The Standard was established as an evening paper in the Tory interest (as the express organ of the opponents of the measure for removing Roman Catholic disabilities) in 1827, its first editor being Stanley Lees Giffard, father of the first earl of Halsbury. In the '5os it was purchased by James Johnstone, who brought out the Standard as a morning paper (June 29, 1857), increased its size from four to eight pages, and reduced the price from fourpence to twopence. In Feb. 1858 Johnstone again reduced the price, this time to a penny. One of its contributors in the 'sixties was Lord Robert Cecil, later Lord Salisbury, the prime minister. In the early '6os it engaged William Heseltine Mud f ord. He was sent as special correspondent to Jamaica in 1865 to report upon the troubles which involved the recall of Governor Eyre ; a further period in the gallery of the House of Commons followed, and in 1876 Mudford became editor. Johnstone, the proprietor to whose energy and perspicacity the paper owed so much, died in 1878, and under his will Mudford was appointed editor and manager for life, or until resignation. Already a great property, the Standard in Mudford's hands entered upon a very successful period. Alfred Austin, T. H. S. Escott, Miss Frances Power Cobbe and Professor Palmer were all writing for the paper at the same time. It had many famous war correspondents, fore most among whom were G. A. Henty, the famous author of boys' books; John A. Cameron, who was killed at Abu Klea; and Wil liam Maxwell. In January 1900 Mudford retired, and was suc ceeded in the editorship by G. Byron Curtis (d. 1907). In No vember 1904 the Standard, which had at that time taken rather a strong line in deprecating the tariff reform movement within the Unionist party, was sold to (Sir) C. Arthur Pearson, who was chairman of the Tariff Reform League, and H. A. Gywnne be came editor. In 1910 it passed into the control of Davison Dalziel (the late Lord Dalziel) and disappeared during the war.
A disastrous experiment in newspaper production was the Tribune, founded by Franklin Thomasson in 1906 as a solid penny daily. After gathering a brilliant staff and expending very large sums he found it necessary to discontinue the paper in 1908. The unhappy enterprise is described in Sir Philip Gibb's novel "The Street of Adventure." The Echo was established by Cassells in 1868 and afterwards owned in turn by Albert Grant, the company promoter, Passmore Edwards, Andrew Carnegie, and the late Sam Storey. The Echo perished in 1905.
The Globe was founded in 1803, and after many years as a leading Whig organ it turned Conservative in r866 when it became the property of a syndicate which included Sir Stafford Northcote (Lord Iddesleigh). Two years later it assumed the deep pink hue which it kept until its demise after the World War. The first number of the Pall Mall Gazette (the name being borrowed from the incident in which Thackeray describes Captain Shandon in the Marshalsea prison drafting the prospectus of the Pall Mall Gazette as a paper "written by gentlemen for gentlemen") ap peared in February 1865. Its first editor was Frederick Green wood, who gathered round him a brilliant array of talent in Sir Henry Maine, Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen, Anthony Trollope, Charles Reade, George Henry Lewes, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and Richard Jefferies. In 1875 Greenwood was able to convey to
Disraeli news of the French bid to secure control of the Suez Canal, thereby enabling Britain to get in first. It had been a consistent supporter of Disraeli, and when on changing hands it became Liberal John Morley became editor, with W. T. Stead as assistant editor. In 1882 its price was reduced from 2d. to id.
When Morley exchanged journalism for politics in 1883, he was succeeded by W. T. Stead (q.v.), with Alfred Milner, afterwards Lord Milner, as his assistant. Stead's adventurous career as the editor came to an end in 1889, in consequence of his publishing a series of articles called "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon," purporting to further the Criminal Law Amendment Bill. He was succeeded by E. T. Cook. The Pall Mall Gazette was now steadily Liberal and a strong advocate of Irish Home Rule. It had two distinguished editors at a later date in Sir Douglas Straight and J. L. Garvin, and finally passed through several hands before its decease.
Founded in 1880 by H. Hucks Gibbs (afterwards Lord Alden ham), for Frederick Greenwood to edit when he had left the Pall Mall, the St. James's Gazette represented the more intellectual and literary side of Tory journalism in opposition to the new Liberalism of Mr. Greenwood's former organ. In 1888 the paper having then been sold, Greenwood retired and was succeeded as editor (1888-1897) by (Sir) Sidney Low, who in his turn was succeeded by Hugh Chisholm (1897-190o). Among the contribu tors were Rudyard Kipling, Sir James Barrie and G. S. Street.
Towards the end of the 19th century it assumed a more popular style and shape, and for a year or two before its acquisition by (Sir) C. Arthur Pearson in 1903 and its final merging in the Evening Standard it was edited by Ronald MacNeill (Lord Cushendun).
When the Pall Mall Gazette was sold to Lord Astor in 1892 and converted into a Conservative organ, E. T. Cook, the editor, and most of his staff resigned; in 1893 they came together again on the Westminster Gazette, newly started for the purpose by Sir G. Newnes (who had made a fortune out of Tit-bits and other pop ular papers) as a penny Liberal evening paper. It was printed on green paper. The paper was conducted on the lines of the old Pall Mall, and it had the advantage of a brilliant political car toonist in F. Carruthers Gould. In 1895 Cook was appointed editor of the Daily News, and his place was ably filled by J. Alfred Spender, who had been his assistant-editor, F. C. Gould (who was knighted in 1906) being his chief assistant. Apart from Sir F. C. Gould's cartoons, the Westminster became conspicuous in London evening journalism for its high standard of judicious political and literary criticism. It gradually became the chief organ of Liberal thought in London. In 1908 a change of proprietorship took place, the paper being sold by Sir G. Newnes (d. 1910) to a group of Liberal capitalists including the late Lord Cowdray and Lord Melchett (then Mr. A. Mond), but without affecting the personnel or policy of the paper. How the famous green Westminster finally vanished after the war to be replaced by the daily newspaper of the same name, which was merged in the Daily News in 1928, has already been stated.