George Wilkes

George Wilkes (1817 – September 23, 1885) was an American journalist and newspaper editor. A native of New York State, he became a journalist and after losing a libel case was imprisoned in New York City's jail; he wrote a pamphlet on the jail's conditions in 1844 based on his stay. The following year, Wilkes and a friend started publishing the National Police Gazette, a newspaper on crime reporting and other sensationalistic topics. In 1856 Wilkes bought a sporting newspaper called the Spirit of the Times, which he had previously worked for.

After selling the Gazette, he published and edited the Spirit until his death in 1885. Wilkes also wrote a couple of books on non-sporting topics and introduced pari-mutuel betting to the United States.

Early life Wilkes was born in 1817 in the state of New York in the United States. It is not sure who his parents were, although they may have been George Wilkes, a cabinet maker, and Helen. Little is known of his upbringing before he became a law clerk for Enoch E. Camp. where he wrote and edited under a pseudonym, "Startle". Among other topics, the Sunday Flash rated New York's brothels and published descriptions and reviews of them. In 1841 and 1842, Wilkes was one of a group of writers and publishers who were prosecuted and convicted of "publishing an obscene paper", for their depictions of prostitution in their newspapers. Wilkes had also been charged with libel, and he pled guilty and printed an apology to the person he was accused of libeling, but he chose to fight the obscenity charge, and went to trial in January 1842. This trial ended with one juror holding out for acquittal, so the prosecutor retried him in April 1842. This time Wilkes, on the advice of his attorney, pled guilty in return for a suspended sentence and a promise to stop working for the sensationalist press.

In 1843, Wilkes was brought before a judge for violating the previous agreement to stop working for "obscene papers". He had been covering the trial of Walsh as a reporter for Walsh's Subterranean and the district attorney claimed that this constituted a violation of his previous agreement. The judge sentenced him to a 30-day sentence, which was to be served in the city jail, the Tombs. After this stint, Wilkes wrote a pamphlet entitled The Mysteries of the Tombs: A Journal of Thirty Days Imprisonment in the N. Y. City Prison, which came out in 1844 and was based on his experiences in jail. Wilkes returned to the study of law after his stint in jail, and even called himself an attorney for a short time. Unlike the Sunday Flash, the Gazette focused its stories on criminals and the details of their crimes. Each issue ran a front page story detailing the life of some criminal, as part of a series titled "Lives of the Felons". Much of the appeal of the paper came from the sensationalist descriptions of the crimes, and the wood-cut illustrations of the crimes and felons. Because of Wilkes' and Camp's efforts to combat crime in New York through the Gazette, the offices of the newspaper were the subject of attacks by mobs stirred up by criminals. Although based on Jewett's life and death, there was much embellishment. Wilkes was a political advisor of Broderick's, but they quarreled over water issues in 1853 and Wilkes left California. Wilkes then traveled to Europe, turning the experience into another book, this one entitled Europe in a Hurry. The date when this occurred is unclear. The dates given in the sources range from in 1856, 1857,

Spirit of the Times

When Wilkes returned New York City, he began to work for William T. Porter's newspaper Spirit of the Times. Porter sold the paper in 1856 to Wilkes, who retained Porter on the newspaper's staff until Porter's death in 1858. Wilkes, however, renamed the paper to Porter's Spirit of the Times, a title it retained until 1859. as Wilkes drove the other paper out of business. Wilkes owned the surviving paper until his death in 1885.

Wilkes also used literary feuds with other newspapers, both in and out of the sporting press, to help his subscription rates. After the Civil War, Wilkes' Spirit was one of the three leading newspapers in New York City. Two, including the Spirit, of the three were mainly devoted to horse racing – the other being The Turf, Field and Farm by Sanders D. Bruce.

Later life

Wilkes was active in Republican Party political affairs and ran for the United States Congress against James Brooks, Wilkes, along with John Chamberlain and Marcus Cicero Stanley, introduced pari-mutuel betting in the United States. Wilkes also was active in promoting boxing, acting as the promoter for some prizefights. In 1871 he went to Paris to cover the Paris Commune, many of the ideals of which he shared. In 1877 he published his last work, Shakespeare from an American Point of View, which reflected his lifelong interest in William Shakespeare. This work was revised twice, with the third edition appearing in 1882. He died on September 23, 1885, in New York City, His heir was his daughter Alicia.