Securing the Family, Embedding the Trade

Abstract

It is a truism that eighteenth-century tradesmen and women worked in and for the family unit. The newspaper trade was no different. Celebrated entrepreneurs, often presented as successful individuals, worked as part of a family unit. John Newbery of the Reading Mercury, children’s book publisher and medicine manufacturer, entrusted his paper to the hands of his step-daughter, Anna-Maria Smart, while he conducted his large publishing business in London. Joseph Gales, radical founder of the Sheffield Register who fled the country under threat of arrest for treason and moved to the United States, was assisted by his wife Winifred who ran the paper and arranged its sale after he had fled. Once reunited in the United States, the family founded several further newspapers, including Joseph Gales junior’s Washington National Intelligencer. That tradesmen and women of all sorts typically operated within family enterprises is commonly understood. Their impact on both newspapers and the trade beyond the individual shop front, however, has been underplayed. Concern for the family and for its future played a significant role in the construction and content of newspapers and on the specialisation of the newspaper trade as a whole. This chapter explores the effects of families on provincial newspaper businesses as this study now turns towards the examination of individual enterprises and the unique constellation of demands placed upon proprietors and their newspapers locally.