ADVERTISING IN LONDON

NEWSPAPERS, 1650-1750
by R. B. WALKER
S
OME regard is likewise to be paid to posterity. There are men of diligence and
curiosity who treastire up the Papers of the Day merely because others
neglect them, and in time they will be scarce. When these collections shall be
read in another century, how will numberless contradictions be reconciled, and
how shall Fame be possibly distributed among the Tailors and Boddice-makers of
the present age.'
Dr Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 20 January 1759
The history of advertising in London newspapers between 1650 and 1750
may be approached from at least three directions. First, there is the history of
advertising per se; in this respect subsequent general histories have made little
advance on Henry Sampson's pioneering work published almost a century ago.i
Blanche B. Elhott in A History of English Advertising (London, 1962) has covered
fresh ground in her examination of the advertisement sheets in the late seventeenth
century, but has barely touched upon the much larger subject of advertising in
newspapers proper during the period tinder review. Nor are there many specia-
lized studies relating to this period. ^ The historians have concentrated somewhat
superficially on the evident humour, quaintness, and evocativeness of many of the
advertisements and have almost entirely neglected any quantitative analysis.
Secondly, advertising may be considered as part of the history of journalism - a
legitimate approach when one appreciates that by 1750 75 per cent of space in
some daihes was being devoted to advertisements. Here however a gap in modern
historiography opens between 1660 and 1772.2 While the eighteenth century
provincial Press recently has received admirable scholarly treatment,'* for the
history of the London Press there are only the outdated nineteenth century works
by James Grant, H. R. Fox Bourne and others. Thirdly, the advertisements may
be studied as a source for literary, economic, and social history. In this respect
they 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 History
and 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 of
Old London {London, ig2S).
3 Joseph Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, 1620-1660 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961); Lucyle
Werkmeister, The London Daily Press, 1772-1792, (Lincoln Nebraska, 1963) especially 445-48- R. L. Haig, The
Gazetteer, 1735-1795 (Carbondale, i960) is a scholarly contribntion. Laurence Hanson, Government and the
Press, 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 economic
history. 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 it
was not till 1648 that a newsbook regularly included advertisements. 2 Until
after the Restoration the word 'advertisement' still had the more general meaning
of 'notice' and the words 'advice' and 'siquis' were used where we should say
advertisement. After 1660 the practice of placing newspaper advertisements in a
separate section went hand in hand with a narrower definition of the term. In
1653 the Perfect Diurnall usually had half a dozen advertisements at one shilling
each; when Marchamont Nedham secured a Press monoipoly in 1655 he raised
the price to 2s. 6d. ^ This reduced drastically the number of advertisements and
in 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 Intelligencer
and th.e Mercurius Puhlicus) averaged about five in each issue; under L'Estrange's
monopoly in 1665 (the Intelligencer and the Newes) it averaged about seven; in
Muddiman's newsbooks 'lost or stolen' notices had become numerous; now in
L'Estrange's the advertisements for doctors and medicines assiimed a relative
importance that was to characterise advertising for more than a century.'* But
when in November 1665 the Oxford (later London) Gazette was established as an
official newspaper it contained no advertisements, excluding them as 'not properly
the 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 occasional
insertions by the less exalted - a physician, a city grocer, a bookseller.^ As a
monopoly newspaper from 1666 to 1679 it must have been under some pressure
to 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 the
publication of advertising sheets associated with an 'office of intelligence' acting
as an agency for real estate, employment, loan brokerage and other matters. In
1649 Henry Walker had established such an 'Office of Entries' but the 'Office of
Publick 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 1657
the Office did not make itself an essential intermediary between buyer and seller
by concealing the identity of one from the other, but was content with the fees it
charged 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, the
Office offered itself as an intermediary, i Meanwhile Oliver Wilhams, who had
purchased the patent issued to Captain Innes in 1637 for an office of intelhgence
from his rival agency, published his Weekly Information.^ Judging from the
catalogue of the Thomason collection the first issue of this weekly was also the
last, probably because Nedham had sufficient influence to protect this monopoly
of publishing. In more orthodox fashion Williams required enquiries for the
houses and lands he advertised to be made at his office.
By his grant of appointment in 1663 as Surveyor of the Press L'Estrange
had the monopoly of printing newspapers and advertising matter, ^ and by
virtue of his licence on 25 June 1666 there appeared a four-page advertising sheet
called Publick Advertisements. Whether further issues were ever pubhshed is not
known; 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 notice
in the London Gazette of 11 October 1666, a month after the Great Fire, telling
people to take their advertisements to an office in Bloomsbury, referred to it
cannot now be known.
Again with the assent of L'Estrange, a Mercury was published in 1667, this
time including prices, shipping and commercial news as well as advertisements.
Its entrepreneur, Thomas Bromhall, as Clerk and Registrar ofthe Passes, was in a
good position to learn of London and provincial prices, and he also conducted an
employment 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 August
to 24 October 1667 Bromhall published seventy-two advertisements, of which
twenty-four were for medicines, twenty-two for lost or stolen property, eight
for books, and only two for situations vacant. Bromhall entered into a contract
with John Piercy, servant to the Queen Dowager and seller of divers medicines
and 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 sold
branded 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 parish
clerks. The claimed circulation of 8,000 was indeed very large, but the Company
of parish clerks, which by its charter of 1639 had jurisdiction over 129 parishes
inside 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 an
associated office of intelligence but the advertiser was not forced to use it as an
intermediary. In May 1676 the free issue of the Mercury was discontinued with
the unfortunate result tloat the thrifty reader whose papers eventually came to
rest in the 'Nichols Newspapers' in the Bodleian Library ceased to take it. However
it continued publication until 24 March 1680, and from 1.2 May 1680 was fused
with the Mercurius Civicus: or. The City Mercury which continued its numera-
tion. ^ The Mercurius Civicus for some time evaded or ignored the ban which a
proclamation of May 1680 had imposed on unlicensed newspapers (it was strictly
an advertising sheet) but did suspend publication in July. Reappearing in Septem-
ber as the City Mercury, it preceded by several months the re-emergence of
newspapers proper in December. In the following year however it proved
impossible for an advertising sheet at id. to compete against newspapers selling at
the 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 and
determined Whig. Harris like many other booksellers stocked an array of medi-
cines his second issue advertised his own 'Admirable and Effectual Water for
the Griping of the Guts''* - and his and other newspapers (at least five existed in
May 1680) greatly increased the outlet for advertisements. In the first quarter of
1680 the London Gazette had ninety-nine and the Domestick Intelligence, which was
also bi-weekly, 135 advertisements. Harris's paper excelled in advertisements for
books 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 of
stolen' category (twenty-eight to thirty-nine). It seems likely that the Domestick
Intelligence was read by the middling and poorer sort in London and the Gazette
by a socially superior, more dispersed, readership.
From 1683 to the expiry of the Licensing Act in 1695 the Gazette regained
its 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 again
opportunity offered for an advertising sheet and a City Mercury, apparently only
loosely associated with an office of intelligence, is known to have been published
from 1693 to 1694.5 Howkins the publisher claimed that over a thousand copies
'weic distributed gratis in London and the provinces. But the most remarkable
adverd'sing medium of the period was John Houghton's trade paper Collection
for 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 advertisements
inserted 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 agricultural
reformer, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and not least (in Henry Sampson's
words) 'the father of English advertising', i
This last claim is merited by Houghton's perception of the commercial
utility of advertising and his attempts, not all successful, to extend the range of
goods and services advertised. He saw that advertising could help to overcome
the problems arising from the growth and complexity of the metropolis and he
published lists of the names and addresses of the members of various trades and
professions. 'I believe some Advertisements about Bark and Timber might be of
use both to Buyer and Seller' was a characteristic proposal^ and as his publication
of grain and produce prices attracted overseas readers he pointed out the value of
his paper for the advertising of books relating to other countries. ^ He published
an index not only of the news contents but also of the advertisements and in
July 1693, in the beHef that the new advertisers would increase the vent of his
paper, introduced a regular two extra pages of book advertisements. 'I shall
receive all sorts of Advertisements', he announced on 28 July, 'but shall answer
for the reasonableness of none, unless I give thereof a particular Character, on
which (as I shall give it) may be dependence but no argixment that others deserve
not 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 and
employment agent, broker for loans, offices, advowsons and marriages,^ and
vendor of chocolate, sago, and 'German Spaw water', led to his own notices
displacing the advertisements of others, but by this time fresh advertising channels
had 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 history
of journalism; henceforward the non-official Press would have a continuous
existence in England. The table on page 117 analyses the number of advertisements
in several papers in the first quarter of several years.*
The London Gazette printed 7,000 to 8,000 copies in 1693'' and over 11,000
in late 1705, of which 950 w^ere given away and over 8,000 sold.* Its total
circulation 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. per
advertisement 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
Books
Medical
Lost or stolen
Runaways
Lotteries
Real Estate
Goods for sale
Auctions
Bankruptcy
Miscellaneous
London Gazette
1695
13
54
2
2
58
17
0
2 1
2 0
0
2 0
2 0 2
1696
13
56
3
50
15
0
I I
I
46
5
16
203
1700
13
79
2
43
17
0
14
I I
14
42
18
240
Post Boy
1696
39
98
3
19
I
40
6
3
3
I
13
187
1700
39
2 0 0
24
35
6
2 1
19
18
I I
0
36
360
Flying Post
1696
39
50
I I
15
2
15
5
4
15
0
9
126
1700
39
178
57
28
9
2 0
6
33
5
2
37
375
the Gazette excluded in principle quack advertisements and all advertisements for
private lotteries. Its wide distribution made it a favoured medium in which to
offer rewards for the return of lost or stolen goods and straying animals, and for
the apprehension of military deserters, missing persons, eloping daughters, and
absconding apprentices who vanished suddenly, usually with a portion of their
masters' goods. As it had many wealthy readers, it was a good place in which to
advertise auctions of luxury articles, books, pictures, and French wines. But the
xmofficial newspapers at the same time were establishing themselves as media
restrained by fewer inhibitions. For them the craze for more or less fraudulent
private lotteries was a boon. Former Acts proving ineffective, it was not till
24 June 1712 that the advertising of such lotteries was effectually suppressed. 1
Examination of the accounts of the Gazette shows that it had casual sales
which shot up by several hundreds when news of special interest was included,
such as for instance victories abroad, the prorogation of Parliament, and the
appointment of Assize judges. 2 Nevertheless the pre-eininence of the Gazette was
steadily eroded in the early eighteenth century, as it failed to make the changes
necessary to resist increasing competition. Not till June 1709 did it become a
tri-weekly, by which time however a daily (the Daily Courant, 1703-35) had
long been in existence. In late 1713 the Gazette sold about 5,100 copies compared
with not more than 4,450 by the Post Boy, its nearest rival; by 1717 sales had fallen
to under 2,500.3
Official policy and constraint required the Gazette to print boringly repeti-
tious addresses and innumerable legal notices, inserted as advertisements, in
enlarged issues for which the reader had to pay extra. Nor did the Gazette's
scrupulous 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, Fourth
Series, Vol. XV (i934-35), 114-15.
118 B USINESS HIS TORY
newspapers which paid only the minimum halfpenny despite their larger size, i
Above all, the gazetteer enjoying a fixed salary (and in the case of Sam Buckley
from 1717 a life office) had little incentive to do better. 2 The Gazette's columns
were increasingly filled with petitions for the relief of insolvent debtors, com-
missions of bankruptcy, and notices inserted by the court of Chancery; as the
general reader dwindled away, so did advertisements for real estate, books, and
other matters. 3
The thriving existence of several newspapers made it harder but by no
means impossible after 1695 to publish an advertising sheet.'* A London Mercury
associated with an office of intelligence is known to have been publishing in
December 1695 and June 1697 (its lifespan is otherwise conjectural) and in March
1707 the Generous Advertiser was established as a bi-weekly with a claimed
distribution of 4,000 free copies in London and the provinces, but it appears to
have soon foundered. From the advertisement rates it announced it may be
calculated 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 producing
and distributing each copy. As the contem.porary General Remark on Trade was
paying its newsboys one farthing for each copy sold, it may be suspected that the
Generous 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 for
promoting of Trade and Gommerce was pubhshed at least over a period of several
months.'
The General Remark on Trade was the characteristically original invention of
Charles 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 policy
holders in London, were designed to build a 'College' for 100 necessitous policy
holders and to maintain and educate twenty poor boys, but it seems that only the
latter object was achieved.* The holders are thought to have been London
artisans and small traders and evidently they and other readers formed a suitable
market for the advertisements of situations vacant or wanted and of urban property
for 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 Company
of 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 may
have been destroyed or concealed by the work of the bookbinder. The Gazette appears to have been the only
London 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 numerous
advertisements and having ceased in 1711 to be distributed gratis 1 came to an
end in 1714. After this, fire insurance companies were occasional rather than
regular advertisers in the London Press.
In 1704 an anonymous writer had suggested to the Treasury the imposition
of a tax on newspapers, adding:
If all Advertisements, Play House Bills, Quacks Bills, were to be printed
on stamp Paper, or else in some News Papers, it would encourage the
Publication of 'em. Because upon that account News Papers would become
more 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.^ The
main aim of the government, to attack the financial viability and thereby the
independence of Sie Press so as to check political criticism by it, succeeded in
killing half a dozen papers immediately, but it did not stifle all criticism nor
reverse the long-term growth of the Press.* The Daily Courant, which had to
raise its price from id. to ijd. and add is. od. to its advertising rates, published
105 advertisements in the week before the tax and only sixty-nine in the following
week. The following table shows how some other newspapers were affected: ^
Issues
Books
Medical
Lost or stolen
Rimaways
Theatres
Real Estate
Goods for sale
Auctions
Bankruptcy
Insolvent debtors
Race meetings
Miscellaneous
London
July
13
9
3
9
6
0
8
6
0
84
79
13
35
Gazette
August
13
I
2
I
7
0
3
0
0
66
301
7
1 0
Post Boy
July
14
87
42
18
3
I
23
32
2
I
0
3
2 2
August
14
26
28
18
9
0
I I
30'
I I
0
0
4
19
Spectator
July August
27
89
62
2
0
27
6
39
14
0
0
0
14
27
16
29
I
0
2 1
I
7
17
0
0
0
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 until
the Spectator expired in December, but the advertisements for books and medicines
fell off sharply. Probably the total decrease for the Spectator was greater than
that of the Post Boy because the former doubled its price and lost half its circulation
while the Post Boy merely added ^d. and after i August still had a circulation of
3,000.1 The table also clearly exposes the advertising profile of these journals:
the Spectator, a literary daily, strong in books and playbills; the Gazette consulted
by the country gentry for its notices of race meetings but increasingly a receptacle
for legal notices; and the less specialized Post Boy where the middling sort would
advertise for the return of their stolen goods and wonder whether they might
buy the stationery, gowns, silks, wine, tea, and snuff that they saw advertised.
Some time after the Act was passed it was discovered that newspapers
printed on a sheet and a half of paper might be classified as pamphlets and thereby
enjoy a much lighter tax; Professor Aspinall's assertion that the advertisements in
such publications escaped the advertisement tax appears to be incorrect. 2 Until
25 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's
London Journal (which received a government subsidy) and Mist's Weekly Journal
advertisements occupied nearly half the space. The two most successftd were
probably the unsubsidised weeklies published by the Whig Read and the Tory
Applebee, for these kept their price at i^d. after the Act instead of increasing it to
2d. like the others; they also had only a small proportion of space given to
advertisements both before and after the tax, presumably on account of editorial
policy rather than lack of would-be advertisers.
A step below the above-mentioned weeklies were the id. papers, also of
six pages, but crudely printed on coarse paper; they were said to be sold by
hawkers to the inferior sort of person, not to gentlemen.'* One of them, Parker's
London News, a tri-weekly, usually consisted of a serial story, some foreign and
domestic news (especially crime reports and Tyburn confessions) and a few
advertisements. Like the weeklies in late April it changed from a six-page folio
into a cramped four-page quarto in order to keep the tax payable down to the
minimum (id.).^ The following table shows the effect of the tax on it and
Reid's Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer and Mist's Weekly Journal, or Saturday's
Post:^
1 J. R. Sutherland, loc. cit., Ii 8; 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 says
that 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
Books
Medical
Lost or stolen
Runaways
Real estate
Goods for sale
Miscellaneous
Parker's
1725
39
2
26
16
5
2
12
3
1726
39
5
7
13
5
3
13
4
Reid's
1725
13
17
13
0
0
2
15
4
1726
13
6
18
I
4
I
2
I
Mist
1725
13
51
n o
6
6
6
24
7
s
1726
13
I I I
187
24
18
30
43
27
66 50 51 33 210 442
Parker's halfpenny readers were by no means literary in their tastes (the two
book advertisements were for a cookbook) and were not housebuyers (the few
real estate advertisements chiefly were for urban property to let) but evidently
they 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 and
other rookeries of crime. This category of advertisement had bulked large in
early newspapers but had since decreased absolutely and relatively. In the first
quarter in 1680 for instance thirty-nine of the ninety-nine advertisements in the
Gazette had been of this kind; in 1695 fifty-eight out of 202; in 1700 forty-three
out 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 goods
unless the beneficiary strove to apprehend the thief and to give evidence against
him, but not until 1752 did it become an offence to offer a reward 'with no
questions asked'. Jonathan Wild, 'Thief-Catcher General of Great Britain and
Ireland' for long evaded the law by receiving 'gifts' rather than rewards until
finally on 15 May 1725 he was sentenced under the Act and hanged at Tyburn
nine days later.'
The figures for Reid's and Mist's papers show ttiat the imposition of a
newspaper tax did not arrest the growing spate of advertisements for quack
medicines. 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 of
ministers' gowns, books, and tulip bulbs, indicate that at least some ofthe readers
were better-off.
In contrast to the halfpenny papers and unstamped weekhes the evening
papers were intended for a socially superior class. The Evening Post, first published
in 1706 and resumed in 1709, was sold at some ofthe most select coffee houses
including 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 a
local readership, but there is evidence that the papers, regularly published and
dispatched to the provinces on the three postdays, were bought by country
gentry; even the bucolic Squire Western read the London Evening News.^ The
St James's Evening Post of 5 July 1718 contains a long advertisement inserted by
the Northamptonshire quarter Sessions to apprise other magistrates of its views
concerning illegal passes and the law of settlement. Many advertisements related
to country estates for sale, race meetings, and expensive books. 2 Country
gentlemen and clergy having read these book advertisements (which afforded
only the barest bibliographical data) used to send off their orders to their London
book factors. 3
In 1725 the amending Act had taxed 'every Journal, Mercury, or other
publick News-paper', but it is not clear whether a purely advertising sheet would
have to pay stam.p tax as being a 'Metcxary'. In appearing at first unstamped in
February 1731 the Daily Advertiser assumed that it did not. However, as it included
some news in the shape of stockprices, course of exchange, and bankruptcy lists,
its case was weakened considerably, and from 27 February it was published
stamped at a cost of i^d. with a short selection of general news. The preface of
the first Daily Advertiser on 3 February said it would present a comprehensive
coverage of advertisements so that the reader would not require (as at present) to
consult several papers to read them and that it would be posted up in various
public places. Of ninety-six advertisements published in the first half-dozen
issues, twenty-one related to books, seventeen to goods, fourteen to real estate,
and thirteen to remedies; later by including theatre advertisements the Daily
Advertiser would be more truly comprehensive. Its success influenced other
papers 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 sole
daily 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 successful
rival the Daily Post (1719-46) had reached 75 per cent. In later years the Daily
Advertiser regiilarly achieved this proportion and had to turn away some intending
advertisers.*
In early November 1734 the Covent Garden theatre was advertising in the
Daily 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 which
agreed to advertise in it, Henry Woodfall established the London Daily Post and
General Advertiser (from March 1744 simply the General Advertiser). Not only were
the 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 a
success 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 British
Museum) it is possible to calculate that the average advertising receipts for a
four-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. out
of a total proceeds amounting to iios. od.; deducting 44s. od. for advertisement
tax this left 66s. od. for the publisher. Unfortunately no comparison is possible
with the proceeds of newspaper sales which are not knoAvn.
In the mid-seventeenth century a weekly paper was likely to contain, at
most, half a dozen advertisements; 100 years later a daily paper might be expected
to hold about fifty. Greater in quantity, newspaper advertising was now more
specialized as the following table for early 1749 shows :3
London Evening Post General Advertiser Penny London Post
Issues 24 24 24
Books
Medical
Lost or stolen
Runaways
Theatre
Real Estate
Goods for sale
Auction
Miscellaneous
698
0
9
26
3
99
I OI
2
227
525
1 1 2
1 0
5
127
2 0
118
318
116
68
127
0
I
0
I
54
0
5
II65 I35I 248
The table indicates that high social class of readership correlated positively
with book and real estate advertisements and inversely with quack medicines, as
the London Evening Post evidently refused this class of advertisement. The Penny
London Post's advertisements of goods consisted largely of a few repeated items,
stays and cheap brandy; its 'books' were a few cheap pamphlets repeatedly
advertised. Most remarkable of all, no less than eight-nine out of its 127 medical
advertisements offered cures for venereal disease. Perhaps connected with the new
mercury treatment,'* this type of advertisement was certainly on the increase.^
In conclusion it is hardly necessary to point out that the General Advertiser, the
only 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 small
significance 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 of
living slowly rose^ advertising as a means of communication if not of persuasion
would seem to have been offered increased opportunities. In 1690 a visitor, the
Rev. 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 and
remarkable passages in it, unless by public printed papers, which came not to
everyman's notice'.^ Yet in regard to travel the newspapers were not helpful.
Advertisements for inns were only occasional, and then inserted rather to report a
change in landlord than to describe accommodation or cuisine. Similarly stage-
coaches were occasionally advertised when some change was made in the service
or its ownership, but not regularly publicized. That the traveller was in need of
helpful information concerning the coaches and carriers that departed from so
many different inns on different days of the week is shown by the timetables
published in the Press in 1657 and 1694,* and from the offer of the Office of
Intelligence in 1675 to act as a free travel agency. ^ Travellers usually had to get
this information from the handbills and posters stuck around inns, but the wealthier
sort could find it in useful directories.*
As we have seen, in the seventeenth century some estate and employment
agencies produced their own papers; in the eighteenth century they were more
likely to advertise their services in the columns of a newspaper.' In the provincial
Press property advertisements outnumbered all others;* in the metropolitan
they were less predominant and noticeably concentrated in the evening papers,
but also to be found in the dailies. Neither did the country gentleman depend on
the 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 a
Collection of all Advertisements relating to the same, that in each respective
Fortnight shall appear, either separately printed, or in the News-Papers both of
London and the Country'.^ If his property was lost or stolen, moreover, he might
resort to the city crier 1 or even publish his own handbill ^ rather than advertise
a 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 of
industrial and commercial products (milled lead, sanfoin and trefoil seed, a fire
engine, a patent dredge etc.) but this might mislead if the low incidence or even
rarity of some of these advertised goods was not noted. Common foods such as
beer, cheese, bread, meat, and fish were not advertised. 1 The large brewers of
porter did not promote sales by advertising but by capturing the sites and the
publicans. 2 Visitors to London might be astonished by the magnificent window
displays 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 at
the shopfront to tout for custom and prevent theft.'' Many goods and foods
were hawked from door to door, whilst the London housewife scarcely needed
to be told to go to Smithfield market for meat and to Billingsgate for fish.^
Even luxuries - tea, coffee, chocolate, snuflf- were advertised somewhat irregularly
after they had ceased to be novelties. Brandy and French wines, truly luxury
articles, fared rather better; gin, the tipple of the common folk, was not advertised
in the newspapers, which by no means prevented the direful effects of its excessive
consumption in the 'gin years', 1733 to 1751.
There were older ways of advertising goods, particularly the cries of the
street 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 the
interior of the shop and its wares rather than merely copy ithe shopsign.* Another
device, one that turned to accoxint the endemic shortage of small coins, was the
issue of shop tokens with an advertising inscription.''
Warren's Blacking in the 1820's is said to have been the first household
product nationally advertised on a large scale.* The earlier prevalence of domestic
and small-scale production had inhibited such advertising. It is significant that
before 1750 advertising was concentrated on a few 'branded' goods and services,
in which category we may place books, medicines, and theatre plays. Holman's
Ink Powder, patented in 1688, was a rare example of a patented and branded
article 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 copyright
safeguarded up to 1695 if entered into the register at tb.e Stationers' Company
and from 1709 by Act, were advertised extensively in the whole period under
review. 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 {OxoTd,
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 expansion
in 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 Narcissus
Luttrell than to the general reader. Newspapers also advertised the book auctions,
of which there were more than one hundred between 1676 and 1700, and told
the interested person where he might get his catalogue. ^ Newspapers had the
advantage 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 sons
with 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 the
playbills were transferred there although other newspapers continued to advertise
playscripts.'* Since plays had short runs and the final decision whether to present
a new programme on the morrow usually was not made until the evening
performance, there was just enough time for an advertisement to be inserted in
next morning's daily. Before 1700, and indeed after it also, plays Were advertised
by means of posters and handbills; the prohibition in June 1700 by the London
and Westminster civic authorities of the posting of playbills may have given an
impulse to newspaper advertising. ^ By this time the audience had become less
select and less courtly than it was earlier under Charles II,* and newspaper
advertising, less costly than the large posters, proved its worth.'' To the news-
paper proprietor theatre playbills were valuable as attractive news items and in
1729 the printer of the declining Daily Courant inserted them gratis rather than go
without. When the theatres adjourned for the summer season the journalistic
hiatus was noticeable; as Margin said in Samuel Foote's play TTie Bankrupt (Act
III), 'Plays and Parliament Houses are winter provisions'.
The early eighteenth century was tlie great age of quackery, some of its
leading practitioners such as Sir William Read and Dr Ward (who however had
enough skill speedily to reduce George U's dislocated thumb) being patronized
by royalty.'' Since only the rich could afford the somewhat lethal attentions of
the physicians of tlie Royal College less fortunate persons resorted to the less
expensive ministrations of the apothecaries and surgeons and travelling mounte-
banks and quacks. Such persons indeed might benefit some psychosomatic
ailments; 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 certain
medicines gained a popular reputation; Daffy's Elixir was still being marketed in
the twentieth century. Many examples of the vdde distribution of certain brands
might be given. Tubal-cain Porter's Elixir Salutis sold at thirty-one shops in
London and many in the provinces ;2 the Elixir Magnum Stomachicum at
seventeen coffee-houses and two booksellers in London and one bookseller in
most 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 common
on 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 in
developing the techniques of advertising. Putting into practice Dr Johnson's
dictum that 'Promise, large Promise, is the soul of an Advertisement',* they
repeatedly thrust their extravagant therapeutic claims before the public in an
unceasing barrage of advertisements. In March 1717 for instance the Anodyne
Necklace, which by its mere presence was supposed overnight to rescue teetbing
and sickly infants from the brink of death, was being advertised at the same time
in at least half a dozen newspapers. Quack medicines were among the first to use
woodcuts to attract the readers' attention. Then there was the appeal to the
superficial appearance of the product. Just as the later house^wife would be advised
to judge the purity of Pear's Soap by its transparency, so the makers of Parker's
Spirit of Scurvy-Grass ixrged: 'Tis to be known by its bright, lovely green, all other
Spirits looking white and languid'."^ Next came the publication of testimonials
from cured patients and allusion inter alia to the crowned heads who had sent for
the Anodyne Necklace with the most gratifying results. Very large promise was
also reinforced by appeal to very large fear. The Anodyne Necklace, offering the
appropriate remedy, scared its readers with an account of the plague in the south
of France and an illustration of the burial of its victims.^ Other advertisements
described in sickening detail the length and number of worms expelled by sick
children 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 address
of 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 Anodyne
Necklace'; it is easy to find the early advertisements for this product in the
newspapers as at the time woodcuts were not numerous. Countless readers were
invited to visit the gentlewoman at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace without
Temple Bar, up one flight of stairs, where they might receive free copies of such
pamphlets as Gibraltar, Reasons why We ought not, on any Account, to part from
if^ and An Account, with a curious Draught finely engrav'd, of the Place where the
Nightingale, Swallow, Cuckow, Woodcock, Fieldfare, and Other Birds of Passage which
appear so all on a sudden among us.^ It will be observed that the subjects of these
works were not medical, but the pages were interspersed with advertisements for
the Anodyne Necklace shop. More relevant was A Gap, Ten to One but it Fits, a
treatise on venereal disease, self-defilement, and 'Venery with Machines . . . to be
read alone privately'. ^ Once up the stairs and in the gentlewoman's embrace it
was no doubt difficult for the enquirer to descend until he had purchased a
venereal remedy or a bag ofthe Famous Purging Sugar Plums; but boys and girls
with an interest in this literature were warned off.**
Apart from aiming to establish in the reader's mind by means of illustration
the image of the seal or brandmark of his product^ the quack advertiser
sought to warn the public most explicitly concerning counterfeits and the shops
where they were sold. It must be confessed that seals were also faked: 'Some
Certain Shops (have) got a whole Drawer full of Counterfeit Seals made, of
most of the Medicines Sold in London, to Seal their own Counterfeit Medicines
with'.'' 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 not
counterfeits. In 1717 Pratt and Barnett's advertisement for Specifick Tincture
said:*
Hereby is detected the famous Anodine Necklace sold at the Sugar-Loaf in
the Strand: Beads made of Dead People's Sculls. A rare Artifice! a choice
Preface, or Introduction to a Belief of Romish Tales! No wonder the Relicts
of their Saints are held in such Estimation, when the Sculls of indifferent
Persons can efiectually remove all manner of Ailments in Old and Young,
and be instrumental in the Cure of Clap and Pox. Charming Doctrine of Dr
Chamberlen! and hard Fate, that his glad Tidings (which have prov'd
Harbingers 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 its
makers 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 if
useless why was it counterfeited? ^
'The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection, that it is not easy to
propose any improvement', declared by Dr Johnson in 1759 and opined that it was
now necessary to gain attention by making most magnificent promises. ^ By
this date a public habituated to advertising had been produced and with it a
certain degree of scepticism and buyers' resistance. The more sophisticated appreciated
the hoax advertisements written with a political motive ^ or to expose social
follies'*. The Tatler, carrying on Jonathan Swift's crtiel joke, published an
advertisement to certify that the astrologer John Partridge had died on 28 March
1708^ 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 guard
against quacks but they were still gullible in other respects. In the share craze of
the Soudi Sea Bubble in 1720 the newspapers, perhaps for the first and certainly
not the last time, profited from the advertising generated by the flotation of new
companies. The Daily Post of 27 May 1720 for instance had three columns of such
advertisements, including one hopeful project to raise tbxee million pounds to
drain the Irish bogs. In 1749 in consequence of a wager there was advertised a
performance at the New Theatre, Haymarket, in which a man would climb into
a quart bottle in full view of the audience. After waiting impatiently for the
entertainment to begin the spectators were by no means pacified by a voice from
behind the curtain which regretted that the act had had to be postponed for one
night but assured them that in recompense he would climb into a pint and not a
quart bottle and accomplish other marvels. The enraged dupes then broke to
pieces all the boxes, benches, and scenes, leaving only the shell of the house
remaining. On this the General Advertiser, which had published the false notice,
unctuously commented: 'Surely this will deter any one from venturing to impose
on 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 make
it 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 play
The Bankrupt hinge upon a false news item published for payment. Even the
obituary of a doctor might contain a puff for the medicines that his widow would
continue to sell.^ The office copy of the General Advertiser in 1744 shows how
puffs were paid for at the usual advertising rates and, a signal advantage, the
advertisement 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 or
commercial 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 restricted
to 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 or
services. In 1711 the Useful Intelligencer had claimed that as it was distributed
gratis it would be more likely to be read 'by all Sort of Persons, Women as well
as Men, it being given into Shops, private Houses and Families as well as to all
Publick Houses'.* Of coiurse women read the Tatler, Spectator, and other
papers, but journals directed mainly to the female reader were a rarity.^ In
1709 the ungentle Female Tatler 'by Mrs Crackenthorpe, a Lady that knows
everything' was feminine neither in its contents nor in its advertising. The
Ladies' Magazine of 1749-53 was said to be designed for the parlour as well as
for the shop and counting-house, but its few advertisements, exposing the merits
of books, soap, and candidates for election, were not distinctively feminine.
Finally, l i e effect of advertising on the practice of journalism may be noticed.
Without advertisements the London papers would perhaps have needed only half
the newsprint that they did use, and this would have hindered the growth ofthe
British paper industry. Without the profits derived from the advertisements
newspapers like the Daily Advertiser probably could not have afforded the better
typography and layout that competed so successfrilly against the smaller, meaner
pages of the old-fashioned London Gazette and the Daily Gourant. Evidently the
contribution of advertisements to gross proceeds varied greatly between one
paper and another; it was low for the London Journal in 1722* and of minor
importance for most provincial papers.^ In the first foiir months of 1706 the
London Gazette received j{^534 from sales and j(^2i8 from advertisements; a year
later from January to August inclusive ^(^1,135 from sales and fy90 from ad-
vertisements.* In 1728 the advertising revenue ofthe Daily Post was estimated
as at least -^1,200 per annmn.^ In December 1775 gross proceeds of the sales
o the Public Advertiser amounted to ^560 and advertisements to ^{^388.1" The
future malice of governments might raise some stern challenges to the Press (in
1789 the advertisement tax was raised to three shillings) but the symbiosis of news
and advertisements that had grown up in the hundred years to 1750 was to remain
an 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).