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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Aberdeen and Northern Counties Printing
Industry
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In 1768 Douglas’s place as the
second printer in Aberdeen was taken by John Boyle. Boyle followed
closely the pattern set by Douglas, printing the works of Pope,
Swift, Voltaire, etc as well as minor religious publications. He
will be best known, however, for The Family Bible which he published
in parts during 1769-71. This is unique as being the only complete
Bible ever to be published in Aber-deen. Boyle’s career in
printing lasted twenty-six years.
Perhaps the last printer of any note in eighteenth-century Aberdeen
was Andrew Shirrefs. After graduating at Marischal College he started
work as a bookseller in 1783 before turning his hand to printing.
In 1787 he attempted to launch a newspaper, The Aberdeen Chronicle,
but it was unsuccessful. Another venture was his Caledonian Magazine
which appeared between 1786 and 1790. Whether or not these failures
discouraged him, he left Aberdeen in 1791 to continue his career
in Edinburgh.
In attempting to research the history of printing in Aberdeen during
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is frustrating to find
relatively little has hitherto been recorded and published. During
the period when labour was in the process of being organised, it
is known that the number of printing firms in the city increased
to twelve. Prominent among those were Avery, Chalmers, Cornwall
and King.
Attempts were first made to organise labour at national level in
1836, when the General Typographical Association of Scotland was
formed. The Association continued until the end of 1844 when it
was replaced by the Northern District Board of the National Typographical
Association. The particular problem of the early 1840s was high
unemployment and this was blamed on the lack of control over the
large number of apprentices entering the trade. Several disputes
arose in Scotland from attempts to introduce apprentice quotas,
particularly in Glasgow and Aberdeen; the strike in the latter city
was a particularly lengthy one.
The union organisation in the Scottish printing industry suffered
badly from these disputes as well as from the continuing high rate
of unemployment. In 1847 those factors resulted in the dissolution
of the Northern District Board and the downfall of the Aberdeen
Branch. Even when the Scottish Typographical Association was in
the process of being set up in 1853, Aberdeen expressed its regret
at being unable to form a branch. At that time there were only twenty-two
journeymen in employment in Aberdeen and, because of the high number
of apprentices, the tradesmen felt powerless. At its formation the
Scottish Typographical Association consisted of only five branches,
but by 1855, when an Aberdeen branch was re-established, the number
had increased to twelve. In 1858 the labour force in Aberdeen’s
printing community consisted of forty-eight journeymen and eighty-one
apprentices. Determined efforts were again made to reduce the number
of the latter but those attempts were strenuously opposed by employers.
James Chalmers, jun, had died in 1810 and was succeeded at The Aberdeen
Journal by his second son David. That the newspaper prospered under
his guardianship is evidenced by the circulation figures of the
Journal in the 1830s which, it claimed, exceeded those of national
rivals such as The Scotsman and Glasgow Herald. On the production
side he is credited with the conversion about 1830 of the Journal’s
press to steam, the first Scottish news-paper to do so. When he
retired in 1853 he handed over the management of the business to
his sons James and John. Over the years the success of The Aberdeen
Journal and the increasing politicisation of the newspaper press,
nationally, had encouraged a number of other publishers to launch
their own publications. Among those was The North of Scotland Gazette,
which first appeared in 1847. Whereas other publications such as
The Aberdeen Observer (1829) and The Aberdeen Shaver (1833) were
short-lived, the Gazette soon became established and in 1853 was
transformed into The Aberdeen Free Press. A full account of the
keen rivalry between the Journal and the Free Press is contained
in Norman Harper’s official history of The Press and Journal:
The First 250 Years, 1748-1998, published in 1997.
One of the founders of The Free Press was George King, a bookseller
in Aberdeen who, with his brother Robert, established the printing
and publishing firm G. & R. King in Diamond Street in 1840.
The business lasted only ten years, but before it reverted to bookselling,
a third brother, Arthur, had set up his own printing venture in
the city as Arthur King & Co. It was in his premises at Broad
Street that The Free Press was first printed.
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Volume 3 published 1996
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