The Hartlepool Mail started life as the daily Northern Evening Mail for Durham and North Yorkshire in 1877. It was published in Hartlepool by influential industrialists in the area, who had formed the South Durham Newspaper Company in 1866 to produce the twopenny weekly South Durham Herald.

Initially comprising 4 pages, the Northern Evening Mail was enlarged the same year and changed its name to the Northern Daily Mail and South Durham Herald in 1883.

In 1884, it was bought by the syndicate formed between Andrew Carnegie and Samuel Storey. When the syndicate failed, Storey kept the Mail. Its politics had previously been Conservative, but under Storey’s ownership, the Mail became a Liberal paper, although Storey’s liberal views were often at odds with the Party’s.