It was "one of the first and most popular unstamped newspapers to mix political news with coverage of non-political events like sensational crimes, strange occurrences, and excerpts from popular fiction".
[1] Cleave published the newspaper from his bookshop in Shoe Lane, London.
Priced at 1d., the newspaper was selling 40,000 copies a week by 1836.
Cleave was imprisoned for refusing to pay stamp duty on his publications; his fines were partly paid by the Association of Working Men to Procure a Cheap and Honest Press, which later became the Working Men's Association.
In 1836 the newspaper merged with Henry Hetherington's London Dispatch.