This clever and amazing article was a sort of dying swan’s song so far as Mr. Jennings and Birmingham were concerned.  If I remember rightly, soon after its appearance he severed his professional connection with the town.  He went to London and joined the staff of a financial journal.  Whether he has made his own fortune or the fortunes of others by his London work I do not know and need not enquire.  I will be content to record the remarkable achievement I have mentioned in connection with his Birmingham journalistic career.

One special reason why I am devoting some consideration and space to the Birmingham press is because I wish to refer to one local publication which had something to do, indirectly at least, with the making of Modern Birmingham.  I allude to the Birmingham Town Crier.  This serio-comic, satirical little paper was started in the year 1861, and was for many years a monthly publication.  On its first appearance it created some stir by its original and, in some respects, unique character, also by the general smartness and humour of its contents.

When it first appeared many were the guesses made as to its promoters and contributors, and, so far as these came to my knowledge, not one proved correct.  Certain quite innocent men were credited with being contributors to the new paper, and some of these did not deny the soft impeachment.  The general guessing, however, ranged very wide, and included all sorts and conditions of men, from the Rev. Dr. Miller, then rector of St. Martin’s, to the bellman in the Market Hall.  Considering that the Town Crier was started with a purpose, as I shall presently show, and that it exerted some influence in its own way upon the progress of the town, it is, I think, fitting that the story of its early beginnings should be told, and I am in a position to tell the tale.

As all the first contributors of the Town Crier have ceased—­most of them long since ceased—­to have any connection with the paper, there can be no harm now in referring to its original staff, if only as a little matter of local history.  I may, therefore, place it on record that the contributors to the first number of the Town Crier, which was published in January, 1861, were Mr. Sam Timmins, Mr. J. Thackray Bunce, Mr. G.J.  Johnson, Dr. (then Mr.) Sebastian Evans, and the present writer, Thomas Anderton.

Some two or three months after its first appearance the late Mr. John Henry Chamberlain joined the staff, and a little later still Mr. William Harris became one of the “table round.”  With this staff the paper was carried on for many years, and with more or less success, according to the point of view from which it was considered.  Being of a satirical character it, of course, often rapped certain people over the knuckles in a way they did not appreciate.  They naturally resented being chaffed and held up to ridicule, but as there was nothing of a malicious or private character in the sarcasms published any little soreness they created soon died away.