The final edition of Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal newspaper appeared 100 years ago, on December 19th,1924.
First published in Dublin in 1763, the Freeman was associated in its early days with the “patriot” opposition in the Irish parliament in College Green. There then followed a brief interlude when it had a dubious connection with Dublin Castle, under the editorship of Francis Higgins – known as the “Sham Squire” – between 1784 and 1802.
Higgins bequeathed the Freeman to one Frances Tracy, probably his illegitimate daughter. On her marriage, it passed to her husband Philip Whitfield Harvey. Under his ownership, the Freeman gradually recovered its independence from government influence.
Harvey died in 1826 and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Henry Grattan, a son of the parliamentarian. In 1831, the Freeman was purchased by its first Catholic editor, Patrick Lavelle, a zealous advocate of repeal of the Act of Union. He died in 1837, and in 1841 his widow sold the paper to Sir John Gray.
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The Gray family was associated with the Freeman for the next 50 years, spanning three generations of the family. They made the Freeman an important newspaper. The repeal in the 1850s of oppressive duties on newspapers opened the way for a great expansion in the newspaper market. Sir John Gray exploited this opportunity, growing the circulation of the Freeman from as little as 2,000 to 3,000 copies per day to approximately 10,000 at the time of his death in 1875.
Under his son, Edmund Dwyer Gray, the Freeman’s circulation was further increased – to over 30,000 copies per day – and it became extremely profitable. Edmund died at the early age of 42 in 1888, and for the next four years the newspaper was under the control of his widow and their young son, also Edmund Dwyer Gray.
From the mid-1870s, the Freeman was the unofficial organ of the Irish parliamentary party at Westminster. It at first opposed Parnell’s rise within the party, but was soon whipped into line and from the early 1880s largely supported Parnell’s leadership.
At the outset of the Parnell “split”, the paper backed Parnell. However, once the anti-Parnellites launched their own daily newspaper, the National Press, in March 1891, it switched sides. The Freeman and the National Press merged in March 1892, with the Grays selling their interest as part of the deal.
There followed a bitter struggle for control of the paper between rival anti-Parnell factions led by Tim Healy and John Dillon, both MPs. Thomas Sexton, another anti-Parnell MP broadly acceptable to both factions, ultimately took charge of it. This proved an unhappy arrangement, as Sexton unexpectedly retired from parliament in 1896. Afterwards, apparently regretting his loss of influence, Sexton used the paper to try to impose his will on his former colleagues. He was increasingly out of sympathy with them, and this was reflected in fractious criticism of the party by the Freeman.
The post-Parnell period saw a steady decline in the Freeman’s fortunes. The National Press had inflicted grave damage on it, and it now faced strong competition from the Irish Daily Independent – established as a pro-Parnell organ when the Freeman changed sides in the “split” and later purchased by William Martin Murphy. The Freeman thus lacked funds for investment and was unable to respond to further increases in demand for newspapers.
In 1905, Murphy transformed his paper into the modern, mass-circulation Irish Independent – at half the price of the Freeman and in a more popular format.
That sealed the Freeman’s fate. The Independent quickly became the market leader, and the Freeman began to incur trading losses.
Sexton proved incapable of dealing with this crisis, and the Irish Party leaders acted to save the paper by forcing his resignation in 1912. Subsequently, the Freeman was subsidised from Irish Party sources. Its parlous condition was exacerbated by the destruction of its premises during the 1916 Rising.
The Freeman was sold off after the Irish Party’s defeat in the 1918 election. Its last owner was a Dublin businessman, Martin Fitzgerald. He gallantly kept it going for another five years, and it became the unofficial organ of the Irish Free State government after 1922. When it closed, its title was bought by the Independent which for many years afterwards carried in its masthead the legend “Incorporating the Freeman’s Journal”.