Eddowes's Shrewsbury Journal

Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire, and the Principality of Wales was a weekly newspaper published on Wednesdays. In its later issues, the title is printed as Eddowes’s Shrewsbury Journal and Salop, Stafford, Worcester, Hereford, Radnor, Brecon, North and Mid Wales and Cheshire County.

The newspaper was conservative in its politics. It began as a four-page paper and grew to between eight and ten pages. An issue in 1890 cost twopence. Serial and short stories were also printed in the newspaper, such as A Mysterious Adventure by Annie Fields.

If philately is your passion, you may find notes of interest in these pages, particularly in reference to the development of both postage and the post office in the UK. In the letter to the editor entitled ‘The Farthing Postage Stamp’, we read the following: ‘The question of the farthing postage stamp opened in your columns recently by a correspondent, has already been brought under the attention of the Post Office and in the columns of Bric a Brac the subject has been a standing dish for some time past. In the issue of last May appeared a paragraph to the following effect, which bears immediately upon the point raised by your correspondent: “When shall we have a farthing postage stamp? It always strikes me as an imposition that I should be obliged to pay for sending through the post the smallest packet in the world to the other side of London, as much as I am charged for carrying a parcel ten times as heavy to the very end of the Kingdom.” A local post as in France (where the rate of postage is one centime, or one-tenth of a penny), would surely satisfy the interests of the Post Office and the public’.