BEFORE Manchester or Liverpool had evening newspapers, Bolton had its Evening News - the first independent halfpenny evening paper in England other than a Shipping Gazette in South Shields.

The publication date was Tuesday, March 19, 1867. Queen Victoria was 30 years into her 63-year reign and, if she knew anything at all about this corner of Lancashire, it was probably that, centuries earlier, the Earl of Derby had been executed here.

The Bolton Improvement Act of 1850 had instigated many changes and the town was acquiring new streets and property. Traders began to take a pride in their premises.

John Tillotson, having achieved the industrious apprentice's dream and married his master's sister, set up his own printing firm when his son, William Frederic, was six years old.

During the child's early years, Bolton was steeped in poverty; more than half the town's 60 cotton mills were closed or on short time.

In the 1850s, the situation improved somewhat and efforts were made to clear the cellar dwellings in which one 12th of the population scrabbled to survive.

Describing that period, a former editor of the BEN, Frank Singleton, wrote: "Bolton itself reflected some of the most important changes of the times.

"The town's yarns were known all over the world - plain and figured muslins, brocades, fustians, twills, counterpanes and quilts.

"Bleaching was carried out on a large scale. The population was over 60,000 and on an average one person from every house in Bolton was a cotton factory worker."

But in the early 1860s there was much local distress and soup kitchens opened as mills closed when the American Civil War caused a shortage of raw cotton.

By 1866, W F Tillotson was a partner in the firm and trying to talk his father round to his idea of establishing an evening newspaper. His prudent father pointed to the failure of two previous publishing ventures, the Bolton Literary Journal and The Working Man's Friend, but his son got his way and, on his 23rd birthday, the first Bolton Evening News appeared.

The paper's title had been agreed in conversation with his close friend, minister the Rev W Hope Davison in the vestry of the St George's Road Congregational Church, and the cleric later became the paper's first leader writer.

The account books showed advertising receipts of £11 2s 4d for the first week of publication; from wholesale sales came £15 13s 11d, and from retail sales, 17s 6d; a total turnover of £27 13s 9d.

That first year was a busy one. The cornerstone of Bolton's new parish church was laid before several thousand spectators by the man footing the whole bill for the structure, Peter Ormrod Esq, of Halliwell Hall.

Later in 1867, a fire at Messrs Tootal Broadhurst, Lee and Company's Sunnyside Mill at Daubhill, caused £10,000s worth of damage. Also there was the Fenian Agitation, subsequent to which Allen, Larkin and Gould were hanged at Salford for the murder of Police Sgt Brett.

In Bolton, 1,022 special constables were sworn in and the borough's mills were watched day and night lest they be sabotaged by agitators.

However short of cash the BEN's first year may have been, it was not, by any standards, short of news - or readers.