WHEN I mention the name Ally Sloper to many hacks, they often think it’s a nickname for one of the newsroom Slopers of the legendary sloping Seventies and Eighties on the Express.

 They conjure up visions of a jacket on the back of the chair and a piece of paper with the secret sign of a quickie in the Popinjay … a triangle with an arrow pointed downwards on the right-hand slope.

 Not so, Alexander (Ally) Sloper was the original Sloper of Shoe Lane … a comic strip character who appeared in the Press as long ago as 1884 when Fleet Street was rapidly growing into the world-famous newspaper centre it became. He came out weekly and the comic’s publishing address was ‘The Sloperies’, 99 Shoe Lane, EC.”

Ally’s pipe was a big favourite

Ally derived from slang at the time as an Alley Sloper, a person who would slip out of the back door of his home or bar, into a passageway when the landlord, debtors or worse his nagging wife turned up — to avoid paying the rent. He was so popular he was even turned into a trend-setting pipe with the bowl carved to look like his character.

Mr Sloper, a red-nosed, lazy schemer, also had a family of pipes made in his image, that included his wife Mrs Sloper, their showgirl daughter Tootsie, a son also called Alexander, twin boys and a dog named Snatcher.

The comic strips depicted the humour of Victorian family life and were originally created for the Fleet Street magazine Judy, the rival of Punch, by writer Charles Ross.

Balding, bulbous-nosed, spindly-legged and often wearing a battered stovepipe hat, Ally was an eternal optimist whose imagination was matched only by his incompetence. He drank in the back alleys of London’s Whitechapel, dodging his wife and creditors from one pub to another.

He would cook up dubious schemes for making easy money which always fell through. A pro-royalty and pro-Empire working-class patriot, he was acceptable to his publishers and advertisers, as well as his target readership. This was perhaps the secret of his success; he was mildly subversive but not a danger to the establishment.

In 1887 he appeared in the strip as a special constable at the Bloody Sunday riots in Trafalgar Square, conning his way to be chief of a police division.

This was a time when pipes were the most popular form of smoking and newsrooms yellowed under the constant battering of thick tar smoke … so too did the lungs of newsmen, right into the 1970s.

The comic: ‘Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday’ was written for the working class. Half-holiday was the half day off given to workers on Saturdays so they could enjoy smoking venues and music halls that often had no ventilation at all. There were even smoking concerts especially for those who imbibed.

Ally Sloper’s fame spread to stage and screen and in 1887 he appeared in almost every pantomime during that year. Next, he starred in silent films, and he was even used in propaganda by the government. Both W.C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin were believed to have based their characters on him.

Ally merchandise was a money-maker … Sloper pipes outsold others for a time, and he had a nationwide fan club. Fans even cut out coupons for their own very own Sloper tobacco.

Mugs, games, toys, paperweights, puppets, cast-iron doorstops in the form of Ally and his wife, and a sauce marketed as ‘Ally Sloper’s Favourite Relish’ were a sell-out and there was even a patent medicine — Sloper’s Pills — that claimed to cure headaches and stomach troubles.

 At the time Prime Minister Gladstone called him a friend of the working class.

But from around 1890 onwards, Ally Sloper’s immense popularity meant that rivals began cashing in on his success, and similar characters began appearing in most newspapers, especially in the titles owned by Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe. The Daily Mirror’s Andy Capp was based on him.

Ally managed to trick his way through until 1916. But Northcliffe’s modern titles and others priced at half-a-penny booted Sloper’s one penny comic into touch and sales crashed. Ally sloped off after 1,679 issues. Not even leaving a coat on the back of his chair.

HOW TO GET CIRCULATION UP

Farmer’s Almanac with the vital hole, top left

AS editors today struggle to get their circulations up, one man had already cracked it back in the 18th century. For in 1792 American publisher Robert B Thomas put a hole through the corner of his publication the Old Farmer’s Almanac so that it could be hung from a hook in his readers’ outhouses, and they could read a page while doing their business, then wipe their bottoms with it. Circulation rocketed from 3,000 copies to 9,000 copies from the first week. It still uses the hole today.

DICKENS LAUNCHES NEWSPAPER

WITH SOME GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I NEVER knew that Charles Dickens didn’t have a beard until he was 42. Worse, I never knew that he was a lively party animal who loved a tipple or two and even started up his own Fleet Street newspaper. So much I didn’t know about Dickens the man, even though his ghost haunts the history of Fleet Street, with so many other men of letters. And his stories are adored worldwide.

But in January 1846, he launched The Daily News to take on The Times with his great friend, social reformer Douglas Jerrold as Chief Sub Editor. He also appointed his dad, John Dickens, to be in charge of reporters and paid his father-in-law George Hogarth five guineas a week to write on music. It was a bit of a family affair but serious stuff. All aimed at helping the London poor.

 The writer’s new chapter started after he wrote Pickwick Papers, which opened the door to all his other books and projects. He was unhappy with the Morning Chronicle which had rejected some of his articles and didn’t pay him enough for those it published. He never liked its content anyway.

 One afternoon at a lunch in Fleet Street, he persuaded printers Bradbury and Evans, the owners of Punch, to take on his newspaper publishing venture with backing from Joseph Paxton, one of Britain’s leading engineers and gardeners who landscaped Chatsworth and went on to design the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition.

Many of the new title’s leader writers, literary and musical critics and reporters taken on were friends of Dickens from the Morning Chronicle who were offered higher salaries, and the launch date was fixed to coincide with the abolition of the Corn Laws.

 The Corn Laws had placed extra taxes on imported corn which meant that British farmers could set a higher price for their own corn leading to higher food prices for poor families and they were struggling.

At the time, The Times was 12 pages and had a circulation of 25,000 copies selling for sevenpence, but Dickens’s Daily News, was eight pages for five pence. At first it sold 10,000 copies but soon crashed to less than 4,000, due in part to Dickens’ dwindling interest.

 He was no newspaper man after all, even though he had been a parliamentary reporter. The writing wasn’t descriptive enough for him and he didn’t understand how to present news. He never liked sitting around in an office either. At the time he was a great traveller and enjoyed his holidays at home and abroad and the good life of wine and song. The discipline for editorial life wasn’t in him.

 Dickens edited just 17 issues of the Daily News before pulling out and years later after his death it was finally sold to George Cadbury, the Birmingham cocoa and chocolate manufacturer and social reformer.

 Dickens had a few bob and many rich literary, political and business friends. He was lively and gregarious and loved bright colours around him in his homes in London and Kent.

 He entertained a lot, often with tables laden with artificial flowers for more than 12 leading figures of the day such as poet Henry Longfellow and novelist Wilkie Collins. In fact, his wife Catherine was such a good cook that she later published a book on what to make for dinners of up to 18 guests and it was an enormous success under her strange pseudonym of Lady Maria Clutterbuck.

 It was entitled appropriately: What Shall We Have for Dinner? In it, she revealed that her husband’s favourite dish was leg of mutton stuffed with oysters. And his favourite snack - cheese in port on toast.

 Dickens never told the movers and shakers of the day that he knew all about the workhouse and poverty from his own family’s experience. His father was sent there with most of his family for debts … while Charles was sent away to live with another family. The dinner guests just saw him for the flamboyant dandy he was with one of the best-stocked wine cellars in London. It was only after his death that the truth came out about his early life in poverty.

 After 22 years of marriage and 10 children he famously dumped Catharine in 1858, alleging she was mentally unbalanced. In truth he was madly in love with a young actress named Ellen Ternan, aged 18 and he bought her a house as a love nest. He was 45.

When he died in 1869, aged 58, his estate was worth the equivalent of £50 million … most of it went to Ellen. His wife was frozen out. Even in his last years he could often be found in Fleet Street’s Cock Tavern or the Cheshire Cheese, where he met friends for port and conversation. He loved Fleet Street as so many great writers did. And the Cock too.

TERRY MANNERS

30th December 2024