The Morning Press and Channel Islands Advertiser was launched in 1860, the same year that the well-established British Press and Jersey Times merged.
Title changed
It changed its title in 1864 to the Jersey Express and Channel Islands Advertiser, which would eventually have its headquarters and be printed at 13 Broad Street, which had been home to the British Press. We have not been able to establish where the newspaper was published from in its early days.
It appears to have been launched by Edmund Francis Carrel, previously proprietor of the Jersey Independent, which had launched in 1855 and continued in publication until 1910.
Carrel was an Englishman, born in Southampton in 1841, the son of Samuel James Carrel and Esther. By 1871 he was living at 13 Broad Street and described in the census as a newspaper proprietor employing 16 staff. He was married to Amelia, born in Jersey in 1829, and the couple had four children, Edmund, Julia, Henry and Lucy. In 1881 Edmund, the eldest, was a clerk in his father's business.
Partnership
But it appears that even though Edmund Francis Carrel was the public face of the newspaper, and a prominent member of the St Helier Municipality, serving as a Centenier, the newspaper business was a partnership with John Edward Styles. He was also listed in business at 13 Broad Street in the 1871 census. Born in Jersey in 1836, and married to Susan Vincent Bennett (1832- ), they had a daughter Isabella, born in 1868. The census showed him as a printer, and subsequent returns showed him as a 'compositor', but there seems no doubt that he was Edmund Carrel's partner.
Almanac listings variously show 13 Broad Street as occupied by the Jersey Express or Mr Styles, and in 1888 there is a record of Carrel and Styles in partnership. By the turn of the century, however, the business was running into difficulties and a limited company was formed in 1900, only to become insolvent the following year. Initially the newspaper had been published three times a week, eventually becoming a daily, but it clearly could not compete with the Evening Post after its launch in 1890, and the Jersey Independent would soon go the same way.
