Welsh Journals

Welsh was a barbarous tongue and an irksome barrier to fuller social and commercial intercourse, English businessmen almost wholly neglected it. In one exceptional week, Seren Gomer printed fifteen advertisements, filling five columns, but half a dozen, filling two columns or less, was more usual, and many of these were put in by David Jenkin himself to advertise his stationery and bookselling business. The G.P.O. and the War Office sent one or two, and Benjamin Hall sent an election address. Lacking advertisements, and with subscribers falling away, the paper was soon in financial difficulty. In November 1814, another £ 2,000 was advanced by the proprietors to keep it alive. On 4 January 1815, the day of publication was changed to Wednesday, in the hope that, as a mid-weekly, it would find more subscribers. By 1 February 1815, the proprietors were despairing of success, and, on 5 April, raised the price to 8d., appealing for 2,000 subscribers, and urging chapels and villages to form reading groups, so that the paper might just pay its way by sales alone. With the number for 9 August 1815 it ceased, after 85 issues. The proprietors lost heavily. Before the end of the year its double-crown press and typefount were offered for sale,2 and John Voss, its treasurer, was still trying to collect outstanding debts in 1816.3 Seren Gomer, as a newspaper, was similar in size to the early Cambrian, having four pages, each 20" by 14^ It was revived in 1818 as a fortnightly, and in 1820 as a monthly magazine. In 1825, after the death of Joseph Harris, it was bought by John Evans, the proprietor of the Carmarthen Journal, whose son, William Evans, sold it in 1836 to the Reverend Joshua Watkins of Carmarthen, a Baptist minister.4 Thereafter, with many changes of ownership and places of publication, it survived into the twentieth century. 1 D. R. Stephen, Gweithiau Joseph Harris, p. xvii, says they lost more than £ 1,000. Cambrian, 25 November 1815. 8 Cambrian, 1 March 1816. 4 Carmarthen Journal, 23 December 1836.