A Brill Calendar: February 23

Luchtmans: A Family Affair

Few Leyden families equal the Luchtmans breed when it comes to printing and publishing over the generations.

In historical surveys they are presented almost like hereditary princes: Samuel I, II & III Luchtmans; a proud succession in an enterprise covering the 18th century. Yet, widening the perspective across the North Sea, the English Walter family provides a parallel. The patriarch of the family business, John I Walter (1739 – 1812), a journalist, initially a denizen of the proverbial ‘Grub Street’ - where slaves of the inky trade survive by writing and hackneying anything for money; libel & slander not excluded - founded ‘The Times’, published under that name the first time in 1788.

His heir, John II Walter (February 23 1776 – July 28 1847), managing the parental business from 1795, made the paper Europe’s CNN of the early 19th century; ‘The Times’ published a soul-stirring account of Nelson’s heroic victory near the bay of Trafalgar (1805) before the first Royal Navy report arrived in Whitehall. And, crucially, John II made the family property solvent; by using – as the first entrepreneur to do so - steam power for his presses, by employing a carrier-pigeon delivery from Paris to Boulogne, and by harnessing the electric telegraph to provide newsworthy information as soon as possible to his readership.

When John III Walter (1818 – 1894) became owner of ‘The Times’ after his father’s death, he concluded this Victorian march through innovations in publishing and printing with the introduction of a revolutionary rotary press, printing rapidly both sides of paper simultaneously. By then, ‘The Times’ was unquestionably ‘the exponent of what English public opinion is, or will be’.

In discussing the socio-cultural role of media more than a century later it is seldom that the whole pedigree of information & communication technology is taken into account.