The East London Advertiser has turned 150 with a 40-page supplement spanning the history of the East End written by its only dedicated reporter, who described the pull-out as a “labour of love”.
The weekly title, owned by Archant, first went to print in 1866 and has reported on Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel murders in 1888, the Siege of Sydney Street in 1911, the Blitz and the fall of the Krays in 1969.
Its “colourful history” is abridged along a timeline in the supplement, which is the second for reporter Mike Brooke who also helped put together the 140th anniversary special ten years ago. Brooke has been at the paper since 2003 and has covered local news in East London since the 1960s.
Famous former journalists – including Richard Madeley, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Steve Harley and Arthur Edwards – have also shared their memories of working at the Advertiser in the paper this week.
Brooke said: “I burned the midnight oil researching and writing this huge supplement, while still putting out the regular weekly editions.
“But then it was a labour of love, working on it each evening after work for the past four weeks, but something I would never have missed.
“Luckily the East End is the best news patch in London, so it was not too hard to fill the paper day-by-day.”
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