20

1866
Mrs Butters’ press dress
Liberty of the press

Mrs Matilda Butters had this gown made in September 1866 for a fancy-dress ball given by the mayor of Melbourne to celebrate the arrival of the new governor of Victoria, the 3rd Viscount Canterbury, Sir John Henry Thomas Manners-Sutton.

According to the State Library of Victoria, the gown was constructed from panels of silk printed with the front pages of Melbourne newspapers. The skirt is made from 14 panels edged with gold braid, and has a circumference around the hem of more than five metres. The outfit was completed with a coronet headdress proclaiming ‘Liberty of the press’, and on the night Mrs Butters carried a miniature printing press she used to print lines from Lord Byron’s poem Lara onto satin ribbons.

Mrs William Dobbs of Gardiners Creek Road, South Yarra, about whom little else is known, made the dress. The papers featured on it were The Age, The Argus, the Weekly Age, The Leader, The Australasian, The Herald, Bell’s Life, The Spectator, Journal of Commerce, Government Gazette, Dicker’s Mining Record, Illustrated Australian News and Punch.

The colonial media was a lively place, full of hard reporting, scandal, shipping news, scurrilous gossip, libel and slander. Public issues were aggressively debated: White Australia, Federation, free trade versus protectionism, social vice, religion and corruption. Newspapers came and went – more than one folded or was sold when the proprietor couldn’t meet the cost of a libel action.

The first newspaper in Australia was the Sydney Gazette: its first issue was published on 5 March 1803 by George Howe. A weekly four-page list of government notices, public announcements, shipping news, auction results, crime reports, agricultural notices, local news and sundry items, it was produced out the back of Government House by ex-convict Howe, who had arrived at Port Jackson in 1800.

William Charles Wentworth launched the colony’s second real paper, The Australian, in 1824. Within ten years there were seven daily papers in Sydney, and by the middle of the century Australia boasted 50 newspapers of varying stability, quality and frequency.

John Fairfax was born on 25 October 1804 in Warwick, England. A printer, bookseller, newsagent and part-owner of the Leamington Chronicle and Warwickshire Reporter, in 1836 he was sued for libel and went broke. He arrived three years later as a free settler in Sydney with £5 to his name. Three years after that he borrowed enough to purchase, with Charles Kemp, the daily Sydney Herald. On 1 August 1842 the masthead was changed to the Sydney Morning Herald. Through Fairfax’s sheer hard work and good decisions, within a few years the Herald had become the major newspaper in New South Wales.

Three businessmen launched The Age in Melbourne on 17 October 1854: brothers John and Henry Cooke, and Walter Powell. Its editorial policy was politically progressive, supporting labour reform, the diggers on the goldfields and the eight-hour day.

Two years later the paper was sold to Ebenezer Syme and James McEwan. Management and editorial policy fell to Ebenezer’s brother David. After Ebenezer’s death in 1860, David Syme took more control and eventually bought out his partners so that by 1891 he was sole proprietor. With a liberal editorial policy, he steadily built the paper’s circulation to become market leader in Victoria. By the end of the 19th century The Age was the most successful newspaper in the Empire.

In the latter part of the 19th century, Syme was one of the half-dozen most powerful men in Victoria. He fundamentally understood the power of the press and was not shy about using it to support his favourite politicians and causes. Politicians curried his favour and respected his views on issues. A man with few friends, he avoided getting too close to his journalists. The exception to this rule was Alfred Deakin, a journalist on The Age who became Australia’s second prime minister.

John Feltham (aka Jules François) Archibald wished for nothing more than to write for The Argus. After years of rejection, he and John Haynes launched The Bulletin on 31 January 1880. Its first two editions sold out. Archibald’s personality was fundamental to The Bulletin. He delighted in making mischief and stood for the ‘average Australian working man’. Archibald was a White Australia nationalist and opposed the monarchy, poverty, hypocrisy, un-Christian Christianity, inhuman piety and cant. He sponsored writers such as Henry Lawson, whom he sent on a long trip through the bush to bring stories of outback life to the city. The Bulletin was a mirror for Australians just at the moment when a nation was being born from the colonies.

Of course Mrs Butters’ press dress tells only a portion of the story of the media in Australia. It fell to David Syme to mentor Australia’s most influential journalist, Keith (later Sir Keith) Murdoch. His father, the Rev. Patrick John Murdoch, knew Syme, who took young Keith on as district correspondent for Malvern. Keith increased The Age’s circulation in the area and worked his way up the ranks. He was a founding member of the Australian Journalists’ Association. Then, in 1915, he was appointed to the United Cable Service office in London.

En route to London, Murdoch stopped in Gallipoli for four days, where he wrote some of the most impassioned reports of World War I. He cel­ebrated the diggers and was unstinting in his criticism of the British bungles in the campaign. This reporting was an important part of the creation of the Anzac myth.

Once in London, Murdoch perfected his talent for getting close to politicians and men in power. He was always happy to lend his influence and words to causes he believed in. In January 1921 he was appointed chief editor of the Melbourne evening Herald, and from this position he worked his way to the board of the Herald and Weekly Times.

Murdoch perfected tabloid newspapers in Australia. He was a complex editor and publisher, although, unlike the others mentioned, he was not a proprietor or media baron. He did however have one paper of his own, the Adelaide Advertiser, which he bequeathed to his son, Rupert.