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The Tottenham & Edmonton Weekly Herald 

In the days when local newspapers vied with one another to share the top stories in the area, the Tottenham & Edmonton Weekly Herald was the name that everyone knew and relied upon. It had a long run from 1861 until 1989. The newspaper premises were a familiar sight on the High Road, just north of White Hart Lane.

(The familiar sight of the Weekly Herald premises on the High Road, north of White Hart Lane, N17. From the collections and © Bruce Castle Museum and Archive)

Established in 1861 by George Cowing with the title The Tottenham & Edmonton Herald, the newspaper soon changed hands when it was taken over in 1864 by Edwin Herbert Crusha (c.1836 – 1914). By 1890 the newspaper had expanded to take on a new title of the Wood Green Weekly Herald.

There were many strings to Crusha’s bow – he was not only the manager under Cowing, a reporter and publisher, but also ran Crusha & Sons printing firm – an easy move over into newspaper printing and publishing. By the 1890s he was also the Registrar for the area for births, marriages and deaths – something that might have fitted well with being the newspaper proprietor and also printer of leaflets and invitations etc. (good for the public notices and personal family announcements). Crusha was listed in Directories as the vaccination officer for Tottenham. And, he was even a churchwarden in the Parish. 

There were plenty of printers locally in Tottenham - Hunnings, Fisk's, Coventry and Crusha's, to name just a few. Reliance on the printed word to get information ‘out there’ was key for all communications at a time before radio, television and social media.

(A carnival float advertising the Weekly Herald, 1950s. From the collections and © Bruce Castle Museum and Archive)

In the letterpress age, being a typesetter or ‘compositor’ was a highly skilled job. We may have all seen what typesetters used to make printed word on posters, leaflets and the like - the 'type' was made up of individual moveable letters, with the metal letter shape set on top of a wooden block. Typesetters put the type together by hand for each page - and it took some time. 

Crusha had nine children, with his first son also called Edwin (Arthur). He did not follow into the family trade of printing and publishing business. Instead he chose a musical career and was a minor composer. Read more about his life (and something about his father).

A photograph shared on ‘I Grew Up In Tottenham (Re-united)’, it shows the printing premises of Crusha & Son in 1920. It describes Mr Crusha being on the left of the photograph, with a 17-year-old compositor in the centre who was apprenticed to his own father on the right of the picture – both of the Edwards family. By this time Edwin Crusha Senior had died (in 1914; and was buried in the family grave in Tottenham Cemetery). The ‘Mr Crusha’ here is likely to be William Crusha, (1870 – 1949), another son of Edwin Senior, who took over the firm and newspaper business from his father. He lived in Lansdowne Road.

 (Crusha & Sons premises at 831 High Road, N17 in 1920. Photograph from ‘I Grew Up In Tottenham (Re-united)’)

When it came to the 1926 General Strike, William Crusha was in the minority in the newspaper business, with an anti-strike stance, and was soon to hit the headlines of the national news himself. As ‘Past Tense’ writes: ‘ “The local Heralds were strongly anti-strike in their editorials”. The owner was Mr Crusha. “His premises had to be continuously guarded by the police because of fear of reprisals”, and when distributed to newsagents they had to have a police escort to ensure delivery. Edmonton council decided not to place any adverts in his papers and opted not to cooperate with his reporters in response to Mr Crusha’s ‘scathing denunciation of the Edmonton Labour Councillors.’

The main source of news was from BBC broadcasts which suppressed news the government did not want broadcast. Radios were sold out from shops. Wood Green Library displayed a copy of news bulletins within minutes of their being broadcast.
In the newspaper room of the library “people swarmed in to hear the papers read aloud by those who reached them first”.

“The strike-breaking editions Crusha brought out achieved national publicity by the references to them, and the use made of them, in BBC news bulletins.”

Read more about this time from ‘Past Tense’.