Evidence of William Edward Hickson to Select Committee on Newspaper stamps: "My experience is this: that what interested me most of all in newspaper reading, and what first formed the habit of reading with me, was reading the accidents and offences in the 'Examiner' newspaper. There were two volumes which my father had had bound up for the years 1808 and 1809; and when I was just beginning to read to got hold of them, and read through the accidents and offences in those two volumes. Now I should never look at those accidents and offences, but I read the leading articles. So that it really produced this effect: it was the means of developing my intellectual powers and I believe that a similar kind of reading would produce the same effect generally throughout the country."