Potter, Frederick Peel Eldon (1838/9–p.1898?), newspaper editor, was born probably in Co. Cork, son of J. W. Potter, printer and bookbinder, who had set up an unsuccessful paper, the Bee, in Kinsale in the early 1830s. The family was of Welsh origin. In 1857 the 18-year-old Potter, then working as an auctioneer, started a paper, the Skibbereen or West Carbery Eagle; or South Western Advertiser. It began as a monthly sideline and Potter – with the help of his father, and possibly, a brother – managed everything himself, including writing copy, setting, printing, and selling. The paper proved so successful that it soon progressed from a monthly four-page broadsheet to a weekly. Its areas were literature, science, and politics and its tone was determinedly, even risibly, cosmopolitan. The goings-on of London society were detailed under ‘Town talk’, and Potter became notorious for his editorial warning that the Skibbereen Eagle had its eye on the tsar of Russia. Hugh Oram writes that ‘with that grandiose but almost throwaway remark . . . no phrase from an Irish newspaper in over 300 years of publishing has since achieved such worldwide fame’ (Paper tigers, 53). It is not known when the phrase was first used, possibly in an editorial in 1871, but there is evidence that Francis Sylvester Mahony (qv), author of The reliques of Father Prout, circulated the remark earlier. Potter may even have adopted rather than invented the phrase, but he certainly capitalised on its fame and returned to it frequently in the editorials of his paper, which in 1868 was renamed the West Cork and Carbery Eagle and in 1891 became the Eagle and County Cork Advertiser.
In 1872 Potter started the Cork Evening Echo and bought, together with Daniel Gillman, the Irish Daily Telegraph, formerly the Southern Reporter. This appeared thrice weekly and claimed to have the largest circulation in Cork. Posing as liberal and independent, it was nationalist in tone, advocating home rule and the principles of the Tenant League. However, Potter overreached himself. The expense of frequent publishing was great and both papers – the Cork Evening Echo and the Irish Daily Telegraph – ceased publication in 1873.
In May 1892 Potter was part of a delegation of businessmen to the house of commons to petition the chancellor of the exchequer to allocate funds to improve mail services between America and Cork. Six years later he was still active as the proprietor of the Eagle and County Cork Advertiser, and still warning people against the tsar of Russia, but there is no record of him after 1898. In May 1907 a Frederick Peel Eldon Potter, presumably his son, graduated from Lincoln's Inn, London.