The Hereford Times has celebrated its 171st birthday. Here it looks back at the man who founded the paper, Charles Anthony…
The letter to the editor, published in the Hereford Times, was anonymous and an angry reader arrived at reception demanding to know who had written it.
In time-honoured journalistic fashion, the editor refused to name the source.
The angry reader demanded to see the editor who came out to the front counter – then leaped across it, grabbed the reader and threw him out.
Times and management styles have changed since that incident, which dates from the editorship of the man who founded the Hereford Times in 1832.
Charles Anthony was born 201 years ago, on September 22, 1802 – a remarkable man, whose vision, enterprise and moral courage, led to his naming as the father of modern Hereford.
As well as founding this newspaper, he was mayor of the city six times between 1836 and 1885.
During those years he led the renaming of the city’s key streets, oversaw the installation of the first iron bridge over the Wye at Hunderton, a new drainage system, the building of Barrs Court railway station and the arrival of rail itself.
He was the man who:
The Hereford Times offices opened in 1838 in Maylord Street – and now demolished – contained a tablet that read: “This printing office was erected by a few zealous reformers of the city and county of Hereford and presented by them to Charles Anthony, editor and proprietor of the Hereford Times newspaper, as a testimony of their confidence in his political integrity and as an acknowledgement of his able services in the cause of civil and religious liberty, 1838.”
As far as this paper is concerned, Charles Anthony was indeed a bold visionary.
When he launched his newspaper, the cover price was set at 7d – and this at a time when the average farmworker’s wage was £20 a year. Four pence of that was government tax and the remaining 3d paid for the production of the four-page newspaper of six columns, with each page a big broadsheet: 24ins by 16ins.
Despite the odds, the determined Charles Anthony campaigned for reform in the city, campaigned against the ‘tax on knowledge’ that held back his newspaper and ensured the firm foundations for the success story that is the Hereford Times today.
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