History factfile

• The first issue of the Melton Mowbray Times cost just one penny.

• The first run of the Melton Mowbray Times lasted just 15 months. It did, however, fare better than its competitor, the Melton Recorder, which was discontinued after just 10 issues.

• Johnston Press bought the Melton Times and Emap's other newspapers and printing presses in 1996 for a cool £211 million.
Bringing you the local news for 140 years...
Machine minder Joe Merchant in the days when the paper was printed in Melton at our Nottingham Street offices. Later the press was sold to Kenya and the printing was carried out at Kettering, Lincoln, Horncastle, Chesterfield and now Peterborough.

The history of the paper is hazy in places and is not helped by the deed of a now legendary cleaner in days gone by who used precious early copies to start the office boiler.

But we do know that the Melton Times flourished through the mid-part of the century, including wartime.

A typed document from the war years now in my possession bears this out. Its author is not known but clearly had a senior role at the paper.

“The results of the year’s trading not only exceeds that of last year despite the heavy taxation burden, but shows that the comparatively

lean early years of this war appear to have gone for good.

“Compared too, with the company’s experiences of the last war, we are very fortunate, for during 1914-18 there was not always a dividend payable and the highest was four per cent, not free of tax.

“That is not to say newspaper production in this war is without trials and tribulations. They are manifold. The greatest undoubtedly being the manpower problem. Like other trades, we have to carry on as best we can with a minimum of staff.

“ . . . there is to be an

immediate review of every newspaper staff in the country, already much depleted, with the view of transferring as many people as possible to war industries.

“Sales of the paper in town and villages have again reached a new record and are over double those in the last war.Demand exceeds supply and this is a healthy augury for the future for it is on sales that a newspaper’s success finally depends.

“More national advertisers have contracts with the Times now than ever before in the company’s history. It is evident they are satisfied with the paper’s appearance and influence.”