Draft:Capital (Indian newspaper)

Capital - A Weekly Journal of Commerce, Industry and Finance, was India's oldest financial newspaper, covering trade, economic output, industry, infrastructure development, public affairs and current events.[1] It was published in Kolkata. Its original subtitle was "A Weekly Commercial Paper Devoted to the Interests of Capitalists and Employers of Labour". Its frequency of publication varied from weekly to fortnightly to monthly. In its weekly version it ran from 32 to as many as 80 pages. It included "Ditcher's Diary", which provided personalised comments on business and financial news, and introduced the convention of publishing indices of stocks and shares from the Calcutta Stock Exchange.

Capital was initially the creation of William Harold Targett. Targett was a larger than life character who had left England as a young man, first going to Australia, pearling on the north-west coast, before moving to Kolkata and starting a career in publishing working for Thacker Spink and Co, and later as advertising manager for The Statesman. He started several newspapers, notably the Asian, a sporting newspaper, in 1878, which ran up to 1914. Wrongly believed to be Australian, "he had all the Australian disregard for tradition, was no respecter of persons, and after joining the Mustard Club had evidently been weaned on vinegar for he owned a tongue that could shave a porcupine"[2]. The British businessmen Shirley Tremearne soon took an interest in this new publication and became its editor in 1890 [3]. Shirley Tremearne was descended from an old Cornish family and moved to India aged 20 in 1868, settling in Kolkata in 1886. He was the founder and managing director of the Great Eastern Hotel.[4] The newspaper was headquartered close to the Great Eastern Hotel in Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah Sarani (formerly known as Waterloo Street). He remained the editor of Capital until he retired from public life aged 73 in 1921. He stayed in India until his death in 1923.

A 1917 compendium of information about the British Crown possession of Bengal noted that "Although Capital is primarily a financial review, its pages are crammed with good readable articles on political, social, trading, and other items of general interest... This paper was never more influential and powerful than it is today, and there is no paper published in India which is so well known in other countries as Capital, or which can give greater facilities for advertisements relating to financial and commercial concerns".[5] After Indian independence, the editor of Capital was Australian journalist Neil McInnes. When he left India for Europe in 1953, Capital was edited by George Barrell.[6] . Capital's last editor was veteran PR man and old communist leader Jolly Mohan Kaul [7]

Capital ceased publication in 1979.

References

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  1. ^ Magire, Aruna and Alspach, Judy : "Preserving Capital: An Important News Source for Indian Economic History" Focus on Global Resources, Fall 2015, Vol. 35, Num. 1, published by the Center for Research Libraries, Global Resources Network, Chicago https://www.crl.edu/focus/article/11934
  2. ^ Hobbs, Major, H. "John Barleycorn Bahadur, Old Time Taverns in India", published by Calcutta H Hobbs, 1933
  3. ^ "Shirley Tremearne: The ambitious hotelier who created India's first financial newspaper", The Indian Express, updated 30 September 2024, https://indianexpress.com/article/research/shirley-tremearne-the-ambitious-hotelier-who-created-indias-first-financial-newspaper-9596209/
  4. ^ Chattopadhyay, Devasis (2024), "Harry Hobbs of Kolkata and Other Forgotten Lives" published by Paper Missile Books, ISBN: 978-81-19626-14-4
  5. ^ Playne, Somerset; Bond, J.W., and Wright, Arnold (1917): "Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa: their history, people, commerce and industrial resources", published by Foreign and Colonial Compiling and Publishing Co., London http:// babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951p0114 0315f;view=1up;seq=728
  6. ^ Obituary: George Barrell, 1924-2004, Military History Journal, Vol 13 No 2 - December 2004, published by the South African Military History Society, Cape Town. http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol132gb.html
  7. ^ Chakraborty, Nitya, "Decoding the Life of Shirley Tremearne - Founder of India's First Business weekly "Capital", Newspack by India Press Agency, 2024 https://ipanewspack.com/decoding-the-life-of-shirley-tremearne-founder-of-indias-first-business-weekly-capital/