Bygone Days

[Pompey Mick]

Here's an interesting little article, especially for the Brighton boys.

 

Challenge of gathering news to send by pigeon

By The Argus, Brighton

The Argus in Brighton is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. Here the paper looks back to a time when reporters covered their patch by bicycle and flew stories to the office...

 

 

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The life of a 19th Century journalist was beset with challenges incomprehensible to staff of The Argus today.

 

These were, after all, the years that saw the invention of the light bulb and specifically-made toilet paper.

 

There were no cars, few telephones, no radio, no fountain pens – even tea bags were unheard of until 1904.

 

Newsgathering in the very early days presented particular problems for the district reporters.

 

Sidney Walter Evans joined the company in March 1897, spending almost 25 years in the Midhurst and Horsham area.

 

When he first took over his patch of some 60 parishes he had to cycle an average of 30 miles a day.

 

Footpads – highwaymen without horses – were not unknown and he invariably carried with him a smooth-edged knuckleduster and a truncheon.

 

In those days, when telephones were few and far between, urgent news was sent back to Brighton by carrier pigeon – a much faster method than using the telegraph service.

 

Evans often carried a basket of six pigeons with him when he went on an assignment.

 

There was a pigeon loft and trap on the roof of head office at Brighton.

 

One of the boys employed to look after the birds was William Christmas, who started work in 1887.

 

It was his job to secure the pigeons as they arrived, remove the reporters' copy from the little capsules attached to them and take it down to editorial.

 

Among the stories Sidney Evans dispatched via his carrier pigeons were his sighting of Queen Victoria's coffin on its way from Osborne House to London for the state funeral and the opening by King Edward VII of the hospital at Midhurst.

 

Evans certainly had a close acquaintance with the community he worked in. Often, after a puncture on the way home late at night, he was glad to seek a bed in one of the local rural workhouses.

 

On one occasion, when an inmate died and the coffin plate failed to arrive, he helped out the master by sitting astride the coffin and painting the corpse's name and age on the lid.

 

Cecil Kerman, later a sports editor of The Argus, started with the company in 1908 as a 14-year-old messenger boy. He used to take a basketful of pigeons to important football matches to send back the results and scorers, and on one occasion had to carry 14 pigeons to the scene of a road crash to fly the story to the office.

 

In later years he stoutly maintained that the pigeons were much quicker than the modern phone service.

 

The Hastings office also had its own pigeon loft, in a tower at the corner of the building.

 

Another pigeon boy, Leslie Long, who started work with the company in 1912, was put in charge of advertising at the age of 21 and held the post of advertisement manager until his retirement in 1963.

 

I wonder if there are any signs of the  lofts  still there?

 

 

 

 

 

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