Our January meeting was 'The history of Sheffield newspapers', a talk by Suzanne Bingham, a local historian from Sheffield and a previous visiting speaker for the group.
A good turnout braved the cold snap that seemed to have descended on us to enjoy a fascinating insight into the development of local newspapers, taking sheffield as a good example. Suzanne divided the development of local papers into three periods - the earliest papers from the late 17th century up to around 1840, the Victorian period up to around the great war, and the modern period.
It was remarkable to learn how the earliest newspapers from around the mid-late 1600's crammed as much information as possible into three or four pages of dense type in order to avoid the expense of what was then relatively highly-taxed paper. These early papers were produced only weekly, as information took a long time to circulate, and it wasn't until around the late 18th century, with a reduction in tax that newspapers began to expand both in number of pages and in size.
It was equally interesting to learn how these early newspapers served a very different audience to that of today, a paper in a city such as Sheffield serving an area that covered Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, because the potential readership was only that small proportion of the population who could read and could afford to buy the paper. This also meant that the paper covered the topics of interest of that well-to-do section of the population that made up the 'gentry', the propertied and professional classes, so while 'standards' such as marriage announcements and obituaries appeared early on, they might cover 'society' people from as far away as London and rarely mention local people or events, although crime news always seems to have been a popular feature.
It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that this really changed, when the effects of the 1870 Education Act meant that by the 1890's most of the population could read. By this time local papers were truly 'local', covering events of interest to their target area andreflecting the appeal of major sporting events and the performance of local teams.
All of this was well-illustrated with examples gleaned from the archives, from which it could be seen how the way in which the public were informed changed over time, for example about things like the progress of the two major wars of the 20th century.
Today of course we have 'instant' information by radio, television and increasingly the internet, and there are real concerns that local papers are disappearing. It will be sad if this turns out to be the case, because these archives offer a tantalising glimpse into our past that could so easily be lost in an age of 'electronic records'.
