The Newcastle Herald - History

History

The Herald had its origins in two early newspapers, The Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter River District News and The Miners Advocate and Northumberland Recorder.

Established in 1858, the Chronicle began as a weekly journal carrying mining, shipping, court and some small items of local news. It cost just sixpence. In the years that followed it took on more of the appearance of a newspaper, became a bi-weekly and then tri-weekly, and by 1876 its last edition was priced at two pence.

Some of the paper's first articles document the Newcastle Earthquake of 1868, riots, severe storms and the Sinking of the Cawarra, the worst shipwreck in Newcastle's history that claimed the lives of sixty passengers on the Brisbane-bound passenger ship. It was also during the paper's infant years that the Newcastle rail line was extended to Watt Street (1858), Newcastle became a municipality (1859), the Miners' Federation was formed (1860) and gas lighting was introduced to the city (1875).

In 1873 in Nelson St, Plattsburg (now part of Wallsend), The Miners Advocate and Northumberland Recorder was first published. Under the guidance of founder John Miller Sweet, the paper flourished and by 1876 it was a tri-weekly selling for three pence and with a circulation of 4000 copies a week.

John Sweet's father-in-law, James Fletcher, believed the region was ready for a bigger newspaper published daily and persuaded his son-in-law to expand. The Advocate moved to Bolton St, Newcastle, and on April 3, 1876, the first copies of The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate hit the streets. The first Herald and Advocate masthead was ornate and carried a sketch of a colliery pit-top, including poppet head and chimney. Such ornate mastheads stayed with The Herald for 104 years, the last major change being on October 6, 1980, when a more modern and simpler masthead was introduced, dropping the "Morning" and "Miners Advocate" from the title.

As with the Chronicle the first years of The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate were to be also marred by tragedy. Some of the first stories printed by the newly named paper included the sinking of the Yarra Yarra off Newcastle with no survivors, a fire in Scott Street, deaths at the Greta coal mine, coal strikes and the beginning of the Boer War. Among other stories of local importance were the sinking of the Newcastle-Stockton ferry Bluebell in 1934, The Newcastle Tragedy of 1927 and the Japanese attack on the city's East End and dockyards in 1942.