Evening Post 1899 advertising

Education was big business at this time and the schools were vying for the patronage of those who could afford a private education for their sons and daughters

This is our first special compilation edition of the Evening Post looking back at advertising in the newspaper's columns in 1899.

The newspaper was then published daily from Monday to Saturday as four broadsheet pages. The front page was dominated by advertising. There was no local news, scarcely a national or international story, and just a digest of minor news items from across the Channel, under the heading Patchwork.

This meant that the front page of the newspaper, then into its tenth year of publishing, looked much the same day after day, with the same adverts appearing in much the same place every night of the week, and week after week.

We reproduce many of those adverts here, trying to spot business trends as the island headed towards a new century; looking for businesses which are still active 120 years later; and examining some of the products and services advertised in a little more detail.

Jersey was starting to become established as a holiday destination towards the end of the Victorian era, and islanders who could afford it were becoming more accustomed to venturing to France. There were regular boats to the Normandy and Brittany ports and the casinos at Granville and St Malo were among the attractions for a short break.

The Hotel de l'Univers in St Malo (still in business today) and Grand Hotel du Nord et des Trois Couronnes in Granville (long since disappeared) shared the Evening Post's advertising columns with the Chalet Hotel at Pontac, a closer and popular destination for St Helier residents wishing to escape from their town homes by jumping on a Jersey Eastern Railway train for a journey of a few minutes.

The picture below shows how the L'Univers in St Malo's Place Chateaubriand would have looked had a picture accompanied the advert.

Competition between King Street's department stores was strong in 1899 and Noel and Porter, A de Gruchy and Voisin's all used the columns of the Evening Post to promote their businesses, evidently with considerable success because, although the first of the three disappeared from the high street in the 1970s, the other two are still going strong today.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the Evening Post of 1899 was perhaps the Katookella Evening Post, because the same advert for this product appeared in the same prominent position at the top of the front page day after day.

Tea was big business at the end of the 19th century, and the Katookella Estate in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was a renowned producer of tea which, judging by the amount it's Jersey agents spent on advertising, must have been very popular in the island. The picture below (not published in the EP, of course, shows the Katookella Estate as it was then.

Strangely Katookella Tea does not seem to have been popular elsewhere. A search for the brand reveals several mentions in Jerripedia, a couple of specialist Ceylon Tea historical websites, and precious little else ...

... and for those fancying something a little stronger than a cup of tea, how about a glass of best quality Claret at just 15 shillings for a dozen bottles? Wine merchants C Le Monnier found themselves with surplus stock which was no longer a profitable export to England after another 4s had been added to the duty there...

... and when it was time for a nightcap, Schweizer's Cocoatina was all the vogue, having arrived on the scene in about 1890 and now advertised regularly in these columns. The EP advert was fairly modest, lacking any graphics. It did mention that the Queen (presumably this was a reference to Victoria, but it didn't mention her by name) and Czar of Russia were fans of what advertising elsewhere claimed was 'The Queen of Cocoas', 'The best cocoa on earth' and 'The world's best cocoa'.

To reach St Malo and Granville hotels (see left) or the UK mainland, it was necessary to take a boat, and competition between the two main railway companies, London and South Western and Great Western, was fierce. There were daily adverts for the scheduled services and frequent excursions from Easter onwards to French ports