The Observer

The very first ever advert for the Observer containing its mission statement. Photograph: guardian.co.uk The very first ever advert for the Observer containing its mission statement. Photograph: guardian.co.uk The first edition of the Observer appeared on 4 December 1791. WS Bourne, the founder of the newspaper, stated that it would share "the spirit of enlightened Freedom, decent Toleration and universal Benevolence." He also hoped that "the establishment of a Sunday newspaper would obtain him a rapid fortune." However within three years, Bourne, a man of minor literary ability and no commercial acumen, found himself £1,600 in debt and was attempting to sell the title to the government (they declined). The four-page first edition included news about crops, sending convicts to Botany Bay, fashionable residences and a new theatre on London's Drury Lane. It also had a dig at one of its competitors: 'A Morning Paper notoriously noted for its lies and blunders, has effrontery to baptize our infant Publication, 'a Sabbath breaking paper.' We would, with all due contempt, wish to know of this sanctified Print, which is the greater breach of the Sabbath, that of keeping a number of men at hard labour the whole of Sunday, for the Monday's paper, or that of employing but one or two individuals early on the Sunday morning, to give out the papers that have been composed and worked off the preceding evening and night?' 'A west-country gentleman, not much acquainted with the ways of London, expressed great surprise, a few nights ago, at the flocks of chicken prostitutes which he observed before Somerset House, and which he actually mistook for the pupils of some large boarding-school. One of the young wiffes, however, soon convinced him of his error, by granting a favour, which will probably retard his journey home for some time.' Read more about the history of the world's oldest Sunday newspaper on the Guardian News & Media archive site and The Observer at 220 .