The first mention of Freemasonry in a newspaper can be found in The Tatler for Tuesday 7 June 1711. It is an anonymous letter addressed to Isaac Bickerstaff, pseudonym for Richard Steele, who established The Tatler on 12 April 1709. Referring to ongoing correspondence, the relevant text reads:

...But my Reason for troubling you at this present is, to put a Stop, if it may be, to an insinuating, increasing Set of People, who sticking to the Letter of your Treatise, and not to the Spirit of it, do assume the Name of Pretty fellows; nay, and even get new Names, as you very well hint. Some of them I have heard calling to one another... by the Names of, Betty, Nelly, and so forth. You see them accost each other with effeminate Airs: They have their Signs and Tokens like Free-masons: They rail at Womankind; ...

It should be noted that these ‘letters’ are often essays written by, and expressing the views of, the publisher. Two further mentions of Freemasonry appeared in The Tatler on 24 September 1709 and 29 April 1710, respectively.
    Not long after this, the premier Grand Lodge was formed, in June 1717, and soon the use of the press for announcements became increasingly frequent, including details of the admission of personalities “into the Society of Free-Masons”.
    On Saturday 5 August 1721, the admission of the Duke of Wharton at the King’s Arms Tavern in St Paul’s Church-Yard, was reported in the Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer. The entry is just a few lines on page 1993 (sic) of the paper, among a long list of general news items. It is the earliest report we have of Wharton’s masonic activities. He was later to become the 6th Grand Master in 1722 (the second Noble Grand Master) under circumstances controversial, at best. Many newspapers reported on his election on Monday 25 June 1722 at the Stationer’s Hall. These reports, showing underlying currents of tension in the fraternity, precede Grand Lodge minutes by a year.
    The event is also reported in Anderson’s ‘minutes’ published in the 1738 edition of the Constitutions which record on page 114 Warton’s irregular election. There is little doubt that Anderson used these same news reports as his source for the events that took place in the decades preceding the publication of the second Constitutions.
    Hints of antagonism towards the Craft, which appeared in the press gradually, soon turned into blatant attacks. The first printed exposure of masonic ritual appeared in No 4712 of The Flying Post or Post Master (April 11-13 1723) within weeks of the publication of Anderson’s Constitutions. (see my article in the last issue of FMT).
    The exposure was attached to an anonymous letter addressed To the Author of the Flying Post and is now referred to as A Mason’s Examination. It gives us the earliest insight into masonic ritual practised at the time. More exposures followed, including announcements and advertisements offering Prichard’s Masonry Dissected for sale. Read’s Weekly Journal went so far as to reprint, on 24 October 1730, Prichard’s exposure in the form of a 32 page 8vo pamphlet.
    These reports did not stop Grand Lodge, however, from using the press when it proved convenient. The minutes for 28 August 1730 resolved “that publick Notice be given in some of the publick News Papers, of the first day of the meeting of the Committee for the general Charity.”
    The best known newspaper connected to the ‘early’ history of Freemasonry is undoubtedly issue No 24 of The Westminster Journal or New Weekly Miscellany, dated 8 May 1742. Here we have a masonic event, the procession in 1741, recorded in detail and exclusively, albeit in an unfavourable light. The whole of the newspaper is dedicated to that one event, a subject well covered by several masonic historians. The publication of the Westminster Journal and other attacks led to a discontinuation of masonic public processions in 1747.
    Masonic ‘newspapers’, in the sense of daily information provided for masons, was an unknown concept. The weekly and monthly masonic periodicals, with just two exceptions, were only popularised in the 19th century. It is quite surprising therefore to find a weekly paper entitled The Free-Mason, dated 13 November 1733. In fact, The Free-Mason was an anomaly, having little to do with Freemasonry proper. Ceasing to be published under the title after three months, the 15 numbers referred to form parts 156 to 170 of a much larger series of 1000 issues of a periodical entitled The Hyp Doctor. A hint as to its title can be found in issue one, in which it states that the publisher, Sir Isaac Ratcliffe (identified as Orator Henley), had left the editor in charge while abroad in France. This may have given the anonymous author the opportunity to satirise, by way of metaphors and play on words, the concept of architecture. Alternatively, the title may have been inspired by a rival publication, The Craftsman. Each number of The Free-Mason is attributed to a different pseudonymous author, such as Tyle Stonehouse (issue one), while Christophera (Kitty) Wren, Vitruvius Britannicus and Inigo Jones authored other issues.
    There is an added important aspect of broadsheet No 5 (Tuesday 11 December 1733). The note at the end of the back page states: “London Sold by J Stevens and Mrs Dodd, without Temple Bar; Mrs Charlton at the end of Swithin’s-alley Royal Exchange, and at Charing-cross, by Mr Joliffe in St James’s Street; and at the other Pamphlet-shops” (my italics). This appears to be the earliest reference to the existence of pamphlet-shops in London. Incidentally, the pamphlet was being sold, among others, by one Mrs Dodd, “without Temple Bar”. It is only coincidental that this is the same Mrs Anne Dodd who lent her name to the 20 page pamphlet, The Beginning and First Foundation of the Most Worthy Craft of Masonry (1739). This is the Dodd Pamphlet in the Spencer family of Old Charges which, we now find, was on sale “at Pamphlet Shops at the Royal-Exchange, Charing Cross, and Westminster as advertised in No 6127 of The Daily Post of Monday 30 April 1739. Mrs Dodd took over her husband’s printing office in 1724.
    There have been no other masonic newspapers or journals in Britain (the first record of a masonic journal is that of Der Freimaurer, Leipzig, Germany, 1738) until the publication of The Sentimental and Masonic Magazine, published in Dublin from July 1792 to August 1795.
    Yasha Beresiner