BURNHAM, EDWARD LEVY LAWSON, 1ST BARON (1833-1916), English newspaper proprietor, was born in London Dec. 28, 1833, and died on Jan. 9, 1916. He was educated at University College school. His father, Joseph Moses Levy (d. 1888), acquired The Daily Telegraph and Courier in 1855, a few months after it had been founded by Col. Sleigh, and, aided by his son, soon changed the current of its fortunes, raising it to a leading position among the London dailies, of which it was the pioneer penny paper. Edward Levy (he took the added name of Lawson under his uncle Lionel Lawson's will in 187 5) acted as editor of The Daily Telegraph till his father's death and then be came its managing proprietor and sole controller till 1903, when he was made a baron and passed over these duties to his son. He had received a baronetcy in 1892.
For many years Edward Lawson was one of the outstanding figures in English journalism. No one in Great Britain did more than he to brighten and humanize the daily newspaper and trans form it from a plain, severe chronicle of the day's events (only mitigated by the occasional ferocity of its political judgments) into a readable and entertaining presentation of the world's news. The abolition of the last of the paper duties in 1861, in which Edward Lawson himself bore an active part, called into being a host of fresh newspaper readers among the middle classes, which welcomed the popular features of the new journalism. Edward Lawson's conception of a popular daily paper was that it should be a faithful mirror of the times and make a strong appeal to the sentiment and the emotion of its readers. Under his direction The Daily Telegraph raised many large funds for various national, patriotic and charitable objects, despatched missions of explora tion and discovery to Central Africa and elsewhere, and started many novel features, such as popular correspondences on live topics of the day, which have since become the established com monplace of journalism. For many years The Daily Telegraph warmly supported the Liberal party, but it strongly dissented from Mr. Gladstone's anti-Turkish policy and the final severance came on his Irish policy of Home Rule. Edward Lawson was not by nature a strong political partisan ; what interested him most was the social advancement of the people, and the development of the British Empire, to which causes he gave strong support, whatever the politics of the government of the day.
He was more than once president of the Institute of Journalists and the Newspaper Press Fund, and in 1909 presided over the first Imperial Press Conference in London. He married Henriette Georgiana (d. 1897), daughter of the actor-manager, Benjamin Webster.