Daily Sketch (original) (raw)

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British national tabloid newspaper (1909–1971)

This article is about the newspaper published from 1909 to 1971. For the magazine published from 1893 to 1959, see The Sketch.

Daily Sketch

Daily Sketch front page on 9 June 1913 mentioning the death of Emily Davison.
Type Newspaper
Format Tabloid
Owner(s) Edward Hulton (1909–1920)Daily Mirror Newspapers (1920–1925)Allied Newspapers/Kemsley Newspapers (1925-1952)Associated Newspapers (1952–1971)
Founder(s) Edward Hulton
Founded 1909; 115 years ago (1909) in Manchester
Political alignment Populist, centre-right, Conservative Party
Ceased publication May 11, 1971; 53 years ago (1971-05-11); merged into the Daily Mail
Sister newspapers Sunday Graphic (1928–1960)

The Daily Sketch was a British national tabloid newspaper, founded in Manchester in 1909 by Sir Edward Hulton, 1st Baronet.

The Sketch was Conservative in its politics and populist in its tone during its existence through all its changes of ownership.

In 1920, Lord Rothermere's Daily Mirror Newspapers bought the Daily Sketch. In 1925 Rothermere sold it to William and Gomer Berry (later Viscount Camrose and Viscount Kemsley). In 1926 it absorbed the Daily Graphic.[1]

It was owned by a subsidiary of the Berrys' Allied Newspapers from 1928[2] (renamed Kemsley Newspapers in 1937 when Camrose withdrew to concentrate his efforts on The Daily Telegraph). From this point forward, its sister newspaper was the Sunday Graphic.

In 1946, twenty years after it had taken over the Daily Graphic, the latter name was revived[3] and the Daily Sketch name disappeared for a while.

In 1952, Kemsley decided to sell the paper to Associated Newspapers, the owner of the Daily Mail,[4] which promptly revived the Daily Sketch name in 1953.[5]

In 1954, an infamous cartoon, titled "Family Portrait?", was published in the paper, which mocked Billy Strachan, a black British civil rights leader, for his anti-colonial and anti-imperialist beliefs.[6] The cartoon depicted him with devil horns representing the Caribbean Labour Congress. His image was posed with images of Hewlett Johnson and Paul Robeson, all of whom stood underneath a portrait of the then recently deceased Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.[6]

The paper participated in the 1965 press campaign against the screening of the BBC film The War Game.[7]

The paper struggled through the 1950s and 1960s, never managing to compete successfully with the Daily Mirror, and on Tuesday, 11 May 1971, it closed and merged with the Daily Mail, which had just switched to tabloid format.[8]

1909: Jimmy Heddle

1914: William Sugden Robinson

1919: H. Lane

1922: H. Gates

1923: H. Lane

1926: Ivor Halstead[9]

1928: A. Curthoys

1936: A. Sinclair

1939: Sydney Carroll

1942: Lionel Berry

1943: A. Roland Thornton and M. Watts

1944: A. Roland Thornton

1947: N. Hamilton

1948: Henry Clapp

1953: Herbert Gunn

1959: Colin Valdar

1962: Howard French

1969: David English

1971: Louis Kirby (acting)

  1. ^ "Amalgamation of 'Daily Graphic' and 'Daily Sketch'". The Times. 16 October 1926. p. 4.
  2. ^ Griffiths, Dennis, ed. (1992). The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. p. 187.
  3. ^ "A Graphic Sketch". Daily Mirror. 2 July 1946. p. 2.
  4. ^ "The Press: Bigger Press Lord". Time. 22 December 1952.
  5. ^ "Our London Correspondence". Manchester Guardian. 2 January 1953. p. 4.
  6. ^ a b Horsley, David (2019). Billy Strachan 1921–1988 RAF Officer, Communist, Civil Rights Pioneer, Legal Administrator, Internationalist and Above All Caribbean Man. London: Caribbean Labour Solidarity. p. 23. ISSN 2055-7035.
  7. ^ "The War Game". Peter Watkins. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  8. ^ "Britain's oldest tabloid closes". BBC News. 11 May 1971. Retrieved 23 August 2013.
  9. ^ Rachael Low, History of British Film, Vol. 4 (2013), p. 196