Cornelius Brown

[3] Within months of taking the editor's chair at the Newark Advertiser, Brown was ready to buy a half share in the newspaper, for which he paid Whiles £600.

Then Mr Brown laid his author's pen aside for three or four years to concentrate on the second important step in the Advertiser story.

Six weeks later half a dozen men met at the Middlegate offices of solicitors Newton and Wallis (now Tallents Godfrey).

That salary remained unchanged for 21 years, at the end of which time Brown himself proposed that it should be cut to £156, because he was handing over the responsibility of night work to a younger man.

The board spent 50 shillings on a treat for the workforce to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee.

The Advertiser began to move into a technological age, buying a 2 hp gas engine to supplement the steam power, and in 1895 installing the telephone.

Brown had attended the October board meeting in 1907 but was taken ill ten days later after correcting the final proofs of his History of Newark.