The Morning Chronicle was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London, England, and published under various owners until 1862, when its publication was suspended, with two subsequent attempts at continued publication. From 28 June 1769 to March 1789 it was published under the name The Morning Chronicle, and London Advertiser. From 1789 to its final publication in 1865, it was published under the name The Morning Chronicle. It was notable for having been the first steady employer of essayist William Hazlitt as a political reporter, and the first steady employer of Charles Dickens as a journalist; for publishing the articles by Henry Mayhew that were collected and published in book format in 1851 as London Labour and the London Poor; and for publishing other major writers, such as John Stuart Mill.
Contents
Founding
The Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser was founded in 1769 by William Woodfall as publisher, editor, and reporter. From 1769 to 1789 the editor was William Woodfall. (In 1789 he sold his interest in the Morning Chronicle and in the same year founded The Diary, or Woodfall's Register, which was the first to fully report on proceedings in Parliament as a regular feature. Since note-taking was prohibited, he worked from memory, at least to the extent of writing notes outside the chamber.) Woodfall's journalism slanted toward the Whig party in the House of Commons.
Newspapers of the time were subject to persecution by the government, and in typical fashion Woodfall was convicted of libel and spent a year in Newgate prison in 1779; a similar fate also befell some of his successors.
Later owners
The Chronicle was bought by James Perry in 1789, bringing the journal firmly down on the Whig side against the Tory-owned London Gazette. Circulation increased, and by 1810, the typical sale was 7,000 copies. The content often came from journalists labelled as radicals, a dangerous connotation in the aftermath of the French Revolution. William Hazlitt joined to report on Parliament in 1813, by which time several charges of libel and seditious libel had been levelled against the newspaper and its contributors at one time or another, Perry being sentenced to three months in gaol in 1798.
Perry was succeeded by John Black, probably in 1817 when Perry developed a severe illness. It was Black who later employed Dickens, Mayhew, and John Stuart Mill. Perry died in 1821. Woodfall had died in 1803.
Charles Dickens began reporting for the Chronicle in 1834. It was in this medium that he also began publishing short stories under the pseudonym "Boz".
The articles by Henry Mayhew were published in 1849, accompanied by similar articles about other regions of the country, written by other journalists.
The Morning Chronicle was suspended with the 21 December 1862 issue and resumed with the 9 January 1864 issue. Then it was suspended again with the 10 January 1864 issue and again resumed with the 2 March 1865 issue.