Baldwin's London Weekly Journal

Baldwin’s London Weekly Journal was a weekly newspaper published between 1762 and 1836. It was founded by Henry Baldwin, and for the majority of its run it was owned, published, and printed by his son Charles Baldwin.

The Baldwins owned and produced a wide range of newspaper and Journals from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, including the St James’ Chronicle (1761-1866), the Standard (1827-) and the Morning Herald (1780-1869). Charles, building on his father Henry’s success, and aided by his embracement of ‘establishment’ politics, developed the family’s newspaper holdings into a lucrative business, reputedly earning £15,000 a year by the 1830s. Baldwin’s London Weekly Journal formed just one small part of this wider newspaper empire.

Baldwin’s London Weekly Journal contained a mix of general, local and foreign news, poetry, fashion and theatre reviews, accounts from the criminal courts, and market updates. Its price steadily increased from 3d. in 1774 to 7d. by 1812, and continued at this level for the majority of its life, until was dropped to 5d. in September 1836, when the stamp duty was reduced.

At the end of 1836, Charles Baldwin ‘finding, from the increased and increasing magnitude of his other concerns, that it is inconvenient to him to continue its publication’, sold his interests in Baldwin’s London Weekly Journal to the proprietor of ‘that highly respectable paper’, Bell’s Weekly Messenger. Subscribers were forwarded a copy of the latter paper at the beginning of January 1837, and Baldwin encouraged them to continue their subscription with that alternative newspaper. Concluding, Baldwin wrote that:

‘After the lapse of 75 years, during which The London Weekly Journal has been conducted by the present proprietor and his family, it is with no little reluctance that he thus takes leave of its readers. He has been most anxious to select and recommend as the successor to their favour a publication of sound principles and literary merit.’ (‘To the Readers of The London Weekly Journal’, Baldwin’s London Weekly Journal, no. 3968, 31 December 1836, p. 4)

Dr Beth Gaskell – The British Library