Manchester Courier

The Manchester Courier was a daily newspaper founded in Manchester, England, by Thomas Sowler; the first edition was published on 1 January 1825.[1] Alaric Alexander Watts was the paper's first editor, but remained in that position for only a year.[2]

The newspaper had a wide circulation in Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Shropshire, Cumberland, Staffordshire, and North Wales. An advocate of commerce and agriculture and a supporter of the Church of England,[3] the paper's initial agenda was to act as a counterpoint to the reforms being advocated by the Manchester Guardian, and in particular to proposals for the emancipation of Catholics. It provided Hugh Stowell, rector of St Stephen's Church in Salford, with a platform to "wage war" on any group dissenting from the orthodox views of the Anglican Church, notably Catholics and Jews, but also including Unitarians, whom Stowell doubted even had the right to call themselves Christians.[1]

The daily Manchester Evening Mail, established by Thomas Sowler junior in 1874 and closed in 1902, was a companion publication and one of several newspapers which began around that time with the intention of providing a less highbrow alternative to their longer-established stablemates.[4] The introduction of the Mail coincided with the Courier becoming a weekly newspaper.[5]

References

Citations

1. Williams (1985), p. 47
2. "Watts, Alaric Alexander (1797–1864)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.), Oxford University Press, 2009, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28884, retrieved 27 February 2018 (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. "Papers Published in England", The Times, p. 5, 24 February 1868, retrieved 28 March 2013 (subscription required)
4. Nicholson (1980)
5. Spiers (1976), pp. 7-8

Bibliography

• Nicholson, John (1980), "Popular Imperialism and the Provincial Press: Manchester Evening and Weekly Papers, 1895-1902", Victorian Periodicals Review, 13 (3): 85–96, JSTOR 20081933
• Spiers, Maurice (1976), Victoria Park, Manchester: A Nineteenth-century Suburb in Its Social and Administrative Context, Manchester University Press, ISBN 978-0-71901-333-1
• Williams, Bill (1985), The Making of Manchester Jewry, 1740–1875, Manchester University Press, ISBN 978-0-7190-1824-4

Further reading

• Buckley, Colin (1994). "The Baron and the Brewer: Political Subsidy and the Last Years of the Manchester Courier" (PDF). Manchester Region History Review. 8: 44–49. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 December 2006.