The Daily Chronicle was developed by Edward Lloyd out of a local newspaper that had started life as the Clerkenwell News and Domestic Intelligencer, set up as a halfpenny 4-page weekly in 1855.
[1] Launched after the duties on advertising and published news had been abolished in 1853 and July 1855, this local paper specialised in small personal ads.
Demand was strong enough to charge a good price per line but, even so, advertising had to be limited to no more than half the paper.
The lobby at 81 Fleet Street served as an informal labour exchange where advertisers and targets would search each other out in person.
Only a small circle knew about his plan and the public was taken by surprise when it appeared in national daily guise on 28 May 1877.
This echoed the paper’s political stance, but it also met readers’ need to know about what was a new legal regime at the time – freedom to join a trade union and picket workplaces.
The breadth of its news coverage was welcomed by many because it deliberately ranged far and wide – far beyond the Westminster affairs that dominated Fleet Street at the time.
Generally recognised as one of the leading journalists of the day, with influence in the corridors of power, he was able to build up a newspaper that he valued highly.
On foreign policy, he was a great believer in the power of diplomacy and expressed his opposition to the Boer War with some vehemence.
Donald had worked as news editor for the Chronicle but had taken time off journalism to experience an unrelated occupation – promoting a hotel.
Under his direction, the paper was broadly supportive of the radical wing of the Liberal Party under David Lloyd George.
After he became prime minister at the end of 1916, Lloyd George valued the Chronicle's impartial and objective coverage and found it the most acceptable of the non-Conservative papers.
Lord Beaverbrook, a Conservative press baron who had promised to support Lloyd George for five years, then became involved as a potential backer.
This failed but the dealings between him and Lloyd George were irretrievably tainted by underhand behaviour on the prime minister's side of the negotiations.
He had assured Parliament on 9 April that the number of British troops facing the German onslaught in March had not been reduced.
Frederick Maurice, the general in charge of statistics on the Western Front, was greatly concerned by the inaccuracy of this statement.
Lloyd George won the vote, partly by counterattacking Maurice's figures but largely because there was no obvious successor and the war was at too sensitive a point to risk a governmental crisis.
Lloyd George was now determined to buy the paper and set about raising the finance from friends of the party and by selling peerages.
On 11 July 1927, Lloyd George sold the company to three investors who were rich but lacking experience of publishing, let alone newspapers.
The first of these sales contained a curious clause that preserved Lloyd George's editorial control without responsibility for its liabilities.
He was granted a 10-year option to buy back the shares if the Chronicle or Lloyd’s Weekly failed to follow progressive Liberal policies or promoted reactionary or communist views.
An audit then showed that the Chronicle owed £3m in debt and commitments, had no cash and was suffering a marked loss of sales.
The News Chronicle prospered until 1956 when its opposition to the UK's involvement in the Suez crisis caused it to lose readers.
Again facing closure, the only offer of help came from Associated Newspapers whose Daily Mail had been the Chronicle's adversary since its launch in 1896.