The first edition was published on 29 December 1918. The first editor was John Turner Fearon (1869–1937), who left the
Dublin-based ''
Freeman's Journal'' to take up the position. David Brookes, who edited the
Mercury between 2000 and 2008, returned to Birmingham in November 2009 and is now responsible for the
Sunday Mercury as Editor-in-Chief along with the
Birmingham Post and
Birmingham Mail. The paper had a circulation of more than 60,000 in 2006 but the average had dropped to below 25,000 in 2014. ==References==