Sunday News (UK)

Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper was an early Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Edward Lloyd launched Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper in 1842. It was the first of three popular papers to be created for those who only had the leisure to read on Sundays. It was followed by the News of the World in 1843 and Reynold's News in 1850.

On 16 February 1896, Lloyd’s Weekly became the only British newspaper in the nineteenth century to sell more than a million copies. Curiously enough, that day would have been Lloyd’s 81st birthday had he lived beyond the age of 75.

Lloyd was already a prolific publisher of periodicals and serialised fiction. He had created titles that sounded like newspapers, such as the Lloyd’s Penny Sunday Times and People’s Police Gazette, but these were a sham to avoid paying stamp duty. The sham lay in printing fictitious or historical stories echoing current events so that readers could glean the outcome of the real event from the dénouement of the story.

Lloyd’s Weekly got off to a complicated start. It first appeared in 1842 as Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper. Selling at twopence, it shamelessly copied the format of the recently launched Illustrated London News – a terrific success from the start, despite costing sixpence.

Lloyd tried to keep his version free of stamp duty by printing the illustrations of current events without captions. Most of the text was devoted to literary and dramatic material but, in its seventh issue, the Stamp Office spotted “news” in the theatre listings. A more colourful version said that it was news of a lion’s escape from a travelling menagerie, but this has never been found. Lloyd may have felt that it made a better story than announcement of a play due to open in Deptford.

Lloyd was determined to publish a newspaper so he decided to pay the duty. Breaking even financially was the real challenge: revenues net of stamp duty failed to cover the cost of the illustrations (stamp duty was more than the 1d duty on news because of the heavy duty on paper - 1½d per pound in weight). After another seven issues, Lloyd dropped all pictures and changed the name to Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper.

In the autumn of 1843, he raised the price to threepence, compensating for this by increasing the number of words per page. He used the postal service for distribution as postage was included in the 1d stamp duty — a useful concession that also enabled him to beat off the newsagents’ demand for a 1d commission.

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