The People's Friend Magazine

7 July 2021

The People's Friend - Issue 7885 - 7 super stories, including 'The Unusual Suspects', a 1950s mystery by Katie Ashmore, and 'Best Served Cold', a comic tale set in Italy by Stefania Hartley. And in our features, Neil McAllister explores the delights to be found around Ellesmere Port, and Douglas McPherson recalls when the world went crazy for the Bay City Rollers! Plus more stories, serials, health, gardening, knitting, recipes, travel, and much more inside. --- Back in 1869, when the recently widowed Victoria was on the throne and Gladstone was Prime Minister, when Alexander Graham Bell was yet to make the first telephone call and Darwin's "Origin Of Species" had been published just ten years earlier, a brand-new magazine - "The People's Friend" - hit the shelves for the very first time. Right from the start, the "Friend's" mission statement was clear: "We intend that fully one half of the 'Friend' shall be devoted to fiction... the 'Friend' being intended for fireside reading, nothing will be admitted into its columns having the slightest tendency to corrupt the morals either of old or young." As the years passed, the "Friend" grew and thrived. Through massive social upheaval, wars, strikes, financial crashes and natural disasters, the magazine continued, dispensing entertainment, instruction, comfort and good cheer to its readers. It became a constant in readers' lives; a true friend to turn to in times of trouble.