Grief for the Queen, suffragettes storm Parliament, and Buffalo Bill loses his jewellery

While the death of an ailing 81-year-old would not normally come as a massive surprise, this was different. Victoria had been on the throne for almost 64 years, and at a time when the average life expectancy of a man was just 45 years, comparatively few people could remember a time before Victoria.

The death of the Queen, on January 22, sparked an  outpouring of grief in an area where she was held in great affection: her celebrated visit to Wolverhampton in 1866 was her first public appearance since the death of her husband Albert, and just nine months before her death, she had paid a whistle-stop visit to the town when the royal train stopped at Low Level station. The Express & Star, which had been founded on the principle of abolishing the monarchy, had by this time softened its tone. Victoria was hailed as the greatest Queen in English history, and reported 'deep gloom' in Wolverhampton as the nation mourned. Flags were flown at half-mast, and people dressed in black.

The new King, Edward VII, was proclaimed in Wolverhampton, Dudley, Cannock and West Bromwich on January 26, and special church services were held throughout the region to mark her funeral on February 2.

Meanwhile, a movement to give women the vote was gaining traction, with a Wolverhampton campaigner playing a leading role. West Bromwich-born Emma Sproson, who moved to Wolverhampton as a child, was among 61 women arrested as 700 members of the 'suffragette' movement made two unsuccessful attempts to storm the Houses of Parliament in 1907. Mounted police were called to deal with the first riot in February, and Mrs Sproson was jailed for two weeks, having rejected the opportunity to pay a fine instead. During her time in Holloway prison, she was buoyed by letters of sympathy from supporters in the town. A brass band played outside the jail as she and 28 other suffragettes were arrested on February 27.

Undeterred, she and Elizabeth Price were arrested again following another attempted raid on March 18, and this time she was jailed for a month. Mrs Sproson would later go on to become Wolverhampton's first female councillor.

On a lighter note, Colonel 'Buffalo' Bill Cody created a stir when he brought his spectacular Wild West Show to the Black Country.

Thousands were mesmerised by his spectacular shows in Dudley, which featured 800 people and 500 horses that had been transported across Europe aboard four trains. But his stay in the town was marred slightly when the showman had his prized jewels stolen.On June 10, 1903, the newspaper carried an advertisement for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World, “headed and personally introduced” by Colonel W F Cody.

The Colonel deeply impressed the Express & Star reporter who wrote: “He was wearing the large wideawake hat, from under which whitened locks tumbled like a tiny sea of foam about his broad shoulders. When he shakes hands well, he shakes, that’s all, and looks you full in the face, reading you as a man reads a barometer or a mariner's compass.”

It was described as the biggest show to ever hit town. But on June 19 the Express & Star reported a fresh twist to the visit.“Buffalo Bill and Dudley – Enriched and Robbed,” was the headline in the Express & Star. After a thrilling description of the show  – “Lance exercise by the British troops, sword-play by American cavalry, rocket exercise by a Yankee lifeboat crew” – the reporter told of a robbery. 

Cody's jewellery, a diamond encrusted pen – or pin, depending on accounts –  given to him by the King, and £3 12s in cash – were stolen from his tent at The Parade Ground in Eve Hill, Dudley. The reputation of the Black Country was preserved, though, when it emerged that it was not a local, but one of the colonel's own entourage who was responsible for the theft – and a Londoner at that. In between performances, a young man called Noel Greenway had taken a photograph of Cody with his secretary, Besse Isbill and his valet William Prizey, sometimes spelled as Puzey or Priney.

A week later Greenway received a letter from Cody, asking him for the photographic plate, saying he urgently needed a copy of the picture. It later emerged that Prizey had gone missing, and was prime suspect for the theft. Prizey, 21, was later arrested in Chelsea, and brought back to Dudley where he was jailed for six months. Cody did not appear to have been too distressed by the theft though. The following day he appeared at Dunstall Park, Wolverhampton, where he appeared before a crowd of 20,000 people.

Dawn of a new era under the Graham dynasty

In 1902, Andrew Carnegie formally called time on his adventure in the newspaper industry, some 21 years after taking over the Evening Star.

He handed control of his stake in Midland News Association to Thomas Graham, graciously accepting a promissory note for the sum of £5,000 – about £511,000 at today’s prices – in lieu of payment. There is no record of Graham paying off the debt, or of Carnegie pursuing it. The millionaire would later described his time in newspapers as ‘one of the forms in which I may be said to have sown my wild oats’.Graham eventually bought out the other partners in the venture, leaving him in sole control, assisted by his sons Norval – known as Norrie – and John Douglas, who was known by his second name.

“My father had a great flair for journalism,” recalled Douglas. “Although he never wrote a leader in his life, he inspired a great many. He was a born organiser and had unerring judgement of men. Like his friend Carnegie, he had the gift of choosing the right men in the right place, giving them not only his entire trust but responsibility as well.

“My father knew how to handle men. A man boiling with rage would come into the office to interview him.

 “On his coming into the room my father would instantly size him up, crack a joke and before long, would be giving him a lecture and the man would leave, smiling.

”It was probably just as well, as life on the newspaper at the start of the 20th century was a very different world to that inhabited by journalists today."

Douglas Graham painted a picture of a noisy, messy working environment not for the faint-hearted, saying: “The machine room contained not only two Marinoni open-delivery presses but also a gas engine to drive them and the stereotype foundry.

”When it was decided to replace the presses with electrically driven ones, the paper continued to be published beneath a tarpaulin roof, while the press room was rebuilt.

“I remember one day, in November I think it was, when the fog got into the room to such an extent that it was as much as we could do to make the presses perform,” Douglas Graham recalled.

The papers were distributed by trams or train, from which they were collected by the newsagents. Groom Billy Wright delivered the papers to the railway station by horse-drawn van, and was known as an expert driver who got the papers to the station in double-quick time – even if his ‘furious driving’ attracted a number of complaints from the public.

“He never, to my knowledge, knocked anyone down,” said Douglas Graham, “but this did not prevent him from being summoned for exceeding the speed limit.”As the population of Wolverhampton and its neighbouring towns grew, so did the circulation of the Express & Star, reaching about the 60,000 mark by 1910. Douglas Graham’s son Malcolm was born in 1901, and in 1989 he fondly described how he would look on in awe at the thundering machinery when he visited the newspaper works as a small child.

“When I came here as a child, all I remember was a big steam engine which used to drive the shaft that ran all the Linotypes and one of the printing presses,” he wrote. “In those days, we were in just two Georgian houses with the gardens covered over and made into a printing house, with three small presses which were second-hand cast-offs from the Daily Telegraph.” 

Sport was an early success story for the newspaper, with Thomas Graham launching Britain’s first special football edition. In those days, the first edition was printed on white paper, the second pink and the final green.