William Dicey (1690-1756) was an English newspaper proprietor, publisher of street literature, printseller and patent medicine seller, in Northampton and later in London.
[3] However, before April 1720 he had formed a partnership with Robert Raikes, his rival printer in St Ives, and both men had moved their new business to Northampton.
Dicey purchased larger premises at 11 The Parade, Market Hill in 1728, where the newspaper continued to be printed until the end of the century.
Dicey copied the contents: 'texts, headnotes, illustrations and all’,[7] in a series of broadside ballads, sold by hawkers and pedlars throughout the countryside.
Raikes and Dicey started advertising a new patent medicine, Dr Bateman's Pectoral Drops, devised by Benjamin Okell, in 1720.
In March 1738 William and Cluer were sued in the Court of Chancery by the London Stationers Company for breaching their monopoly of 'Psalters, Primmers, Almanacs, Prognostications and Predictions.
[14] His eldest son inherited his London business, subject to his paying £1500 in annuities to his sisters Ann, Mary and Charlotte, and £500 to his brother Robert.