THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL was the foremost nationalist daily newspaper published in Dublin in the nineteenth century. James Joyce refers to it in Ulysses as ‘a great daily organ’.
The central position it still had in Irish life in the early years of the twentieth century is reflected in the fact that it features prominently in Ulysses. It was, however, already in decline by then, and it ceased publication one hundred years ago, on 19 December 1924.
First published in Dublin in 1763, the Freeman was associated in its early days with Charles Lucas, Henry Grattan and Henry Flood, leaders of the ‘patriot’ party which had sought legislative independence for the Irish parliament in College Green. There followed a short interlude when it became a government organ, under the editorship of Francis Higgins – known as the ‘Sham Squire’ – between 1784 and 1802.
After Higgins died, the Freeman passed to his putative daughter and subsequently to her husband, Philip Whitfield Harvey. Harvey was an honourable man by all accounts, and under his ownership the Freeman gradually recovered its independence from government influence.
Harvey’s son-in-law, Henry Grattan, son of the parliamentarian, briefly succeeded him as proprietor in the late 1820s. 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 the newspaper was sold to Sir John Gray whose statue stands in O’Connell Street, Dublin, commemorating his role in bringing the Vartry water supply to the city.
Three generations of the Gray family were associated with the Freeman over the next 50 years. They made the Freeman an important newspaper. The abolition in the 1850s of the oppressive taxes on newspapers opened the way for a great expansion in the newspaper market. John Gray exploited this opportunity, growing the circulation of the Freeman from as little as 2,000–3,000 copies per day to approximately 10,000 at his death in 1875. Under his son, Edmund Dwyer Gray, the Freeman’s circulation soared to over 30,000 copies per day and the paper became extremely profitable.
Edmund died aged 42 in 1888, and for the next four years the Freeman was under the control of his widow and their young son, also Edmund Dwyer Gray. Gray’s widow was the daughter of the English philanthropist Caroline Chisholm, celebrated for her work for female emigrants to Australia but caricatured as Mrs Jellyby in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.
From the mid-1870s, the Freeman was the unofficial organ of the Irish party at Westminster. It initially 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’ in 1890, it continued to back Parnell. However, after the anti-Parnellites launched their own daily paper, the National Press, in March 1891, it switched sides. The Freeman and the National Press later merged, with the Grays selling their interest to facilitate the merger. The young Edmund Dwyer Gray emigrated to Australia and became a journalist and politician of note in Tasmania.
Following the merger, there was a bitter struggle over several years for control of the paper between two rival anti-Parnell factions – each seeking to dictate its editorial policy. Thomas Sexton, an 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 sometimes fractious criticism by the Freeman.
Moreover, Sexton presided over a steady decline in the Freeman’s business 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 the demand for newspapers.
In contrast, Murphy transformed his paper in 1905 into the modern, mass-circulation Irish Independent – at half the price of the Freeman and with a lighter presentation of news. He copied what Lord Northcliffe had done in London in 1896 when he launched the Daily Mail, the first mass-circulation newspaper in Britain.
This sealed the Freeman’s fate. The new Independent quickly became the market leader, and the Freeman began to incur heavy 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 by Irish party sources. Its parlous condition was exacerbated by the destruction of its premises during the 1916 Rising.
The Freeman was sold off in 1919 after the Irish party’s defeat in the 1918 general election. Its last owner was a Dublin businessman, Martin Fitzgerald. He kept it going as an organ of constitutional nationalist opinion for another five years, but it was a pale shadow of its former self.
When it finally closed after 161 years of continuous publication, its title was bought by the Irish Independent. For many years afterwards, the Irish Independent carried in its masthead the legend ‘Incorporating the Freeman’s Journal’.
Felix M. Larkin is a historian and former public servant. He is a contributor to each of the three volumes of The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish History (2020 & 2023).
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