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| Plate D from Bisset's Directory, showing High Street, including the Aris's Birmingham Gazette offices. |
Thomas Aris was a London stationer and printer who came to Birmingham in about 1740 in order to set up a printing business, including publishing a newspaper in the town. It was not the town's first newspaper. Thomas Warren had printed The Birmingham Journal from 1732 which continued till 1743, but the paper that Aris set up, The Gazette, or Aris's Birmingham Gazette, was the dominant paper of Birmingham over the eighteenth-century. Also, Aris's Gazette survives, whereas there is only one known surviving copy of Warren's Journal.
Aris was not the only Londoner to see the potential for a newspaper in the provincial town of Birmingham. Richard Walker, who had been printing The Warwick and Staffordshire Journal from his offices in London's Fleet Street from 1737, tried to make the move to Birmingham at the same time as Aris. Aris had picked a spot on the High Street, in the centre of the printing area of Birmingham and where the early booksellers were situated, but had to wait for the lease of the previous occupier, a linen draper called John Hunt, to expire. This stalled him until Michaelmas 1741, and Walker took the opportunity to move to Birmingham and begin his venture. The two papers were printed in the town for about three years, but Aris was successful out of the two, and he absorbed Walker's paper into his own in 1743. Aris's Birmingham Gazette came out every Monday, and included London and local news, as well as an array of adverts.
The premises that Aris took over was 99 (98 before number changes) High Street, and part of a line of buildings that stood near the alley leading to the Swan Hotel. All these buildings were rebuilt in about the 1680s, and the frontage to Aris's offices, along with the Swan one side and Richard Pratchett's druggist's shop the other, can be seen in Bisset's Directory (see above and below).
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| The printing offices of Thomas Aris Pearson, 1800, passed through the family from Thomas Aris. On the left is the apothecary shop of Richard Pratchett, and the right, the Swan Hotel. |
Through the door of Aris's premises was probably to the bookshop, noted by William Hutton in 1749 as one of only 'three eminent booksellers' in the town; the others being Thomas Warren and Francis Wollaston. Sir Lister Holte of Aston Hall would certainly have agreed, as he shopped there for books and stationary in the late 1740s, purchasing nearly £20 worth in just over a year. Holte purchased almanacs, memorandums, and books such as Virgil and Le Clare's Architecture, as well as stationary: quires of gilt paper, red ink, sticks of black wax, marbled paper, and 300 coats of arms. Aris also printed a range of books himself (see books Thomas Aris printed), including music engraved by Michael Broome, who had various roles at St. Philip's church, such as training the choir, and composing music for psalms. Broome was also particularly skilled in engraving the music that Aris printed. In 1787, after Aris's death and the business was run by Pearson & Rollason, it was announced in Pye's Directory that the shop stocked about 30,000 books in different languages.*
Thomas Aris died 6th July 1761 at his home at Holloway Head (see it here) shortly after he had retired from the trade, but the business continued as a family affair. It frequently changed hands, though, due to the sudden death to one or another partner. The hands of which the business went through is very complex, but succinctly, Richard Pearson & Samuel Aris Junior (Thomas Aris's brother-in-law and nephew through his brother Samuel) took over after Thomas Aris's death. When Richard died in 1769, Samuel Aris carried on with Ann Pearson (Richard's widow), until Samuel died in 1774. Between 1775 and 1790 books from the press bear the imprint Pearson and Rollason, the latter being James Rollason (son of Noah who had been in partnership with Samuel Aris Senior with the Coventry Mercury), the former probably being Ann (who died in 1779), and later a Thomas Pearson, as 'Thomas Pearson' is the imprint in books after James Rollason's death in 1789. In 1799 Ann Pearson's son, Thomas Aris Pearson takes over briefly, till his own death in 1800, and he was still occupying the shop in the image in Bisset's Directory.
After the Aris's
In the early 1800s the site was run as a bookshop and printing establishment by Beilby and Knott, and later just Knott, who also produced fancy and marbled papers at their manufactory in Bordesley. Knott was still occupying the business in 1836 when the Swan Hotel was put up for sale.
The image below shows the 'Aris's' building on the right in about 1841, one-hundred years after Thomas Aris first inhabited it. It was still known as Aris's but was being run by Hall, with his name adorning the top.
Other Printers: Nᵒ.1 Thomas Unwin; Nᵒ.2 Henry Butler (a printer of ephemera rather than books); Nᵒ.3 Thomas Warren.
NOTESAfter the Aris's
In the early 1800s the site was run as a bookshop and printing establishment by Beilby and Knott, and later just Knott, who also produced fancy and marbled papers at their manufactory in Bordesley. Knott was still occupying the business in 1836 when the Swan Hotel was put up for sale.
The image below shows the 'Aris's' building on the right in about 1841, one-hundred years after Thomas Aris first inhabited it. It was still known as Aris's but was being run by Hall, with his name adorning the top.
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| High Street in about 1841. The central building with the two pillars was the Market Hall, and the church on the left was St. Martin's, with the open Bull Ring area in front. The statue of Nelson, near the church, can still be seen in Bull Ring today. |
Other Printers: Nᵒ.1 Thomas Unwin; Nᵒ.2 Henry Butler (a printer of ephemera rather than books); Nᵒ.3 Thomas Warren.
~FINIS~
* John Money, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760-1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977).
Joseph Hill, The Bookmakers of Old Birmingham: Authors, Printers and Booksellers (Birmingham: 1907).