in
The Dublin Gazette of the
mourning dress required of visitors to
Dublin Castle after the 1901
death of Queen Victoria In 1670, when
Elisha Leighton became
Chief Secretary for Ireland, he began a gazette in Dublin, but stopped after a few months because there was "so little news to 'stuff it. Notices relating to Ireland were occasionally published in the
London Gazette, for example the
statutory preparation for the 1679
Irish Parliament. In late 1688
James II fled London and
was deposed as king; in 1689 he established a power base in Dublin,
summoned an Irish Parliament in May and established a gazette. After James lost the
Battle of the Boyne to
William III, the office of
King's Printer was restored to
Andrew II Crooke, whose
Dublin Intelligence claimed to be "published by authority" from 1690 to 1693. This newspaper's official status was marginal; Dublin Castle made little input and reprimanded it for publishing a "scandalous" notice from the
Jacobite Sir
Theobald Butler. In 1705, under the
Lord Lieutenancy of the
2nd Duke of Ormonde, a new
Dublin Gazette was founded, although in its early days it was only two pages in length. The earliest surviving copy, dated 9 February 1706, is numbered as Issue 84 and is held in
the Library of
Trinity College Dublin (TCD). The first act of the
Parliament of Ireland referring to the
Gazette was in 1727, requiring the publication in "the
Dublin-Gazette published by authority" of the details of each new inmate in
debtors' prison, for the benefit of creditors. That year three different periodicals were using the title "Dublin Gazette": the authorised one printed and published by J. Gowan from 21 June; another by Christopher Dickson was titled the "Dublin Gazette" from 3 June until 4 July, when it was renamed ''Dickson's News-Letter and Flying Post''; while Thomas Hume's
Dublin Courant was in August 1726 renamed
The Dublin Gazette: or, Weekly Courant, and continued until at least 1729. The official status of the
Gazette, through various changes of printer, is unclear prior to 21 August 1750, when the series of copies collected in the Chief Secretary's Office begins with issue No. 1. Until some decades later, ownership of the title and any profits remained with the printer. Until the 1770s,
The Dublin Gazette had less of the character of an organ of government than its London counterpart, since it included
foreign news reports and private advertisements besides official notices. A notice subsequently appeared in the
Gazette on 13 April 1776, dated from Dublin Castle on 27 March, stating "that it is his majesty's royal pleasure, that for the future, the
Dublin Gazette shall, as nearly as possible, be put upon the same footing as the
London Gazette; and that it shall contain no other articles of news than such as are authorized by his majesty's government of this kingdom, or duly authenticated; and his excellency the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland has appointed Mr W. Roseingrave compiler of the said Dublin Gazette." The office of Compiler of
The Dublin Gazette was in fact a
sinecure; William Roseingrave had been first appointed
during pleasure under
letters patent on 20 April 1763, at which time he was already under secretary to the Second Secretary. Roseingrave died in 1780 and was succeeded by William Williams Hewitt, son of
James Hewitt, 1st Viscount Lifford; he died in 1798 and was succeeded by Nicholas Price, a relative of
Viscount Castlereagh. Murphy surmises that, the year between the
1798 Rebellion and the
Act of Union, the Irish government felt it needed total control. The Union abolished the Irish Parliament and hugely decreased the work for a King's Printer, such that printing the
Gazette provided most of Grierson's business for several years. In the
financial years 1819 to 1820, fees paid by the government to Grierson for printing notices in the
Dublin Gazette amounted to £6,354, compared to a total of £15,021 for printing in various private newspapers. As part of the 1817 absorption of the
Exchequer of Ireland into the
British Exchequer, the office of Compiler was among those scheduled to be abolished upon the demise of the present holder. In 1834, George III Grierson testified that he as printer paid fees of £1200 to Price as Compiler, that Price also received a salary of £300 from the
Dublin Castle administration, and that Price did no work but was
accountable for any errors. Price denied that his office was a sinecure, but in September 1836 he surrendered his patent in return for an annual pension of £1,590, which
The Spectator reckoned eight times the value of the work he had been doing. In 1850,
Alexander Thom took over as printer from Grierson's sons. Changes in 1836 and 1850 meant the printer produced the
Gazette on a contract basis rather than retaining the profits, and government notices were included without charge. Legal changes during the
Tithe War of the 1830s required
Church of Ireland ministers to place notices relating to their tithes within the
Gazette, causing them to complain at the expense, responsibility for which was uncertain. In 1865, the
Irish Court for Criminal Cases Reserved said that an 1857 issue of
The Dublin Gazette which stated it was "printed by authority" was not
prima facie admissible evidence under a statute requiring it to state that it was "printed by the Queen's authority". By contrast, the
High Court of Justice in Ireland ruled in 1902 that a similar statute was satisfied by a 1902 issue which stated at the start it was "published by authority" and at the end that it was "printed under the authority of
His Majesty's Stationery Office". In evidence to an official enquiry in 1856, the Secretary to the Commissioners of Charitable Donations and Bequests for Ireland noted that a bequest for £3,000 had gone unclaimed for years despite being posted in the
Gazette, and said, "there ought to be some better medium than the
Gazette, which, it has been said, is a place to keep a secret." When an 1891
Land Purchase Bill required certain notices be printed in the
Dublin Gazette,
Thomas Sexton secured an additional requirement to place the notice in a newspaper published in the same county as the land for purchase; he argued "that
Gazette only circulates among officials, mainly in the City of Dublin". Until September 1887 the
Gazette published average cereal prices from major towns. In 1898 the cessation was ruled in court to have the unintended consequence that
quarter sessions and the
Irish Land Commission lost their statutory power to alter agricultural rents based on the reported prices. In the debate on the 1900 bill that removed the anomaly,
Independent Nationalist MP
Tim Healy said, "the editor of the
Dublin Gazette ... is the one journalist who is always entitled to my sympathy, and I suppose he was so busy printing
coercion proclamations that, in the language of
Fleet Street, his columns were "crowded out," and he had no room for printing the corn returns. ... I think also that if these corn returns in the
Dublin Gazette, and even if the
Gazette itself disappeared, Ireland as a whole would not be sorry." At the beginning of the
Easter Rising of 1916, the
Gazette published a proclamation by
Lord Wimborne, as
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, of
martial law. This stated that "certain evilly disposed persons" had "with deadly weapons attacked the
Forces of the Crown".
The Gazette ceased publication during the Rising and for more than a week following it, with the result that a compendium issue was later published for the period between 25 April and 9 May 1916.
Printers ==Supersession==