JOHN HARKNESS PUBLISHER
& PRINTER OF BROADSHEETS
John Harkness was a publisher and well-known
printer in Preston who during the greater part of the nineteenth century,
produced a tremendous amount of publications. It is a great pity that so little
of his work has survived, for although now famous as a Broadsheet printer his
work was by 
no means confined to this field alone. In 1840 he printed a
religious "Chap Book" containing sixteen pages of carols, then in 1866
he published two fine works "A Garland of Verse" and "A Directory
of North Lancashire". One of his major works was printing and publishing in
1874, a short lived newspaper "The Preston Illustrated Times", but it
is without doubt that his main source of income was from the printing,
publishing and selling of ‘Broadsheets’.
Now what were these Broadsheets, or Broadsides
, which were so universally popular almost since the introduction of printing? They were the simplest and cheapest form of spreading information and giving amusement; they were printed on flimsy paper and varied in size, the most popular being 9½ " x 8 ". In almost every instance they were illustrated by wood cuts, often very crude but some of fine quality. The subjects most successful were of a sensational nature comprising of ballads, abbreviated histories, comic tales, political litanies, dialogues, murders, elopements, love tragedies, robberies, shipwrecks, pirates anything of a gruesome and exciting nature! They were nearly all written in bad verse and sung to the most popular tunes of the period. They were sold in the streets of cities and towns, often in long lengths, several together, so much by the yard. There was a ditty sung when doing this:"Three yards a penny – Three yards a penny, Songs, Songs, Songs"
If the song was about a particularly gory murder the seller would do a roaring trade.
Harkness began printing Broadsheets in 1838 and was producing them until 1875 when they began to lose popularity due to advances in education and the many forms of cheap periodicals which flooded the market. Unfortunately, none of the Harkness Broadsheets are dated, but they were numbered and ran from No.1 to beyond 1,200.
Whilst we can’t be certain of the total output from Harkness’s printshop, or it may be that he was the most prolific producer of the ‘Pace Egg’ or ‘Peace Egg’ chap books in Lancashire. Not only were they sold locally but in West Yorkshire and in many of the cotton towns around Manchester.
Copies of Harkness’s peace egg chap book are held at the local studies libraries of Manchester, Oldham and Preston, as well as Cambridge University, Sheffield University, the Osborne Collection in Toronto Public Library, and the Opie Collection at the Bodleian library, Oxford. Other copies are held in private collections.
His first business premises were in Manchester Road (formerly called Water Street). Afterwards, he was at two different addresses in Church Street and finally moved to North Road.
John Harkness died in 1888 at the age of 82. When he died the bulk of his stock and printing materials were transported to Blackburn and sold for a pittance.
Such is the end of a man and his printing press who made history by the production of Broadsheets. There are scarcely any Prestonians who know anything about Harkness.
"A prophet is not without honour save in his own country"
Roy Smith