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Owner killed by lifeboat
AFTER Mr Taylor's departure the ownership of the Free Press and of 24 High Street passed to Edward Palmer Rogers, who had been the proprietor and manager of newspapers in Pontefract.
He only spent 10 years in Bridlington but he secured a place in the history of the town by the remarkable manner of his death.
He was run over by a lifeboat.
The lifeboat, one of two in Bridlington at the time, was being launched at night to go to the assistance of a large barque which had gone ashore on the rocks near Danes Dyke.
The carriage had stuck in soft sand and was extricated only by the exertions of eight horses and, according to a contemporary account, "hundreds" of helpers hauling on ropes.
When the carriage had been pulled out of the soft sand and the wheels bit on a firmer surface, the horses bolted.
Rogers, who was aged 70, was unable to get out of the way in time.
He was knocked down and a wheel passed over his body.
A FEW months before this, on July 25, 1896, the long connection of the Free Press with 24 High Street had been broken when the paper was acquired from Rogers by Green and Son of Beverley.
Under Rogers the paper fell on lean times and he reverted to the practice, long since abandoned by his predecessors, of buying his paper part-printed from London.
And, for one week in 1896, it ceased officially to be a newspaper at all.
The first issue published from Beverley, on August 1, 1896, contained this announcement:
"The whole of the arrangements in connection with the publishing of this issue of the Bridlington Free Press having had to be made at so short notice we must ask the indulgence of our readers ...
"Unfortunately the previous proprietors had allowed the registration of the Free Press as a newspaper to lapse and owing to the formalities which are considered so necessary to government officials the registration cannot be completed until after the publication of this issue.
"For this week therefore the postage is one penny, after which it will be placed under the ordinary regulations for newspaper postage, and will be carried for one half-penny."
Under the Greens' management, however, the paper did not fare any better.
It by then had to face the competition not only of the old-established Observer and Gazette but also of the newly-established Chronicle.
AT the end of 1897, it was acquired by Meredith Whittaker, of Scarborough, and the first issue under the new management was that of January 6, 1898.
The state into which it had sunk can be gauged from the fact that the purchase price was 25 for the copyright in the title – which was all that there was to sell.
Whittaker's interest was as much political as journalistic, and his purchase of the Free Press preserved it as the Liberal voice in the district.
The Chronicle , which was founded at this time, became the Conservative organ.
After the demise of the Gazette in September 1914 these two had the field to themselves and continued for the next 40 years into an age in which politics came to mean less and less in local journalism.
In 1898, the circulation of the Free Press was under 400 copies a week.
It soon improved from that.
Between the wars, when for some years there was a mid-week issue in addition to the weekend publication, progress was continued.
A brake was applied to the growth by the Second World War, and some years of stringent newsprint control after the war, but in 1952 a five-figure circulation was reached for the first time and it has continued selling more than 10,000 copies every week ever since.
In fact, the paper – now owned by Johnston Press – sells more than 15,000 copies and continues to go from strength to strength.
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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