Cyril Arthur Pearson
Encyclopedia
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(24 February 1866 – 9 December 1921) was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
newspaper magnate
Business magnate
A business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...
and publisher
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
, most noted for founding the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
.
Family and Early life
Pearson was born in the village of WookeyWookey
Wookey is a village and civil parish west of Wells, on the River Axe in the Mendip district of Somerset, England. Wookey is often confused with its sister village Wookey Hole which is perhaps best known today for the Wookey Hole Caves...
, Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
to Arthur Cyril and Phillippa Massingberd Maxwell (Lyte) Pearson and educated at the prestigious Winchester College
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...
in Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
. His father was Rector of Drayton Parslow in Buckinghamshire, England per the District 16, Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire, England 1881 Census. His first job was as a journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
working for the London-based publisher George Newnes
George Newnes
Sir George Newnes, 1st Baronet was a publisher and editor in England.-Background and education:...
on Tit-Bits
Tit-Bits
Tit-Bits was a British weekly magazine founded by George Newnes on 22 October 1881 until 18 July 1984, when it was taken over by Associated Newspapers' Weekend, which itself closed in 1989. The last editors were David Hill and Brian Lee...
magazine. Within his first year he had impressed Newnes enough for him to make him his principal assistant.
In December 1887, Pearson married Isobel Sarah Bennett, the daughter of Canon Frederick Bennett, of Maddington, Wiltshire, with whom he had three daughters.
In 1897, Pearson married, as his second wife, Ethel Fraser
Ethel Pearson
Ethel Maud, Lady Pearson, DBE , née Ethel Maud Fraser, was a British humanitarian.On 3 June 1897, she married, as his second wife, the publisher Arthur Pearson, who was created a baronet in 1916. She became heavily involved in St Dunstan's Hostel for the Blind, the home for blinded soldiers that...
, daughter of William John Fraser. Ethel was the mother of Pearson's son and heir Neville Pearson
Sir Neville Arthur Pearson, 2nd Baronet
Neville Arthur Pearson was born on 13 February 1898 in Frensham, Surrey, England.He was the son of the British newspaper magnate to Sir C. Arthur and Ethel Maud Pearson. His father, who was blind and a journalist, died in 1921. He succeeded his father as publisher of a number of magazines...
.
Career
In 1890, after six years of working for Newnes, Pearson left to form his own publishing business and within three weeks had created the periodical journal Pearson's Weekly, the first issue of which sold a quarter of a million copies.A philanthropist
Philanthropy
Philanthropy etymologically means "the love of humanity"—love in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, or enhancing; humanity in the sense of "what it is to be human," or "human potential." In modern practical terms, it is "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of...
, in 1892 he established the charitable Fresh Air Fund, still in operation and now known as Pearson's Holiday Fund, to enable disadvantaged children to partake in outdoor activities.
In 1898, he purchased the Morning Herald, and in 1900 merged it into his new creation, the halfpenny Daily Express. The Express was a departure from the papers of its time and created an immediate impact by carrying news instead of only advertisements on its front page. He was also successful in establishing papers in provincial locations such as the Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
Daily Gazette. He came into direct competition with the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
and in the resulting commercial fight almost took control of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, being nominated as its manager, but the deal fell through.
In 1898, Pearson founded The Royal Magazine
The Royal Magazine
The Royal Magazine was a monthly British literary magazine that was published between 1898 and 1939. Its founder and publisher was Sir Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet....
, a monthly literary magazine
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
which remained in publication until 1939.
In 1900 Pearson despatched the explorer and adventurer Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard to Patagonia
Patagonia
Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...
to investigate dramatic reports of a giant hairy mammal inhabiting the forests, and conjectured to be a giant ground sloth
Mylodon
Mylodon is an extinct genus of giant ground sloth that lived in the Patagonia area of South America until roughly 10,000 years ago.Mylodon weighed about and stood up to tall when raised up on its hind legs. Preserved dung has shown it was a herbivore. It had very thick hide and had osteoderms...
, long since extinct. Hesketh-Prichard's reports from 5,000 miles away gripped readers of The Express, despite him finding no trace of the creature.
During this same period, Pearson was also active as a writer, and wrote a number of tourist guides to locations in Britain and Europe. Under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of "Professor P R S Foli", he wrote Handwriting as an Index to Character in 1902, as well as works on fortune-telling
Fortune-telling
Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination...
and dream interpretation
Dream interpretation
Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. In many ancient societies, such as those of Egypt and Greece, dreaming was considered a supernatural communication or a means of divine intervention, whose message could be unravelled by people with certain powers...
.
Pearson was a strong supporter of Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain was an influential British politician and statesman. Unlike most major politicians of the time, he was a self-made businessman and had not attended Oxford or Cambridge University....
's tariff-reform movement, and organised the Tariff Reform League
Tariff Reform League
The Tariff Reform League was a pressure group formed in 1903 to protest against 'unfair' foreign imports and to advocate Imperial Preference to protect British industry from foreign competition. It was well funded and included politicians, intellectuals and businessmen, and was popular with the...
in 1903, becoming its first chairman.
In 1904 he purchased the struggling The Standard and its sister paper the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
for £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
700,000 from the Johnstone family. He merged the Evening Standard with his St James Gazette and changed the Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
stance of both papers into a pro-Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
one, but was unsuccessful in arresting the slide in sales and in 1910 sold them to the MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Sir Davison Dalziel and Sir Alexander Henderson.
Loss of eyesight and later life
Glaucoma
Glaucoma is an eye disorder in which the optic nerve suffers damage, permanently damaging vision in the affected eye and progressing to complete blindness if untreated. It is often, but not always, associated with increased pressure of the fluid in the eye...
despite a 1908 operation, Pearson was progressively forced from 1910 onwards to relinquish his newspaper interests; the Daily Express eventually passed, in November 1916, under the control of the Canadian–British tycoon Sir Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook
Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook
William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Bt, PC, was a Canadian-British business tycoon, politician, and writer.-Early career in Canada:...
.
Through the British and Foreign Blind Association, Pearson published his Pearson's Easy Dictionary in Braille
Braille
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...
form in 1912. Later completely blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
, Pearson was made president of the National Institution for the Blind in 1914, raising its income from £8,000 to £360,000 in only eight years. In 1915, he founded St Dunstan's
St Dunstan's
St Dunstan's is a large national charity in the United Kingdom, providing support, rehabilitation and respite care to blind ex-service personnel of the British Armed Forces....
Home for soldiers blinded by gas attack
Poison gas in World War I
The use of chemical weapons in World War I ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas and the severe mustard gas, to lethal agents like phosgene and chlorine. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. The killing capacity of...
or trauma during the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Its goal, radical for the times, was to provide vocational training rather than charity for invalided servicemen, and thus to enable them to carry out independent and productive lives. Pearson's dedication to this work led to him receiving a Baronetcy on 12 July 1916, whereupon he took the title Pearson, 1st Baronet of St Dunstan's
Pearson Baronets
There have been three Baronetcies for persons with the surname Pearson, all in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. Two of the creations are extant as of 2010....
, London. He received the GBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in 1917.
Pearson was a close friend of the pioneer of the Scouting
Scouting
Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement with the stated aim of supporting young people in their physical, mental and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society....
movement Baden-Powell
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Bt, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB , also known as B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement....
, and supportive of his efforts in setting up the movement and publishing its magazine The Scout. When Pearson's scheme for publishing in Braille
Braille
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...
was faltering due to lack of funds, on 2 May 1914 Baden-Powell publicly requested that "all Scouts perform a 'good turn' for The Scout magazine publisher Mr C Arthur Pearson, in order to raise money for his scheme of publishing literature in Braille for the blind."
In 1919, Pearson wrote the book Victory over blindness: how it was won by the men of St. Dunstan's. He founded the Greater London Fund for the Blind
Greater London Fund for the Blind
The Greater London Fund for the Blind is a British charity. It was formed in 1921 by Sir Arthur Pearson to co-ordinate the raising of funds to improve the lives of blind and visually impaired people in London....
in 1921, funded by the establishment of its annual 'Geranium Day' appeal.
Death
Pearson died on 9 December 1921 when he drowned in his bath after knocking himself unconscious in a fall. He was buried in Hampstead CemeteryHampstead Cemetery
Hampstead Cemetery is a historic cemetery in West Hampstead, London, located at the upper extremity of the NW6 district. Despite the name, the cemetery is three-quarters of a mile from Hampstead Village, and bears a different postcode...
after a service to which the Cabinet, the British and Norwegian royal families, and many institutes for the blind all sent official representatives. Two of his pallbearer
Pallbearer
A pall-bearer is one of several funeral participants who helps carry the casket of a deceased person from a religious or memorial service or viewing either directly to a cemetery or mausoleum, or to and from the hearse which carries the coffin....
s were blind. He was survived by his wife, son and three daughters.
In 1922 his biography, The Life of Sir Arthur Pearson, was written by Sidney Dark.