comprehensive. Its success influenced otherpapers to add 'Advertiser' to their titles and to devote even more space to adver-tising. It must be remembered hfflwever that in its heyday when it was the soledaily newspaper (1702-19) the Daily Courant had given about half of its space,and in some issues two-thirds, to advertisements. Some issues of its successfulrival the Daily Post (1719-46) had reached 75 per cent. In later years the DailyAdvertiser regiilarly achieved this proportion and had to turn away some intendingadvertisers.*

In early November 1734 the Covent Garden theatre was advertising in theDaily Journal, and Drury Lane, Goodman's Fields, and the New Theatre, Hay-market, in the Daily Post: the declining Daily Courant had no theatre advertise-ments at all. In that same month with the backing of five London theatres whichagreed to advertise in it, Henry Woodfall established the London Daily Post andGeneral Advertiser (from March 1744 simply the General Advertiser). Not only werethe playbills a valuable source of revenue for tlie publisher, but readers would

1 Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Book VI, Chapter 11.2 Of 166 advertisements in the Evening Post of January 1725, 97 related to books, 29 to real estate, and 18

to medical remedies.' F. A. Mumby, Publishing and Bookselling (London, 1930), 175.•t R. L. Haig, op. cit., 57; L. Werkmeister, op. dt., 2.

ADVER TISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS - 1650-1750 123

purchase the paper in order to read them.i The new paper was therefore asuccess and like the Daily Advertiser gave 75 to 80 per cent of space to advertise-ments. From the office copies ofthe General Advertiser in 1744 (now in the BritishMuseum) it is possible to calculate that the average advertising receipts for afour-page issue were ^s los. od.^ In one issue (8 March) theatre and entertain-ment advertisements yielded 33s. od., books 43s. od. and medicines 15s. od. outof a total proceeds amounting to iios. od.; deducting 44s. od. for advertisementtax this left 66s. od. for the publisher. Unfortunately no comparison is possiblewith the proceeds of newspaper sales which are not knoAvn.

In the mid-seventeenth century a weekly paper was likely to contain, atmost, half a dozen advertisements; 100 years later a daily paper might be expectedto hold about fifty. Greater in quantity, newspaper advertising was now morespecialized as the following table for early 1749 shows :3

London Evening Post General Advertiser Penny London PostIssues 24 24 24

BooksMedicalLost or stolenRunawaysTheatreReal EstateGoods for saleAuctionMiscellaneous

6980

926

399

I O I2

227

5251 1 2

1 0

5127

2 0118318116

68127

0I0I

540

5

II65 I35I 248

The table indicates that high social class of readership correlated positivelywith book and real estate advertisements and inversely with quack medicines, asthe London Evening Post evidently refused this class of advertisement. The PennyLondon Post's advertisements of goods consisted largely of a few repeated items,stays and cheap brandy; its 'books' were a few cheap pamphlets repeatedlyadvertised. Most remarkable of all, no less than eight-nine out of its 127 medicaladvertisements offered cures for venereal disease. Perhaps connected with the newmercury treatment,'* this type of advertisement was certainly on the increase.^In conclusion it is hardly necessary to point out that the General Advertiser, theonly daily paper of the above three, attracted the theatre and auction advertise-ments.

At this point we may turn to consider analytically rather than chronologi-cally the role of advertising in the period under review; by 1750 it had become

' London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 4 November 1734.2 Average of twenty issues 12 March to 3 April 1744.3 London Evening Post from 3 January to 25 February; General Advertiser from 2 to 28 January, Penny

London Post 4 January to 27 February 1749.1 R. Campbell, The London Tradesman (London, 1747), 52.5 fo the last quarter of 1726 43 out of the 154 medical advertisements in Mist'sWeekly Journal were for

venereal cures.

124 BUSINESS HISTORY

necessary in the marketing of certain goods and services but was still of smallsignificance in many other areas. Yet as London's population, swollen by immi-grants, increased from 575,000 in 1700 to 675,000 in 1750' and the standard ofliving slowly rose^ advertising as a means of communication if not of persuasionwould seem to have been offered increased opportunities. In 1690 a visitor, theRev. Robert Kirk, had remarked, 'Few in it know the fourth part of its streets,far less can they get intelligence of the hundredth part of the special affairs andremarkable passages in it, unless by public printed papers, which came not toeveryman's notice'.^ Yet in regard to travel the newspapers were not helpful.Advertisements for inns were only occasional, and then inserted rather to report achange in landlord than to describe accommodation or cuisine. Similarly stage-coaches were occasionally advertised when some change was made in the serviceor its ownership, but not regularly publicized. That the traveller was in need ofhelpful information concerning the coaches and carriers that departed from somany different inns on different days of the week is shown by the timetablespublished in the Press in 1657 and 1694,* and from the offer of the Office ofIntelligence in 1675 to act as a free travel agency. Travellers usually had to getthis information from the handbills and posters stuck around inns, but the wealthiersort could find it in useful directories.*

As we have seen, in the seventeenth century some estate and employmentagencies produced their own papers; in the eighteenth century they were morelikely to advertise their services in the columns of a newspaper.' In the provincialPress property advertisements outnumbered all others;* in the metropolitanthey were less predominant and noticeably concentrated in the evening papers,but also to be found in the dailies. Neither did the country gentleman depend onthe London newspapers for news of racemeetings, for from 1733 he could sub-scribe to a fortnightly Historical List of all Horse-Matches Run 'together with aCollection of all Advertisements relating to the same, that in each respectiveFortnight shall appear, either separately printed, or in the News-Papers both ofLondon and the Country'.^ If his property was lost or stolen, moreover, he mightresort to the city crier 1° or even publish his own handbill rather than advertisea reward in a London newspaper.

Except for the advertisements in the dailies of the City auctions. Press adver-tising of goods was still of minor importance in their marketing. It would be

' George Rude, Hanoverian London, 1714-1808 (London, 1971), 4.2 E. W. Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1934), 23.3 Quoted in N. G. Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London (1935), 5io-•t Publick Adviser, 26 May 1657; Houghton's Collection, 8 June, 6 July, 3 August 1694.s City Mercury, 4 November 1675.6 e.g. R. Burrage, A New Review of London (London, 1722 and 1733); anon., A Compleat Guide to All

Persons who have any Trade or Concern with the City of London (London, 1740).'e .g . Spencely in Mist's Weekly Journal, 30 January 1725, and Thomas Rogers in London Journal, 11

February 1727.s G. Cranfield, op. cit., 204.' Historical List of all Horse-Matches Run (London, 1739)-

'» For list of property 'cried' see London Mercury, 25 March and i April 1721 etc.11 For a facsimile see B. Lillywhite, op. cit., 163-64, 225.

ADVER TISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS -1650-1750 125

possible to produce an impressive list of advertised consumer goods (tea, wine,snuiF, mangoes, glass, mirrors, plate, gowns, shoes, petticoat-hoops etc.) and ofindustrial and commercial products (milled lead, sanfoin and trefoil seed, a fireengine, a patent dredge etc.) but this might mislead if the low incidence or evenrarity of some of these advertised goods was not noted. Common foods such asbeer, cheese, bread, meat, and fish were not advertised. 1 The large brewers ofporter did not promote sales by advertising but by capturing the sites and thepublicans. 2 Visitors to London might be astonished by the magnificent windowdisplays of the shops but most of these shops did not advertise in the news-papers, at least not regularly. The shopman continued to place his apprentice atthe shopfront to tout for custom and prevent theft.'' Many goods and foodswere hawked from door to door, whilst the London housewife scarcely neededto be told to go to Smithfield market for meat and to Billingsgate for fish.Even luxuries - tea, coffee, chocolate, snuflf- were advertised somewhat irregularlyafter they had ceased to be novelties. Brandy and French wines, truly luxuryarticles, fared rather better; gin, the tipple of the common folk, was not advertisedin the newspapers, which by no means prevented the direful effects of its excessiveconsumption in the 'gin years', 1733 to 1751.

There were older ways of advertising goods, particularly the cries of thestreet vendors, which so distiorbed the practice of Hogarth's Enraged Musician,shopsigns which projected far into the street, and tradesman's cards and shopbills.In the course of the eighteenth century the latter came to depict artistically theinterior of the shop and its wares rather than merely copy ithe shopsign.* Anotherdevice, one that turned to accoxint the endemic shortage of small coins, was theissue of shop tokens with an advertising inscription.''

Warren's Blacking in the 1820's is said to have been the first householdproduct nationally advertised on a large scale.* The earlier prevalence of domesticand small-scale production had inhibited such advertising. It is significant thatbefore 1750 advertising was concentrated on a few 'branded' goods and services,in which category we may place books, medicines, and theatre plays. Holman'sInk Powder, patented in 1688, was a rare example of a patented and brandedarticle of common use that was extensively advertised over a number of years.*Books, and the term is used here to include pamphlets, which had their copyrightsafeguarded up to 1695 if entered into the register at tb.e Stationers' Companyand from 1709 by Act, were advertised extensively in the whole period underreview. For the ordinary reader there was no better means of communication

' G. Cranfield, op. cit., 210-11.2 Peter Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England, 1700-1830 (Cambridge, 1959), 136.3 M. D. George, 'London and the Life of the Town', in A. S. Turberville, ed., fohnson's England {Ox£oTd,

1952), Vol. I, 175.^ A. E. Richardson, Georgian England (London, 1931), 72-73.5 Rose M. Bradley, The English Housewife in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1912), 168-72.* Ambrose Heal, London Tradesmen's Cards of the XVIII Century (London, 1925), 3-9.' J. R. S. Whiting, Trade Tokens, A Social and Economic History (Newton Abbot, 1971), 70-73, 99.* F. Presbrey, op. cit, 85.' Daily fournai, 2 January 1723.

126 BUSINESS HISTORY

and marketing than the neMrspaper advertisement; without it the great expansionin readership and book sales could not have occurred. Probably die Term Cata-logues published between 1668 and 1711 and other catalogues irregularly pub-lished were of greater interest to booksellers and to bibliophiles such as NarcissusLuttrell than to the general reader. Newspapers also advertised the book auctions,of which there were more than one hundred between 1676 and 1700, and toldthe interested person where he might get his catalogue. Newspapers had theadvantage of being read by all classes interested in aJl kinds of books. Indeed,the taste of the great was various. The fifth earl of Bedford indulged his sonswith the newest schoolbooks and himself with twopenny horrible murders.

The first theatre advertisements in newspapers had appeared in the tri-weeklies in 1700 but as soon as the Daily Courant was estabHshed in 1702 theplaybills were transferred there although other newspapers continued to advertiseplayscripts.'* Since plays had short runs and the final decision whether to presenta new programme on the morrow usually was not made until the eveningperformance, there was just enough time for an advertisement to be inserted innext morning's daily. Before 1700, and indeed after it also, plays Were advertisedby means of posters and handbills; the prohibition in June 1700 by the Londonand Westminster civic authorities of the posting of playbills may have given animpulse to newspaper advertising. By this time the audience had become lessselect and less courtly than it was earlier under Charles II,* and newspaperadvertising, less costly than the large posters, proved its worth.'' To the news-paper proprietor theatre playbills were valuable as attractive news items and in1729 the printer of the declining Daily Courant inserted them gratis rather than gowithout. When the theatres adjourned for the summer season the journalistichiatus was noticeable; as Margin said in Samuel Foote's play TTie Bankrupt (ActIII), 'Plays and Parliament Houses are winter provisions'.

The early eighteenth century was tlie great age of quackery, some of itsleading practitioners such as Sir William Read and Dr Ward (who however hadenough skill speedily to reduce George U's dislocated thumb) being patronizedby royalty.'' Since only the rich could afford the somewhat lethal attentions ofthe physicians of tlie Royal College less fortunate persons resorted to the lessexpensive ministrations of the apothecaries and surgeons and travelling mounte-banks and quacks. Such persons indeed might benefit some psychosomaticailments; by means of harmless medicines Count Fathom had some success with

' E. Arber, ed.. The Term Catalogues (London, 1903), Vol. I, Introduction and 386, 406, 419.2 J. Lawler, Book Auctions in England in the Seventeenth Century (1676-1700) (London, 1898), xvii; A.

GrowoU, Three Centuries of English Booktrade Bibliography (New York, 1903), 64.3 Gladys Scott Thomson, Life in a Noble Household, 1641-1700 (London, 1937), 274.•* A. Jackson, 'Play Notices from the Burney Newspapers, 1700-1703'; PMLA, Vol. XLVIII (1933),

815-49.5 W. Van Lennep, ed.. The London Stage, 1660-1800, Part I, 1660-1700 (Carbondale, 1965), Vol. I, lxxv-

lxxviii.•> John Loftis, The Politics of Drama in Augustan England (Oxford, 1963), 8-14.' E. L. Avery, ed.. The London Stage, 1660-180O, Part 2, 1700-1729 (Carbondale, i960). Vol. I, xci.8 F. H. Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine (London, 1929), 384-86.

ADVER TISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS - 1650-1750 127

hysterics and hypochondriacs. 1 At the lowest level of all came the self-diagnosed,self-prescribed treatment of ill-health by means of advertised 'brand' medicines.Few newspapers, except the London Gazette which severely restricted or dis-cotoraged them, excluded such advertisements for long. By advertising certainmedicines gained a popular reputation; Daffy's Elixir was still being marketed inthe twentieth century. Many examples of the vdde distribution of certain brandsmight be given. Tubal-cain Porter's Elixir Salutis sold at thirty-one shops inLondon and many in the provinces ;2 the Elixir Magnum Stomachicum atseventeen coffee-houses and two booksellers in London and one bookseller inmost towns 3; Dr Godfrey's Cordial which had wholesale warehouses in Bristol,Norwich, Chester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Dubhn, and London.'*

'Everybody who does a large advertised trade is selling something commonon the strength of saying it's uncommon', declared the inventor of Tono-Bungay.5 For good or ill the sellers of quack medicines were foremost indeveloping the techniques of advertising. Putting into practice Dr Johnson'sdictum that 'Promise, large Promise, is the soul of an Advertisement',* theyrepeatedly thrust their extravagant therapeutic claims before the public in anunceasing barrage of advertisements. In March 1717 for instance the AnodyneNecklace, which by its mere presence was supposed overnight to rescue teetbingand sickly infants from the brink of death, was being advertised at the same timein at least half a dozen newspapers. Quack medicines were among the first to usewoodcuts to attract the readers' attention. Then there was the appeal to thesuperficial appearance of the product. Just as the later house^wife would be advisedto judge the purity of Pear's Soap by its transparency, so the makers of Parker'sSpirit of Scurvy-Grass ixrged: 'Tis to be known by its bright, lovely green, all otherSpirits looking white and languid'."^ Next came the publication of testimonialsfrom cured patients and allusion inter alia to the crowned heads who had sent forthe Anodyne Necklace with the most gratifying results. Very large promise wasalso reinforced by appeal to very large fear. The Anodyne Necklace, offering theappropriate remedy, scared its readers with an account of the plague in the southof France and an illustration of the burial of its victims.^ Other advertisementsdescribed in sickening detail the length and number of worms expelled by sickchildren and to drive home the lesson furnished a crude woodcut of the worms. One mountebank offering a cure for venereal disease named and gave the addressof a wretched vicUva. of the disease whom enquirers were invited to inspect, i"

From the second to the sixth decade of the eighteenth centxxry readers

1 T. Smollett, Count Fathom, Chapters 35, so-52.2 Domestick Intelligence, 23 March 1680.3 Houghton's Collection, 17 November 1693.^ Craftsman, 16 January 1731.5 H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay, Book 2, Chapter II (2).' Idler, 20 January 1759.' Houghton's Collection, 17 November 1693.8 Applehee's Original Weekly Journal, 24 February 1722.' Penny London Post, 4 January 1749.

10 St James's Evening Post, 23 September 1718.

128 BUSINESS HISTORY

became familiar with a cut of a female head surmounting the 'Famous AnodyneNecklace'; it is easy to find the early advertisements for this product in thenewspapers as at the time woodcuts were not numerous. Countless readers wereinvited to visit the gentlewoman at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace withoutTemple Bar, up one flight of stairs, where they might receive free copies of suchpamphlets as Gibraltar, Reasons why We ought not, on any Account, to part fromif^ and An Account, with a curious Draught finely engrav'd, of the Place where theNightingale, Swallow, Cuckow, Woodcock, Fieldfare, and Other Birds of Passage whichappear so all on a sudden among us.^ It will be observed that the subjects of theseworks were not medical, but the pages were interspersed with advertisements forthe Anodyne Necklace shop. More relevant was A Gap, Ten to One but it Fits, atreatise on venereal disease, self-defilement, and 'Venery with Machines . . . to beread alone privately'. Once up the stairs and in the gentlewoman's embrace itwas no doubt difficult for the enquirer to descend until he had purchased avenereal remedy or a bag ofthe Famous Purging Sugar Plums; but boys and girlswith an interest in this literature were warned off.**

Apart from aiming to establish in the reader's mind by means of illustrationthe image of the seal or brandmark of his product^ the quack advertisersought to warn the public most explicitly concerning counterfeits and the shopswhere they were sold. It must be confessed that seals were also faked: 'SomeCertain Shops (have) got a whole Drawer full of Counterfeit Seals made, ofmost of the Medicines Sold in London, to Seal their own Counterfeit Medicineswith'.'' The fact that so few branded medicines were protected by patent,''apparently made it necessary to defend them by advertisement. Polemical ad-vertising was also employed to discredit competing products that were notcounterfeits. In 1717 Pratt and Barnett's advertisement for Specifick Tincturesaid:*

Hereby is detected the famous Anodine Necklace sold at the Sugar-Loaf inthe Strand: Beads made of Dead People's Sculls. A rare Artifice! a choicePreface, or Introduction to a Belief of Romish Tales! No wonder the Relictsof their Saints are held in such Estimation, when the Sculls of indifferentPersons can efiectually remove all manner of Ailments in Old and Young,and be instrumental in the Cure of Clap and Pox. Charming Doctrine of DrChamberlen! and hard Fate, that his glad Tidings (which have prov'dHarbingers of Deatli to those Children, thro' Parents Dependance thereon)should meet with the most vehement Ctirse and Reproach.

It will be observed that one objection to the Anodyne Necklace was that itsmakers were papists. Interestingly, their reply failed to deny that it was made of

1 London Journal, 25 February 1727.2 Reid's Weekly Journal, 5 February 1726.3 Champion, 16 January 1741.•» Mist's Weekly Journal, 24 December 1720.5 e.g. Richard Stoughton's CotdisX in London Journal, 28 January 1727.* The English Man's Two Wishes, n.p., n.d.' B. Woodcroft, Suhjett-Matter Index of Patents of Invention (London, 1854), lists 18 between 1650 and J750.* St James's Evening Post, 14 March 1717.

ADVERTISING IN LONDON NEWSPAPERS - 1650-1750 129

old bones 'For if Health be but obtained, 'tis no matter by what Means'; and ifuseless why was it counterfeited?

'The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection, that it is not easy topropose any improvement', declared by Dr Johnson in 1759 and opined that it wasnow necessary to gain attention by making most magnificent promises. Bythis date a public habituated to advertising had been produced and with it acertain degree of scepticism and buyers' resistance. The more sophisticated appreciatedthe hoax advertisements written with a political motive or to expose socialfollies'*. The Tatler, carrying on Jonathan Swift's crtiel joke, published anadvertisement to certify that the astrologer John Partridge had died on 28 March1708^ but it was left to Addison to write a genial parody of quack advertise-:m.ents themselves*. People might be more (but insufficiently) on their guardagainst quacks but they were still gullible in other respects. In the share craze ofthe Soudi Sea Bubble in 1720 the newspapers, perhaps for the first and certainlynot the last time, profited from the advertising generated by the flotation of newcompanies. The Daily Post of 27 May 1720 for instance had three columns of suchadvertisements, including one hopeful project to raise tbxee million pounds todrain the Irish bogs. In 1749 in consequence of a wager there was advertised aperformance at the New Theatre, Haymarket, in which a man would climb intoa quart bottle in full view of the audience. After waiting impatiently for theentertainment to begin the spectators were by no means pacified by a voice frombehind the curtain which regretted that the act had had to be postponed for onenight but assured them that in recompense he would climb into a pint and not aquart bottle and accomplish other marvels. The enraged dupes then broke topieces all the boxes, benches, and scenes, leaving only the shell of the houseremaining. On this the General Advertiser, which had published the false notice,unctuously commented: 'Surely this will deter any one from venturing to imposeon the Public, in the like manner, for the future'.''

One means increasingly used to outwit suspicious readers was the 'puff',here taken to mean the publication of an advertisement in such a way as to makeit appear as news. Steele inserted in the Spectator puffs for actors, wine merchants,book sellers and quack doctors,^ and Samuel Foote made the plot of his playThe Bankrupt hinge upon a false news item published for payment. Even theobituary of a doctor might contain a puff for the medicines that his widow wouldcontinue to sell. The office copy of the General Advertiser in 1744 shows howpuffs were paid for at the usual advertising rates and, a signal advantage, theadvertisement tax was evaded. Inter alia its puffs drew favourable attention to a

' ibid., 14 March 1717.2 Idler, 20 January 1759.3 e.g. Heraclitus Ridens, 4 February 1681." e.g. Female Tatler, 1709, passim.5 Tatler, 26 August 1710.' Spectator, 27 November 1711.' General Advertiser, n and 17 January 1749.8 L. Lewis, op cit., 123-26.' London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 28 June 1743.

130 BUSINESS HISTORY

bowling green, a play, a good fishing lake, and the knighting of Thomas Rider,esquire, of Kent, i By the 'seventies such puffs or 'paragraphs' of a political orcommercial nature had become very numerous.

Advertisers do however seem to have overlooked the female market.Advertisements making a direct appeal to women's needs were mainly restrictedto some medicines, cosmetics, and a few books. It is to be observed that news-papers were generally read in the coffee-houses, attended by the male sex only,^and that females were less likely than men to be in a position to buy goods orservices. In 1711 the Useful Intelligencer had claimed that as it was distributedgratis it would be more likely to be read 'by all Sort of Persons, Women as wellas Men, it being given into Shops, private Houses and Families as well as to allPublick Houses'.* Of coiurse women read the Tatler, Spectator, and otherpapers, but journals directed mainly to the female reader were a rarity.^ In1709 the ungentle Female Tatler 'by Mrs Crackenthorpe, a Lady that knowseverything' was feminine neither in its contents nor in its advertising. TheLadies' Magazine of 1749-53 was said to be designed for the parlour as well asfor the shop and counting-house, but its few advertisements, exposing the meritsof books, soap, and candidates for election, were not distinctively feminine.

Finally, lie effect of advertising on the practice of journalism may be noticed.Without advertisements the London papers would perhaps have needed only halfthe newsprint that they did use, and this would have hindered the growth oftheBritish paper industry. Without the profits derived from the advertisementsnewspapers like the Daily Advertiser probably could not have afforded the bettertypography and layout that competed so successfrilly against the smaller, meanerpages of the old-fashioned London Gazette and the Daily Gourant. Evidently thecontribution of advertisements to gross proceeds varied greatly between onepaper and another; it was low for the London Journal in 1722* and of minorimportance for most provincial papers.^ In the first foiir months of 1706 theLondon Gazette received j{ 534 from sales and j(^2i8 from advertisements; a yearlater from January to August inclusive ( 1,135 from sales and fy90 from ad-vertisements.* In 1728 the advertising revenue ofthe Daily Post was estimatedas at least -^1,200 per annmn.^ In December 1775 gross proceeds of the saleso£ the Public Advertiser amounted to ^560 and advertisements to ^{^388.1" Thefuture malice of governments might raise some stern challenges to the Press (in1789 the advertisement tax was raised to three shillings) but the symbiosis of newsand advertisements that had grown up in the hundred years to 1750 was to remainan enduring element in British journalism.

Macquarie University

1 General Advertiser, 22 March and 3, 7, and 12 April 1744.2 L. Werkmeister, op. cit., p. 7.3 London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 4 November 1734.•• Useful Intelligencer for promoting of Trade and Commerce, 10 July 1711.5 B. M. Steams, 'Early English Periodicals for Ladies (1700-1760)', PMLA, Vol. XLVIII (1933), 38-54.« L. Hanson, op. cit., p. 107.' G. A. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 236.8 Estimated from H. L. Snyder, loc. cit., 226-29.' The Case ofthe Coffee-Men of London and Westminster (London, 1728).