Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a reporter or writer for The Sporting Times (esp. such ‘stars’ as Arthur Binstead (1861–1914), nicknamed ‘The Pitcher’, William Farn Goldberg, ‘The Shifter’, and Nathaniel Newnham-Davies, ‘The Dwarf of Blood’).

1898		Binstead & Wells [title] A Pink ’Un and a Pelican.
1908		Sporting Times 18 Jan. 4/3: To the Editor of the ‘Sporting Times’. Dear “Pink ’Un”.

2. a reader of The Sporting Times.

1890		Sporting Times 12 Apr. 1/2: St. George’s Day, on which we shall expect all good Englishmen and Pink ’Uns (synonymous terms) to wear roses in their buttonholes and to liquor up without ceremony.
1900		Sporting Times 6 Jan. 3/4: ‘A Pink ’Un on the Adriatic,’ writes us a letter, which makes us want to shift London from the damp, muddy banks of the Thames to the verdant foot of Mount Maggiore.
1910		Sporting Times 1 Jan. 5/1: Here’s luck to all Pink ’Uns, at home and afar, / In nineteen hundred and ten!

3. The Sporting Times.

1887		Referee 31 July in Ware (1909) 197/1: Before doing so, I took the advice of one John Corlett, who propriets a paper called the Pink ’Un.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Sept. 15/4: By the amalgamation of the ‘Man about Town’ and the ‘Bird of Freedom’ the British public are doomed to have additional weekly doses of drivel fired into them about the ‘Master,’ and the ‘Shifter,’ and the ‘Tale-Pitcher,’ and all the other dull-witted drunkards with whose gin-scented breath and pimply eruptions the ‘Pink ’Un’ has for years endeavored to familiarise London cab-drivers and noblemen of the Kimbolton-Dunlo type.
1898		Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 128: Upon counsel for the plaintiff [...] stating, in support of his case, that he ‘should have to read from a paper called The Sporting Times,’ the learned judge at once interposed, ‘Oh, you mean the Pink ’Un!’.
1899		E.W. Rogers [perf. Vesta Tilley] The Latest Chap on Earth 🎵 He reads the Pink ’Un for the latest news with the latest cynics quiz.
1905		Sporting Times 11 Feb. 2/2: The fame of Romano’s reaches curious spots. Down at Bottombarley is preserved the shell which was plugged with a leaf of the ‘Pink ’Un’ recording a dinner at the Roman’s.
1914		‘Bartimeus’ ‘The Seventh Day’ in Naval Occasions 155: Hide that ‘Pink ’Un’ under the table-cloth, one of you.
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 210: Bar a weekly wrestle with the Pink ’Un [...] I’m not much of a lad for reading.
1930		Sporting Times 4 Jan. 1/5: [heading] Things The Pink ’Un Wants To Know.
1933		E. Blair letter 10? Dec. in Complete Works X (1998) 328: The plaster statuette is talking about the sheet of the ‘Pink ’un’ that she was wrapped up in.

4. the Financial Times.

1970		Partridge DSUE Supplement 1330/1: Pink ’Un [...] The Financial Times, founded in 1913.
1979		Guardian 2 Jan. 24/4: Today [...] the first Financial Times will hit Wall Street [...]. But for all the [...] computer setting [...] the new international Pink ’un depends very much for its birth on the weather .