J The Marlborough Journal

The Marlborough Journal

The Marlborough Journal was a weekly newspaper printed in the town for 190 issues between March 1771 and July 1774. It was one of only two local newspapers to be published in Wiltshire in the 18th century, the other being The Salisbury Journal which is still a going concern.

The foundation of the newspaper testifies to the importance of Marlborough as a stopping point along the Great Bath Road. Although Marlborough’s population did not exceed 3,000 souls in the 1770s, no fewer than 42 stagecoaches stopped in the town each day. The inns and hostelries saw a constant flow of guests and patrons, including those elite visitors who stayed at the Castle Inn, now C1. It was to serve both this transitory population and the town’s residents that The Marlborough Journal was conceived. It was established by John Smith and Edward Harold, the town’s printers and booksellers, to ‘indulge that principle of curiosity inherent in the mind of man’. Most of the copy was supplied from London and was surprisingly global in its coverage. It was possible for citizens of Marlborough to keep abreast of faraway events like the partition of Poland, the disbanding of the Jesuits by the Pope or the coronation of Gustavus III of Sweden. What is perhaps more surprising is how quickly news reached the editor’s desk: a report on the American pre-revolutionary Boston Tea Party of 16th December 1773 was already before the town’s readers by 29th January 1774.

There is still much to delight the modern reader of The Marlborough Journal. Book notices tell us of prevailing literary fashions, theatre reviews document the critical fortunes of leading actors of the time, while news from Plymouth, Southampton and Portsmouth detail the comings and goings of commercial and naval shipping. Serving a rural community, the newspaper reported on corn prices and animal auctions. Then, like now, there was demand for private schooling, one met in part by Mrs Hilliker who advertised the merits of her ‘Ladies Boarding School’. Perhaps some of her charges and their siblings took note of The Journal’s regular advertisements for medical elixirs that promised to address ailments such as ‘Scurvy, Leprosy, Pimpled Faces, and other malignant Eruptions’. And like newspapers of a certain stamp of more recent times, The Journal found space for amusing anecdotes, such as the account given here of the nuptials of Thomas Thirlewell, an octogenarian groom. The last issue of The Marlborough Journal was published in July 1774. Edward Harold confessed that the ‘Expence attending its Printing and Circulation [was] more than the Advantage received’. He switched to supplying local readers with The Bath Chronicle which he sold alongside his books, stationery and medicines ‘to such of his Customers as shall please to take it.’ The College’s collection of 189 issues of The Marlborough Journal is the most complete in existence and provides unique documentation of life in the town during the 1770s.