William Clowes was the founder of the vast printing establishment
from which these sheets are issued; and his career furnishes
another striking illustration of the force of industry and
character. He was born on the 1st of January, 1779. His father
was educated at Oxford, and kept a large school at Chichester;
but dying when William was but an infant, he left his widow, with
straitened means, to bring up her family. At a proper age
William was bound apprentice to a printer at Chichester; and,
after serving him for seven years, he came up to London, at the
beginning of 1802, to seek employment as a journeyman. He
succeeded in finding work at a small office on Tower Hill, at a
small wage. The first lodgings he took cost him 5s. a week; but
finding this beyond his means he hired a room in a garret at 2s.
6d., which was as much as he could afford out of his scanty
earnings.
The first job he was put to, was the setting-up of a large
poster-bill--a kind of work which he had been accustomed to
execute in the country; and he knocked it together so expertly
that his master, Mr. Teape, on seeing what he could do, said to
him, "Ah! I find you are just the fellow for me." The young man,
however, felt so strange in London, where he was without a friend
or acquaintance, that at the end of the first month he thought of
leaving it; and yearned to go back to his native city.
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