Caters News is the UK’s oldest independent press agency and was founded in 1927 by Herbert S Cater. Mr Cater came from a family who ran a building business in Barnstaple in the West Country. He served in the tank corps in the first war, he moved around the country before settling in Birmingham, as a sub editor on the Evening Gazette.

He later moved to the Gazette’s sister paper, the Evening Despatch before he decided to go it alone and set up his own freelance agency in 1927. Caters was born. The move – at the height of the 1920’s economic depression and during a time when journalists didn’t make the news themselves – was a brave one. And little did he know the small freelance agency he founded would become the international news, picture and video agency it is today.

During the early days, the agency began covering court stories and business meetings which extended to writing and publishing monthly magazines for the big Birmingham industrials – all on typewriters of course!