Sunday Referee
Founder(s)Richard Steele[1]
Founded1877[2]
Ceased publication1939 (absorbed by the Sunday Chronicle)[3]
A Reader of The Referee by Joseph Clayton Clark, c. 1900

The Sunday Referee was a Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom, founded in 1877 as The Referee, primarily covering sports news.[4]

History

George Robert Sims, who was a popular journalist for The Referee was approached by East End headmistress Elizabeth Burgwin. Together they created the Referee Children's Free Breakfast and Dinner Fund. Sims to wrote appeals in The Referee for funds.[5] The fund they created became the largest charity supplying free school meals in London by 1900.[5]

In 1925/26 the paper gave front-page coverage for many weeks to apparent revelations by the writer Frank Power (real name Arthur Vectis Freeman) about the sinking of HMS Hampshire and the disappearance of Herbert Horatio Kitchener ten years previously. These culminated with Power's sensational claim to have returned Kitchener's coffin to Britain, but on official examination it was found to be empty except for weighting material.[6]

Dylan Thomas contributed several early poems to the newspaper.[7] During the 1930s columnists included Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, the "maverick" Liberal politician William Mabane and the philosopher Bertrand Russell. A column reviewing popular records was contributed by Christopher Stone, one of the first "disc jockeys".

The edition of May 24, 1936, had 24 broadsheet pages and cost twopence. The publisher was the Sunday Referee Publishing Company of 17 Tudor Street, London EC4. No edition number was carried. The front page masthead carried the paper's title in Gothic script above the slogan "The national newspaper for all thinking men and women". Seven pages showed the paper's interest in sport but there was also a range of general news, features and show business gossip typical of the Sunday press. One page, for instance, speculated with illustrations on which "beauties" would be the faces of the forthcoming BBC television service.[8]

In the 1930s, considerable money was invested in an attempt to compete with the leading Sunday newspapers, and circulation reached 400,000, but in 1939 it was merged with the Sunday Chronicle.[9]

Editors

1877: Henry Sampson[10]
1891: Richard Butler[10]
1922: Robert Donald[10]
1924: A. Laber[10]
1932: Mark Goulden[10]
1936: R. J. Minney[10]

References

  1. ^ Sir Richard Steele (1897). Selections from the Works of Sir Richard Steele. Ginn. pp. 14–.
  2. ^ D. Butler (30 April 2016). Twentieth-Century British Political Facts, 1900-2000. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 533–. ISBN 978-1-349-62733-2.
  3. ^ Nicholas Kaldor; Rodney Silverman (1948). A Statistical Analysis of Advertising Expenditure and of the Revenue of the Press. CUP Archive. pp. 60–. GGKEY:R7P7G338959.
  4. ^ H. G. Wells (2017). The War of the Worlds. Oxford University Press. pp. 169–. ISBN 978-0-19-870264-1.
  5. ^ a b Horn, Pamela (2004-09-23). Burgwin [née Canham], Elizabeth Miriam (1850–1940), educationist. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/51776.
  6. ^ McKie, David "McKie's Gazetteer", Atlantic Books, 2008, pp 289-294
  7. ^ George Tremlett, Dylan Thomas
  8. ^ The edition of May 24, 1936
  9. ^ Harold Herd, The March of Journalism, p.266
  10. ^ a b c d e f David Butler and Jennie Freeman, British Political Facts, 1900-1960
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