A short history of the Register newspaper 1836-1931

South Australia's first newspaper was the South Australian gazette and colonial register. Founded in London by partners Robert Thomas and George Stevenson, under the auspices of the Public Officers of the Colonisation Commission, the first issue was published in that city prior to the departure for South Australia of the first party of official European settlers. It was a unique instance of a founding newspaper being established before its reading community existed.[1] But South Australia's first newspaper was doubly unique in that it was also established without the same strict government controls that were applied to the first newspapers published in the other Australian colonies.[2] The Register remains the major printed source covering the establishment of the British colony of South Australia, in some instances containing the only information regarding early events such as government land sales, and the establishment of schools, businesses, churches and self-government. For almost one hundred years the Register was Adelaide's major morning newspaper. For seventy years it competed with the Advertiser until control of both newspapers was acquired by Keith Murdoch of the Melbourne Herald in 1929.

Founding partner Robert Thomas was a Fleet Street seller of law books, while George Stevenson had been editor of the London Globe, a newspaper owned by Colonel Robert Torrens.[3] Thomas had acquired a secondhand Stanhope press in order to create a printing firm as an adjunct to the general store he intended opening in Adelaide, and consequently found himself approached by the Colonisation Commission's officers with the invitiation to publish the colony's first newspaper, as a distinct aspect of Wakefield's settlement plan.[4] Thomas was next approached by intending colonist George Stevenson with a proposition for a newspaper partnership. The first issue of the Register was printed in London in June 1836, its contents outlining the publishing venture and promoting the new colony. Stevenson meantime obtained the position of private secretary to the colony's first governor, Rear-Admiral John Hindmarsh. Following their arrival in the colony there were many delays in the printing before the second issue of the Register finally appeared, almost one year after the first, printed in a rush hut off Hindley Street.

Radical and outspoken beginnings

England in the 1830s was home to an outspoken radical and liberal press, struggling to be free from heavy government restrictions and taxes. A prominent Parliamentary fighter for press freedom was George Grote, who was also a strong supporter of the experimental colony of South Australia.[5] Coming from this background of tight controls and burdensome stamp duties, the early South Australian press (and particularly Stevenson as editor) had an almost completely unrestricted freedom, and made the most of it - even regardless of financial impacts.

The first years of settlement were challenging for the Europeans as they confronted the difficulties of establishing a community in a totally unknown land. They were attempting to become self-sufficient while putting into practice the founders' ideals and theories for a free society. As the printed voice of the colony the Register was naturally drawn into the thick of the early internal bickering, particularly because Stevenson's government role brought charges of bias against the newspaper. Stevenson, in the tradition of the English press of the period was outspoken on many fronts in a style of 'personal' journalism which was then commonly employed. He targeted many individuals, one of whom was the powerful and troublesome Resident Commissioner, the lawyer James Hurtle Fisher. As the lawyer involved in formulating many of the administrative details for the governance of the colony, Fisher had conveniently ascribed more power to his own role than to that of the Governor.[6]

The climax of the press involvement in the squabbles came on 29 July 1837 when the Register published a letter from 'A Colonist' accusing Fisher of selling government-owned bullocks to his own sons. The letters were in fact the work of Margaret Stevenson, the editor's wife - and thereby the first South Australian woman known to write for the press, albeit anonymously.[7] It is not known what other newspaper content may have been her work. Fisher responded to the accusations by charging the Register with libel, a charge which was upheld by the court. The Register (Stevenson) was undeterred, and ridiculed the jury's decision, 'We spit upon a verdict so obtained.'[8]

These editorial tirades ceased following the recall of Governor Hindmarsh to London, and the appointment of Sir George Gawler in a role combining both governor and resident commissioner. Stevenson and Thomas apparently decided to change the Register's editorial policy with the arrival of the new governor, and the earlier outspokenness now largely disappeared. However, when Gawler sanctioned the killing of four Aborigines in retaliation for the killing of all the Europeans on board the brig Maria at the Coorong in 1840, Stevenson believed Gawler's actions went against British law. He spoke out emphatically in the Register, but without the hysteria of some of his earlier campaigns. Gawler strongly resented this public questioning of his authority, and responded by withdrawing the government printing contract from the Register. This in effect brought the bankruptcy of the firm of Thomas and Stevenson in 1842, and the subsequent sale of the Register to James Allen.

Allen had previously been the editor of the Southern Australian. Like Stevenson, he was inclined to be outspoken, freely and frequently expressing his disagreement with the policies of the colony's third governor, 29-year-old George Grey. Allen directed his greatest venom towards Grey within the pages of a short-lived weekly titled the Southern Star. Allen's ownership of the Register lasted only three years. He re-sold the newspaper in June 1845, having found, he said, that 'freedom of speech does not pay.'[9] In fact the sale was probably due to financial difficulties. Allen's outspokenness had tended to frighten off advertisers, and his criticism of the governor had excluded him from government contracts and advertising.

John Stephens became the third owner of the Register. Stephens again was incredibly outspoken in a way unimaginable to modern journalists or newspaper readers. However, Stephens also brought a passionate idealism and a radical religiosity to his writing, partly as the result of being the son of a Wesleyan minister involved in ending the British slave trade. Stephens had been editor of the London-based Christian Advocate, before moving to George Fife Angas's promotional newspaper (also in London) the South Australian Colonist. In Adelaide in 1843 he established the Adelaide Observer, a weekly aimed at the new rural readership. This now became an adjunct to the Register.

Under Stephens the Register was at the centre of many heated debates, and consequently also many libel actions. Stephens continued undeterred, but in 1850 a storm erupted over a candid obituary for the mine owner Samuel Stocks. Stephens was a well-known teetotaller, earning him the nick-name 'Johnny Drinkwater' and the contentious obituary referred not only to Stock's drinking, but hinted at worse vices.[10] It caused a furore, but in response almost 1,700 male readers of the newspaper signed a petition in support of the Register editor. The petition, printed in successive issues of the newspaper, are both an insight into the Register's readership, and a unique instance of support for a newspaper and its editor.

Stephens died prematurely later that year, having worked himself into the ground running his two newspapers. However, he had achieved the formidable goal of making the Register a daily, and Adelaide's dominant newspaper. Following his death, the Register and Observer were run on behalf of his widow for a time, before being sold and from 1853 becoming a joint stock company. This was the first successful newspaper company in Adelaide, in contrast with earlier single editor/owner or small partnership companies. The Register's days of unfettered outspokenness ended as it was now seen by its proprietors as a commercial venture, losing its radical edge. It has been suggested that the Victorian gold rush drew away significant numbers of the Adelaide population. These prospectors included many of the more liberal and radical thinkers of early South Australian society, thus contributing to a more conservative press.[11] This was certainly true in the case of taking away many of Adelaide's newspaper writers and printers, but was only a small part of the massive changes that took place in Adelaide's press in the 1850s. Many of these changes centred around the pre-eminent Register.

Commercial company

In May 1853 a group of prominent Adelaide businessmen financed the establishment of the Adelaide examiner. This was largely as a vehicle for their political opinions on the eve of the coming election, one in which several of them were standing as candidates. After thirteen (weekly) issues were published, the men closed the trial newspaper and sensibly purchased from Stephens' executors the Register and the Observer newspapers. What Stephens on the proceeds of his patent medicine sales could not do, this group of wealthy shopkeepers and merchants could. The following year the Register was the first newspaper in Adelaide to install steam printing presses. The company employed both a team of journalists, and a separate commercial department with a team of "canvassers" to solicit advertisers. James Allen, now running the Register's main competitor, the Adelaide Times, could not hope to compete and was forced to close in 1858.[12] With the failure of Allen's newspaper, a second group of prominent Adelaide businessmen saw the opening to finance a disgruntled Register editor (and Congregational minister) named John Henry Barrow, in founding an opposition morning newspaper. The new venture had the backing of a group of businessmen and politicians, and was named, so that there could be no doubt about its commercial aims, the South AustralianAdvertiser.[13]

As well as the move towards corporate ownership, the post gold rush period saw the Adelaide press invigorated by a number of technological advances. First was the advent of steam printing in the colony. This was followed by the opening of Australia's foundation public railway in 1854, connecting the river port of Goolwa with the seaport of Port Elliot. This was to ultimately transform the press. The short south coast line was the nucleus for the development of a network of rail lines laid across the colony through the 1860s and 1870s. In tandem with the growth of coaching lines, the railways made possible a two-way news flow: newspapers out to a burgeoning country readership, and the return of news reports from a growing army of country correspondents. (Helpfully, country correspondents were helpfully among the cheapest form of journalistic labour through being mostly paid in kind, that is, with a free newspaper subscription.) A more immediate and comprehensive change to the press came with Australia's first city to city telegraph line - that between Adelaide and Melbourne, opened in July 1858. Completion of the link brought such a prolonged wave of interstate news down the line that soon afterwards a second line had to be constructed. From this time the 'Telegraphic Despatches' [sic] column became a prominent feature of the Register. The telegraph system was to bring immense changes to news reporting.

South Australia's young Parliament had shown great vision in bringing to Adelaide the clever Charles Todd to oversee the installation of the line. The telegraph was extended to Sydney in 1861, and eventually all the Australian capitals were linked telegraphically. In 1872 Todd completed his greatest feat of all, with the building of the Overland Telegraph Line. This formed a direct link from Adelaide to that centre of civilisation, London, via submarine cable between Darwin and Java. This connected with the newly erected Indian telegraph line.[14] From 1858 'Telegraphic News' warranted a column of its own in any newspaper worthy of the title, but electrically posted news did not come cheaply. So newspaper alliances between colonies were formed throughout the latter decades of the nineteenth century to collectively fund the receipt of the telegraphic news. The Register joined an agreement with the Melbourne Argus, Sydney Morning Herald, and Sydney Evening News for the procurement of cable news.[15] This was well ahead of the British press, where the telegraph networks were privately owned and news provided by them was consequently even more expensive than in Australia.[16] (Later, foreign and war correspondents were also employed by shared arrangements with other newspapers.[17])

Representative government

Finally, the 1850s saw a change affecting the whole population of South Australia, and one which impacted hugely on the press and its journalists. In 1857 South Australia gained its first fully elected two-house parliament. Election notices had first appeared in the Register in early 1851 for the first Legislative Council elections. These were to become a good source of newspaper revenue, together with the increasing number of government notices. Parliament through its legislative role impacted on the work of Adelaide's journalists both directly and indirectly. The District Councils' Appointment Bill (1853) of the nominative Legislative Council allowed the formation of district councils. With the development of local government came increased rural settlement and burgeoning country news reporting. An examination of Adelaide newspapers before and after the passing of the 1853 legislation demonstrates a marked surge in country news reporting, clearly connected with the establishment of local government. But other legislation impacted directly on the practice of journalism itself, notably in such matters as libel laws, but also through newspaper postage regulations. Until 1881 newspaper postage was free, partly as an added service to country readers.

Several of the new newspaper proprietors were elected to Parliament, which was arguably one of the reasons they had purchased shares in a newspaper, aiming to influence public opinion in print. These media owners included the editor and joint owner of the Register, Anthony Forster; shareholder Alexander Hay; Advertiser company director Thomas King, and others. Adelaide journalists now developed their first major specialisation, that of Hansard reporter. This had actually begun a year earlier, when shrewd James Allen through his Adelaide Times gained the contract for reporting Legislative Council proceedings.[18] The contract for Hansard went back and forth between the Register and the Advertiser, with the Register filling the contract for lengthy periods.[19] Hansard reporting was generally the work of a team of four journalists, better paid than general reporting, and a field to which journalists aspired.[20] From 1896, the Register and Advertiser had a joint arrangement with Parliament for the Hansard reporting.[21] However, in 1914 both the newspapers withdrew from the contract and a permanent Hansard staff was appointed. This initially included three former Register journalists.

But more than all this, local parliament, politicians and political issues became and remained the mainstay of the press through the rest of the nineteenth century. This was in keeping with the tenets of the press in England in the late eighteenth century. In the 1850s under Forster's editorship, the Register channeled some of its previous libelous outspokenness into satire. In 1860 a series, 'Little lessons for little politicians' satirised the MPs of the day. In 1865 a regular satirical/political summary, 'Talk on the flags by an Idler' began. This popular column ran for two years, and was followed by 'Rough notes of the week by Candid' in a similar vein. But the column which generated the most frequent comment from a number of sources was 'Echoes from the Bush by Geoffrey Crabthorn' which began in 1869. The main author was then-editor John Howard Clark. This came to consist of 'Crabthorn correspondence' with letters written by the mythical Crabthorn himself as various characters, and 'Quips and cranks' which satirised local doings such as popular rural ploughing matches.

Press proliferation

Through the 1860s Adelaide witnessed an increasing newspaper proliferation. To make a comparison with the city's nearest neighbour, Melbourne's newspaper production was only three times that of Adelaide in the 1850s and 1860s, while the Victorian population was four times that of South Australia.[22] The country press became a flourishing genre in South Australia through the 1860s with the growth of district councils and increased rural populations. It was here that some of the vigorous outspokenness that had largely left the daily press with its move to corporate ownership, continued to be exhibited. George Massey Allen's pioneering South Australian country newspaper, the Northern Sun at Kapunda was an extreme example. Its unfettered editorial tirades landed its proprietor in jail for libel.[23] Meanwhile Mount Gambier's Border Watch, today South Australia's oldest country newspaper, under editor John Watson, produced perceptive political commentary throughout the nineteenth century. Denis Cryle in his history of Queensland's colonial press has noted this move of vigorous personal journalism from the city to the country in that colony[24] but the situation was certainly replicated in South Australia. And if Adelaide's major morning newspapers became more conservative as they became more commercial in operation, there remained pockets of vigorous debate within the burgeoning specialist press of the city. Adelaide Punch first appeared in 1865, drawing directly on British prototypes, in this case the long-running London Punch. Adelaide Punch was the forerunner of a succession of 'comic journals' including the Lantern, and Quiz, which were produced well into the twentieth century. These published biting satire, and political and social commentary, with sport and theatre included for popular appeal. These and the many other specialist titles, including the religious press, filled the demands of a growing readership, and at the same time influenced the content of the dominant dailies, including the developing Register.

Finally, in 1862 the evening press was born in Adelaide with the publication of David Gall's Telegraph in 1862, modeled on a hugely successful London tabloid newspaper. This was taken over by the Advertiser in 1863, and for a time the Register laboured under a disadvantage. Equality between the rival companies was restored with its own purchase of the Evening Journal in 1867. From this time the two companies - the Register and the Advertiser - existed on an exactly equal footing, a situation unknown in any other place. Each published a morning newspaper, with a week-end newspaper for Sunday reading which had a particular appeal to country readers. Each published an evening summary newspaper aimed at homeward bound city workers. Publicly the two companies competed for dominant circulations, but behind the scenes they colluded on subscription and advertising rates, and tenders for government contracts. Combined, the two companies dominated every other Adelaide newspaper office. They were also the major employers of journalists in South Australia and provided both high rates of journalist employment and high rates of journalist movement between newspapers. When John Langdon Bonython took over the Advertiser in the 1880s, improving its level of reporting and production, an even keener competition was created with the Register. This then was the situation of the Adelaide press and the Register throughout the nineteenth century.

Political views

From the 1860s the Register was nick-named 'Granny' by the wider press and the politicians of Adelaide. This was both an acknowledgement of its pre-eminence as the city's oldest newspaper, and an allusion to its conservatism. The Advertiser under Bonython tended to be slightly more progressive than the Register - or more than it had been under the puritan Barrow's ownership. From 1878 under editor John Harvey Finlayson, and even more from 1897 under William Sowden, the Register's stance was increasingly conservative and protectionist. But the newspaper did support women's suffrage, and numbered Catherine Helen Spence among its freelance reporters. It also published a variety of women's literary work, in the Observer in particular. From late in the nineteenth century women were employed full-time on the Register staff as social columnists and secretaries. Interestingly they do not appear at all in the board minutes until 1907, when a pay rise for Winifred Scott is mentioned.[25]

The Register was ferociously anti-socialist and anti-Labour, particularly under Sowden's editorship when the local Labour movement was developing under Premier Charles Kingston. The Register stance extended also to the new Federal government with editorials criticising Fisher and Deakin for their socialistic leanings.[26] The Register proprietory had a poor relationship with the local branch of the Typographical Society, and the Trades and Labor Union. They clashed over pay and conditions,[27] culminating in a strike by the Register printers in 1888, and the dismissal of the majority of the men who were replaced by non-union workers.[28] Under Sowden the Register was a strong supporter of both the South African War and the First World War - indeed Sowden's involvement in a number of fund-raising ventures during the later conflict almost certainly helped gain him a knighthood in 1918.

Final years and the Register News Pictorial

The press worldwide was drastically affected by the First World War. The war itself brought new styles of reporting, including extensive use of bold headlines, maps, and photographs. However, the steep rise in the cost of paper through wartime shortages; the interruption of trade routes for acquiring ink, paper and machinery; together with rising wages; costs of distribution and cable usage; and labour shortages, all required increased capital investment. The shortages and rising costs also forced many newspapers to move to a smaller (tabloid) size, with fewer pages and shorter articles. Some of the changes remained in place after the war, and were combined with the new style of popular journalism. This favoured greater use of photographs, sensationalism and large headlines with smaller articles. London newspapers such as the Daily Sketch and Daily Mirror set a new and highly successful style in newspaper production. In Melbourne the Sun News Pictorial was founded in 1922, bringing the new format to Australia. In 1925 the Sun News Pictorial was bought out by the Melbourne Herald under Keith Murdoch, who then turned his sights on Adelaide. In May 1928 Keith Murdoch met with Register co-director Evan Kyffin Thomas and from January 1929 Murdoch became a co-director of the Register. Soon afterwards, with the retirement of Sir JL Bonython, Murdoch also purchased controlling interest in Bonython's Advertiser. Murdoch applied the Sun News Pictorial format to the Register, creating the Register News Pictorial in 1929.

The new Register contained larger advertisements, in particular film advertisements, and greatly expanded real estate and motor car advertising. Photographs, now able to be more cheaply reproduced, were used both in advertisements and in news items. Through the 1920s more sensational matters such as divorces and abortion cases, previously reserved for the pages of Frearson's illustrated newspapers and Truth, were now given coverage in the Register. Divorce notices sometimes filled a whole column in the mid 1920s. Billy Hughes, Australia's Labor turned Nationalist Prime Minister was disliked by the Register which maintained its conservative political stance. Syndicated general interest articles were used more frequently as 'filler', with increased space given to reader's letters and such things as 'Madame Wu's Psychic Page'. The final year of the newspaper, 1931, saw the Register given over largely to sensationalism. With Murdoch's dual acquisition of the Advertiser, and the sale of the remaining Register shares to Murdoch by Geoffrey and Evan Kyffin Thomas, there was obviously little point in the Herald running two morning newspapers in Adelaide. The Advertiser was chosen as the company's flagship, and the Register marked for closure. Remaining Register staff were moved to the Advertiser, and the final issue of the newspaper was published just five years short of its centenary, on Friday 20 February 1931.

Owners The Register was founded by partners Robert Thomas and George Stevenson, with Stevenson as first editor. When the business was declared bankrupt in 1842, James Allen became owner of the Register[29] until his return to England in June 1845.

The newspaper was taken over by John Stephens of the Adelaide observer, beginning an alliance of the two newspapers which continued until they both ceased in 1931. Stephens was a man of several parts, advertising himself as 'printer, bookseller, stationer, commission agent and patent medicine vender'. [sic] Such a business sideline was a common practice among newspaper editor/owners in this period. When Stephens died at the end of 1850, the Register and Observer were run on behalf of his widow by Stephens' executors until 1853.

The two newspapers were then purchased by partners William Kyffin Thomas, son of the Register founder, and Anthony Forster, with the latter becoming editor. Henry Hussey was the printer. Within weeks a joint stock company was formed to take control, consisting of four prominent businessmen and another experienced newspaperman, Edward William Andrews. By 1865 the ownership was in the hands of just three men: William Kyffin Thomas, EW Andrews and John Howard Clark.[30] With the deaths of Andrews and Clark, ownership of the newspaper was left in the hands of the Thomas family. The editors, and often also the business managers of the firm, also held shares in the company. Editors John Howard Clark and EW Andrews made large investments, and mortgages of the Register were held by their respective families long after both had died.[31]

William Kyffin Thomas died in 1878, and his son Robert Kyffin Thomas then took over. Robert was knighted in early 1910, shortly before his death. The company was then owned jointly by Evan, Reginald and Geoffrey Kyffin Thomas. William Sowden acquired shares in the firm when he became editor in 1897. Reginald Kyffin Thomas died in a car accident in 1915, from which time the company was owned by the remaining two Thomases and Sowden. Sowden was knighted in 1918, and retired from both the newspaper and the partnership in 1922, leaving it in the hands of Evan and Geoffrey Kyffin Thomas.

In May 1928 Evan Kyffin Thomas met with Keith Murdoch in Melbourne, and discussed the Herald and Weekly Times group gaining a controlling interest in the Register. The minutes at this point give no indication of financial matters, but family members have stated the meeting was prompted by the Register's financial difficulties. An agreement was signed between the Thomases and Keith Murdoch in November 1928, and from January 1929 Murdoch became a co-director of the Register. The Thomases were aware that Murdoch was in negotiation at the same time for the purchase of the Advertiser.[32] Following the withdrawal of the Thomas brothers from the proprietorship, the Register and Observer both ceased to be published. The final issue on 20 February 1931 and staff were then moved across to the Advertiser.

Bibliography:

Advertiser minute book, 7 September 1864, State Library of South Australia, BRG 10/8/1

Australasian typographical journal, Melbourne, Australasian Typographical Society, 1883-91

Bonwick, James, Early Struggles of the Australian Press, London, Gordon and Gotch, 1890

Cryle, Denis, The Press in Colonial Queensland: a Social and Political History 1845-1875, St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1989

Curthoys, Ann, and Schultz, Julianne, Journalism, print, politics and popular culture, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1999

Duncan, Beth, Mary Thomas, founding mother, Kent Town, Wakefield Press, 2007

Green, HM,  A History of Australian literature: pure and applied, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1974
Griffiths, LH, The telephone in S. Aus. its development and history a lecture, Adelaide, SA Postal Institute Lecture Society, 1933

Jones, Helen, In her own name: a history of women in South Australia from 1836, Kent Town, Wakefield Press, 1994

Livingston, Kevin, 'The communication revolution, the Adelaide Convention and the Constitution,' New Federalist, no. 2 (Dec. 1998)

Manuel, Deane, Journalism in Adelaide 1845-1854: an examination of its literary, critical and topical scope at the mid-century, with a particular study of the Mercury ... , MA Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1975

Manuel, Deane, 'Roads not taken: some minor concerns of Adelaide's newspapers at the mid-nineteenth century', Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, no. 8 (1980)

Marquis, Len, Address to Mortlock Library Staff, State Library of South Australia, OH 142/6

Mayer, Henry, The press in Australia, Melbourne, Lansdowne Press, 1964

Parsons, Ronald, Southern passages: a maritime history of South Australia, Netley, Wakefield Press, 1986

Pike, Douglas, Paradise of dissent, London, Longmans Green and Co., 1957

Pitt, George H, The Press in South Australia: 1836-1850, Adelaide, Wakefield Press, 1946

Register board minutes, 1889-1930, State Library of South Australia, ACC 2137

Seaman, Keith, The history and Influence of the Press in South Australia 1836-1856, MA Thesis, Flinders University, 1987

Smeaton, Thomas Hyland, Education in South Australia from 1836-1927, Adelaide, Rigby, 1927

'South Australian journalism, our first newspaper, an outline of the Register's history', Register 1 July 1892, p. 5

Sowden, William, 'Our Pioneer Press', unpublished manuscript, 1926, State Library of South Australia, PRG 41/2

'Stevenson, George (1799-1856)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1966, vol. 2, pp. 481-482

Talbot, Michael, 'Pioneer Printer Robert Thomas: a victim of Colonisation Theory?' Talk to the Glenelg Historical Society 2012

'The Late Mrs Stevenson', Lantern, 3 October 1874, p. 5

Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, The New British Province of South Australia, London: Printed for C Knight, 1834

[1] Lloyd, Clem, 'British Press Traditions, Colonial Governors, and the Struggle for a 'Free' Press', Curthoys, Ann and Schulze, Julianne, Print, politics and popular culture, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999, p. 18

[2] Green, HM, A History of Australian literature: pure and applied, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1974, vol. 1, p. 67

[3] Pike, Douglas, A paradise of dissent, p. 93

[4] Talbot, Michael, 'Pioneer Printer Robert Thomas: a victim of Colonisation Theory?' Talk to the Glenelg Historical Society 2012, pp. 3-4; Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, The New British Province of South Australia, London: Printed for C Knight, 1834, pp. 140-141

[5] Boyce, George, Curran, James and Wingate, Pauline, Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day, pp. 55-56

[6] Parsons, Ronald, Southern passages: a maritime history of South Australia, Netley, Wakefield Press, 1986, p. 35

[7] Pitt, GH , The Press in South Australia: 1836-1850, Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1946, p. 16

[8]South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (hereafter referred to as Register), 19 May 1838, p. 8

[9] Pitt, p. 33

[10] Pike, p. 135

[11] Manuel, Deane, Journalism in Adelaide 1845-1854: an examination of its literary, critical and topical scope at the mid-century, with a particular study of the Mercury ... , 1975,  p. 98

[12]Register, 23 August 1858, p. 3

[13] Hereafter referred to as the Advertiser

[14] Livingston, Ken, 'The communication revolution, the Adelaide Convention, and the Constitution', New Federalist, no. 2 (December 1998), pp. 24-29

[15] Register minutes, 27 March 1892, State Library of South Australia, ACC 2137

[16] Lee, Alan, The origins of the popular press in England, 1855-1914, London: Croom Helm, 1976, p. 62

[17] Register minutes, 29 December 1899

[18] Marquis, Len, Address to Mortlock Library Staff, State Library of South Australia, OH 142/6

[19] Register minutes, 8 May 1890; 30 June 1890

[20] Ibid, 29 June 1891

[21] Ibid, 8 May 1891

[22] Calculations based on population figures available for the South Australian Census as listed in the South Australian Year Book 1988. Victorian figures sourced from the Museum Victoria web-site and the Australian Data Archive, Australian National University web-site, 13 May 2013. Newspaper publication for Melbourne calculated from Newspapers in Australian Libraries: a union list, Part 2, Australian Newspapers, Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1985, pp. 145-66.

[23]Register, 13 April 1861, p. 3

[24] Cryle, Denis, The Press in Colonial Queensland: a Social and Political History 1845-1875, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989, p. 107

[25] Register minutes 2 July 1907

[26] Ibid, 1 November 1907, p. 4; 4 December 1907, p. 4

[27] Register minutes, 4 May 1894

[28]Australasian typographical journal, December 1888, p. [953]

[29]Register, 20 August 1842, p. 2

[30] Ibid, 2 October 1865, p. 2

[31] Register minutes, 14 June 1889, 10 October 1890, etc.

[32] Register minutes, 25 March 1929

Trove : Historic Australian Newspapers: South Australian newspapers in digital format.
Please note alternate titles:

• Register (Adelaide, SA : 1901 - 1929)
• Register News-Pictorial (Adelaide, SA : 1929 - 1931)
• South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (Adelaide, SA : 1836 - 1839)
• South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900)