IT’S OUR BIRTHDAY

135 TODAY

AT THE HEART OF ALL THINGS LOCAL SINCE 1885

IN Anlaby Road a circus is opening, promising the “most talented artists in the world”, while down at Alexandra Dock, crowds flock to see a French warship as the captain joins the Major for lunch.

At a warehouse nearby a teenager is killed when a bag of cement lands on his neck and in court a conductor is fined for allowing his tram to become overcrowded with football fans.

It is 1885 and the people of Hull have just been presented with what will become their daily briefing of life in their city. The first edition of the Hull Daily Mail is on the streets and it is crammed with news, views and reports.

Hull itself is a booming city. In 50 years, the population has grown from just over 30,000 to more than 160,000, driven by fishing and the huge demand for its ports.

Ships and trawlers are crammed like matchwood into the great docks that reach into the heart of the city and smoke from steamers rises to join the coal fires across the tightly packed terraced streets.

The city itself is compact. Its main arteries are recognisable, Holderness Road to the east, Anlaby Road and Spring Bank to the west. But the streets and warehouses thin out beyond the Boulevard, the Avenues, Witham and in Beverley Road to the north.

The city centre is a dense network of streets, public buildings and industry. The city is a fierce furnace of activity.

And against this Victorian landscape, the Hull Daily Mail arrives on Tuesday, September 29, 1885.

It was, it announced with confidence, a wholly owned and operated publisher of Hull. It was not, as was often the case in the day, a collection of reports and columns from other newspapers.

“We might have offered it bigger, but it would have been a bastard paper,” wrote the leading column in that first edition.

“Our primary duty of a real newspaper is to record and describe local proceedings and events. We shall, therefore, give special attention and prominence to all matters of local interest.”

Critical to this, it proclaimed, would be the “promptness, completeness and accuracy of our reports”.

It was also honest about its intentions. The Mail was there to make money, and if it was successful in doing this by charging a halfpenny (around 60p in today’s money) it would prosper and the people of Hull would benefit.

“Thus,” said the leader, “We begin out career with confidence and we shall prosecute it with vigour.”

That first edition diligently covered events in the city, around England and across the world, providing the people with Hull with their first true daily news service.

The reports range from reports of court and accidents to council meetings, sports reports and lists ranging from the latest prices of trading goods and shares to the horse racing results.

Its small band of reporters are already alread showing a sharp journalistic instinct. At a council meeting it is quick to pick up an exchange between councillors on how expenses are paid and highlights the two guineas and first-class rail tickets each member receives.

Another story reports a “sad accident”, the death of a labourer Thomas Dunn who was struck on the neck with a bag of cement “and so seriously injured him, death ensured shortly after”.

Meanwhile, a 17-year-old stone mason, Samuel Mcivor, of Drypool, has fallen off a la ladder and is “lucky to escape with a broken le leg”. “He is going on as well as can be expected in the Infirmary,” the story concludes.

Another teenager, George Tether, is also at the hospital after being crushed by a shifting boat in the docks.

There are also court reports, John Miller, a conductor on the Hull Tramways, is summoned for allowing overcrowding on his tramcar after a football match and is fined 5s.

Three men, Joseph Dunhill, John Parket and Brax Lindh are charged with stealing bottled ale and porter from a merchant in Wellington Street, while labourer Foster Earl is jailed for striking a man with a rock after

being confronted for banging on windows in Waller Street.

The Mail also reports the arrival of the French warship, the Mouette, at Alexandra Dock, which has “excited much attention”, noting that the Captain has been invited for lunch by the Mayor.

Meanwhile, the police are praised for cracking down on houses in Chapel Street and Little Queen Street, which have been “a social and moral pest for years”. The residents are moved to other areas of the city where “they are supposed to be leading more reputable lives”.

“It is very gratifying, too,” the report continues, “that the police are receiving fewer complaints as to the brothels than they have ever received before.”

There is also news from around the world, a special report comes from the “revolt in Roumelia” where Turkish troops are defeated by insurgents. In Madrid, cholera has claimed 238 lives, while in Bengal, 3,500 square miles of land has been flooded.

Around the UK, a drunk policeman

Francis Lory, 30, had attacked an inspector with a “violent blow to the jaw” and is jailed for a month, with hard labour.

And in Bradford an inquest had been opened into the deaths of Jacob Wilkinson and Samuel Banks, killed by a runaway tramcar.

There is also sport. The Hull Football Club (who would go on to become Hull FC) have travelled to Halifax, but, despite a “splendidly contested and exceedingly pleasant game”,

A Mail newspaper delivery boy in the 1960s A newsagent selling the Mail in the 1960s

The Mail’s first offices in Whitefriargate in the early 1900s

An old Hull Mail & Times delivery vehicle in the 1920s

GETTY IMAGES Hull docks from 1896

Laying out text in blocks in the 1970s lose by the odd try in front of a crowd of 4,000 fans. But to find these titbits of news and the narrative of daily life in Hull, readers had first to flip past a front page dominated by adverts. The Mail was being true to its word, it was here to make money and in 1885 there was only one place local businesses wanted to be, the front page. There we found the opening in Anlaby Road of Hengler’s Grand Cirque featuring the “most talented artistes in the world”, including “a host of merry clowns” and “bicycle phenomenons”. Across at the Alhambra Theatre in Porter Street, England’s famed magician, Doctor Cavendish, is performing with his “startling sensation performance – Mystification!”. Spread across the front page are also adverts for all manner of goods and services. There are the finest “fur capes” from Harland’s in Chariot Street; The “purest sweetest butter” from a dairy in Prospect Street. Down the same road, Bladon and Company offer dresses, jackets from the “London and Berlin markets” while the Talbot Hotel in Scale Lane is advertising “first class wines, spirits, ale and cigars”. Packed into four pages, the first edition of the Hull Daily Mail looks a bargain at its halfpenny price. As its publisher and editor forecast, it would go on to be one of the success stories of local and regional newspapers in England. Much may have changed in Hull in 135 years but the core values of the journalists who established the Mail remain in place. The Mail continues to be a paper for its community, chronicling the daily life of a proud city and its people. And whether in print or online, that, we hope, will remain true for generations to come. The Hull Daily Mail in press hall in the 1990s Hull Daily Mails being loaded onto delivery vans in West Street at the back of the HDM office in Jameson Street in the 1960s

Hull Daily Mail newspaper boys rush out with copies which carries a front page story on the Queen giving birth in February 19, 1960

A delivery of Sportsmails is ready in South Street to be motorcycled across to Goole in the 1960s