The Surgeon-Journalist: Thomas Revel Johnson, Australian Sports Press Pioneer

ABSTRACT

Thomas Revel Johnson was a pioneering Australian sports journalist in the mid-19th century who also conducted a professional career as a surgeon. This article aims to examine Johnson’s achievements in Australian sports reporting as an emerging genre before it was taken seriously by the mainstream press. It also examines his place in a watershed libel case that cast him as a scapegoat and resulted in an unduly harsh two-year jail sentence. The article situates Johnson as part of a pre-Federation commercial media that attempted to establish a distinctly “Australian” voice, championing the underdog and working to undermine imported societal hierarchies.

KEYWORDS:

• Thomas Revel Johnson
• Australian press history
• sports journalism
• Australian libel law
• NSW sports media

Early sports writing in Australian newspapers in the mid-19th century was an ungainly mix of gossip, sensationalism and lengthy months-old reports reprinted from British newspapers. Yet it was also the beginning of a new voice that went beyond the established colonial press of the time and dared to question societal assumptions imported from Britain. Cheeky in its outspokenness, this new voice laid the foundations for a sports press with a distinctly Australian identity. Many independent newspapers came and went during that time, more often leaving publishers broke than resulting in profit. But despite the ephemeral nature of their product, it was these pioneers who initiated what would become the backbone of profitability in the popular press of the 20th century—the importance of reporting Australian sport.

Across the new land of journalistic opportunity strode a figure whose personal and professional life became fodder for the pages of the very industry he was part of. He was the sometimes reviled, sometimes celebrated and now little-remembered newspaper proprietor Thomas Revel Johnson (1817–1863), founder of Australia’s first sports-oriented and first Sunday newspapers. Unusually for a journalist, Johnson’s primary career was that of a qualified professional surgeon, which he interspersed with his journalism. Adding further intrigue, Johnson was a descendant of the prominent Guest family of British industrialists and hereditary peers, recognised in his father’s will, though brought up outside the family because his father was not married to Johnson’s mother.

This article situates Johnson as a pioneer of Australian journalism in the 1840s and early 1850s who contributed to a new representation of pre-Federation Australian identity and who challenged authority in an attempt, in his own words, “to expose and repress ‘humbug’, either judicial, magisterial or political”.¹ But he paid a steep price for his impudence. By the time Johnson founded his most successful newspaper, Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (“Bell’s Life”)² in 1845, he had already served a jail sentence for publishing material deemed obscene in his earlier newspaper, the Satirist and Sporting Chronicle, and had been judged insolvent; he was again declared bankrupt in 1855. I argue that Johnson’s two-year jail sentence following a benchmark libel case was unduly harsh and part of a move to silence oppositional voices in the fledgling New South Wales (NSW) press, essentially making Johnson a colonial scapegoat.

Johnson founded several other newspapers, but apart from Bell’s Life, all were short-lived. This was a common phenomenon in the early Australian press: many publications lasted just a few issues.³ Nevertheless, they built on the emergence of a popular press that reflected the interests of readers, and Johnson recognised early that local sports content would be important, because it was intrinsic to society. As Bruce Haley notes in line with Anthony Trollope’s 1868 anthology of sporting essays, British Sports and Pastimes, sport was elevated in the Victorian period to become “part of the business of life, not just a respite from it”.⁴

Historians particularly from the late 20th century onwards have questioned the idea that Australian sport as an institution promoted egalitarianism. Brian Stoddart argues that one must also question “the received ideas about social organisation as a whole”.⁵ Long before such critiques, Johnson was presenting sport as a microcosm of wider culture, particularly class, exclusion and snobbery. He saw sports reporting as another opportunity to publicly reveal injustice and its perpetrators. Central to Johnson’s practice as a sports press editor was his belief that most of the population, not part of society’s elite, wanted to read about sports and that the existing press did not tap into that need.

This article analyses the place of sports reporting in 1840s Australian newspapers by discussing Johnson as a new colonial voice long before the build-up to and advent of Federation. My research encompasses primary sources such as legal documents, contemporary newspapers, genealogy sites and records. Starting with Johnson’s background and immigration to NSW as a young man, it discusses his work as an early sports journalist in Sydney at a time when “serious” publications paid little heed to the cultural importance of sport and its place in the formation of an emerging Australian identity.

Scholarly Study of Early Australian Sports Journalists

In discussing the significance of the way that sports journalism and colonial identity developed, historians such as Stoddart debunk the idea that sport in Australia was classless: “The first reality is that from the onset of organised sport in Australia the issues of wealth and station are prominent,” Stoddart states.⁶ He uses the horseracing industry as an example, which he says modelled itself on the British system ruled by the aristocracy.⁷ This article extends Stoddart’s argument to the earliest Australian sports press, locating Johnson as a critic of an inherited British style of top-down management of the racing industry that fostered corruption.

Scholarly discussion about Australian sport, the press and colonial identity of the first half of the 19th century is underdeveloped compared with that of the second half, and particularly with that of the two decades before Federation. Writing about Australian media in Paradise of Sport, for example, Richard Cashman starts his analysis in the 1880s.⁸ He concedes that newspapers “were central to the expansion of sporting culture”, yet excludes the pre-1880s press as not popular enough and not exclusively devoted to sport.⁹ However, I argue that early sports journalists, proprietors such as Johnson, and their publications deserve to be included in the discourse because they set the foundations for the importance of the press on its way to what Cashman describes as more than a medium of record, giving sporting events “shape, meaning and moral worth”.¹⁰ Cashman concurs with Chris Cunneen that it was not simply the publications, but the journalists themselves, who “had a part not only in shaping sporting agendas but also in creating sporting heroes and heroines”.¹¹ While Cashman focuses on journalists who contributed to shaping the “golden age” of Australian sport from the 1890s to 1920,¹² I argue that the importance of individual journalists to sport can be traced from the earliest sports reporting, particularly from the advent of the sports press.

Johnson’s contribution has been largely overlooked in historical research into Australian media. He is not mentioned in Denis Cryle’s 1997 history, Disreputable Profession: Journalists and Journalism in Colonial Australia,¹³ or in Henry Mayer’s ground-breaking study The Press in Australia (1964).¹⁴ Johnson is mentioned, albeit briefly, in R. B. Walker’s The Newspaper Press in New South Wales 1803–1920¹⁵ and in the online encyclopedia Colonial Australian Narrative Journalism.¹⁶ As Neville Meaney argues, in the initial period of self-government from the 1840s, “it was political leaders and newspaper editors who, often also filling the role as cultural leaders, gave voice to colonial self-consciousness and defined the relationship to Britain and the Empire”.¹⁷ This article places Johnson as one such cultural leader. He was well known in NSW in his time, as evidenced by frequent mentions of him in newspaper stories and gossip columns—and the fact that his portrait was drawn for an engraving in 1852 by the colonial artist and surveyor Thomas Balcombe (1810–1861) (see Figure 1).¹⁸

Figure 1. Thomas Balcombe, portrait of Thomas Revel Johnson, National Library of Australia, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1813739937.

Early Life and a New Beginning in Australia

Thomas Revel Johnson was born in County Cork, Ireland, probably in 1817,¹⁹ in the unfortunate circumstance, at the time, that his parents were unmarried. His father was the wealthy Welsh industrialist Thomas Revel Guest (1790–1837), who had two children—Thomas Revel Johnson and Sarah Johnson—with a woman in County Cork.²⁰ The circumstances of the children’s mother and even her name are not recorded in searchable online records, though she may have had the surname “Johnson”, given the children’s name. Guest later married Anne Biggs, also of Cork, in 1820, but they had no recorded children. In his will, Thomas Guest acknowledges Thomas Revel and Sarah as “my reputed” son and daughter, a contemporaneous term that recognised offspring of unmarried parents. In Ireland, he was employed to represent the family business, Dowlais Ironworks, a major Welsh iron and steel works that provided materials for the burgeoning railway industry. Later he became a Wesleyan Methodist preacher and in 1836 was elected first mayor of Cardiff. His brother was Sir Josiah John Guest, who ran Dowlais from 1807 to 1852 and whose second wife was the celebrated Lady Charlotte Guest (who, unconventionally, took over the company after her husband’s death).²¹

Luckily for Johnson, Thomas Guest provided for him in his will, with a trust legacy of £2,000 that he would attain at the age of 24.²² To put this sum in perspective, a craftsman in a big Irish city such as Dublin in 1838 earned less than 40 pence a day.²³ However, there was a caveat: to claim the fund, Thomas had to have qualified to practise as “a Surgeon and apothecary”.²⁴ If he refused, or did not pass the exams by that time, he would get only £1,000 (excepting illness or accident preventing him from qualifying).²⁵ Before age 24, Thomas could apply for advance funds for his “maintenance, education and advancement in the world”.²⁶ He duly completed his qualifications and was admitted as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 1841, departing immediately for Australia and listing his address on RCS records only as “Sydney, New South Wales”.²⁷

On arrival, Johnson decided to settle in NSW and soon found a wife, 22-year-old Harriet Jane Willmot (variously Willmott or Wilmott), whom he married by special licence on 20 June 1842.²⁸ The Anglican ceremony was conducted by the Reverend Robert Allwood at St James’ Church, King Street, an impressive building that seated 1,500 people.²⁹ Thomas and Harriet Johnson’s early years together were difficult as several disasters befell them, including the death of their infant son. Harriet had already known sorrow, having been orphaned as a child. On 3 October 1842, less than four months after their wedding, Johnson “of Elizabeth St, Sydney, surgeon”, filed for bankruptcy,³⁰ and their property, including his wife’s inheritance from her father, was sold at auction on 20 February 1843.³¹

Johnson as Colonial Scapegoat

Despite financial disaster, Johnson immediately founded the Satirist and Sporting Chronicle newspaper. It lasted only until April that year and is not considered important enough to be discussed in most newspaper histories—yet it was Australia’s first “sports” newspaper.³² It was a humble beginning, bearing little resemblance to the wide-ranging sports coverage of Johnson's later publications. However, it was a start at a time when sport hardly appeared in the established press. Mayer shows that in 1845, the Sydney Morning Herald featured no sport at all, and this did not change until the 20th century, while the Melbourne Herald contained 5.6 per cent in 1845 (decreasing to 2.8 by 1865).³³ Sports content in the Satirist included NSW races listings on the front page of every edition, and reports of cricket, rifle shooting, boxing and pedestrianism.

The reports were written as opinion pieces. For example, in reporting a cricket match of 6 March 1843 between the “Australian” and “Victoria” Clubs, the unnamed writer (likely Johnson himself) argues that “The Natives” (the former) won because they used the “unfair” bowling practice of “Still”—that is, “most of his Balls being thrown over his shoulder”, which he claims resulted in injury to batters.³⁴ (“Roundarm” bowling was accepted by the Melbourne Cricket Club from 1835 but remained a subject of debate.) The article also says the Victorians needed to adopt more systematic practising regimes,³⁵ something that could be considered an anti-amateurism (i.e. anti-gentleman’s game) stance. In other sports news, the first of a series on rifle shooting, run over three editions, says, “We have watched with much pleasure and anxiety, the progress now making in the Colony in furtherance of this truly national sport”—interesting in that this comment preceded Federation by 57 years.³⁶

It was the newspaper’s other side—that of satire—that was to get Johnson into serious trouble, with his aim to debunk and ridicule the ruling class. On the front page of the first edition on 4 February 1843, Johnson stated the Satirist’s purpose: “Our object is to expose and repress ‘humbug’, either judicial, magisterial or political.”³⁷

The short-lived newspaper caused controversy in Sydney society, had dire consequences for its owner-editor, and marked a watershed in Australian legal history in curtailing press freedom. In his history of Australian censorship, Coleman notes that Johnson’s Satirist was Australia’s “first obscene newspaper”, whose importance was as a “sort of organ of the class war” in changing social times.³⁸ Mayer contends that the Satirist marked the addition of “the sex angle” to sensationalism in Australian newspapers, a forerunner to the advent of “a bright and easy-to-read Press eagerly devoured by the workers” from the late 1860s. Sport fit easily into that realm, particularly events that appealed to the masses, such as boxing and horseracing.

In March 1843, Thomas Revel Johnson was accused of libel by a 29-year-old solicitor named Robert Ebenezer Johnson (evidently no relation).³⁹ The offending words had appeared in an article in the Satirist and Sporting Chronicle, claiming Robert Johnson’s pockmarked face was due to “the commission of sin in early life, and the effects of mercury”, a reference to syphilis treatment.⁴⁰ However, the civil case was dropped when Thomas Revel Johnson and the printer of his newspaper, Charles William Brown, were arrested and faced with criminal charges for publishing “obscene libels”. Similarly charged was Charles James Gogerly (variously “Goggerly”), nominal printer-publisher of a competing publication, the Satirist and Sydney Chronicle, which had reprinted Johnson’s newspaper’s material.

Concurrently, Edward Alcock, printer and publisher of the Colonial Observer, was also being tried on another charge of libel. He was convicted and fined £200, with sureties from himself and two others totalling £1,000, but not given a jail term as such, except that he was to be held at Darlinghurst until the fine was paid.⁴¹ Johnson used Alcock’s case to criticise the legal system’s inconsistency. He lambasted the Australian press, maintaining that if this were England, the press “would have been unanimous in their opposition to so great an encroachment upon their rights and privileges”.⁴² The Sydney Morning Herald, he said, kept “a contemptible silence”, while the Australian, “with truckling spirit, and shameless effrontery, urged on, and encouraged the prosecution”.⁴³ (The Australian referred to here is William Charles Wentworth’s 1824–1848 publication, not the current newspaper of the same name.)

In publicly lampooning politicians and the judiciary, Johnson had picked powerful enemies. Discussing would-be legislature members, he pointed out ex-convicts, over-imbibers and philanderers. Mr Willum Hustler was advised to stay away from politics, threatened in the Satirist thus: “We are in posession [sic] of the Devonshire House story.” However, Johnson noted that although the newspaper opposed Hustler, if he waited long enough, his luck might change because “every dog has his day”.⁴⁴ The historian Kirsten McKenzie claims it is unlikely Johnson “really inhabited the moral ground he proclaimed”,⁴⁵ but I disagree: clearly Johnson, as a newspaperman, aimed to inflame emotions to sell copies, but there is also a sense of genuine outrage behind his words, directed at the rich and powerful, keeping in mind that he was largely excluded from his wealthy paternal and aristocratic family.

Through the press, men such as Johnson could challenge the hierarchical British system that had been exported to the colonies. As Penny Russell explains, it was an outdated system of “pretension and prudery, the inflexibility of social boundaries … the privileging of ‘good form over good will’”.⁴⁶ In the first edition of the Satirist, Johnson asks, “What is humbug?”, and answers, referring to the governor of NSW at the time, Sir George Gipps: “Ask Mister Gipps, he will tell you cheating people of their cash under the specious appearance of liberal institutions, when in reality he holds all the power himself.”⁴⁷ Concerning the charges of libel against him, Johnson wrote about the institution of a free press as synonymous with freedom of the wider population. He insinuates that charges against him were made “more of vengeance than of justice” and that such prosecutions must be repressed in order to “advance the true interests of our fellow colonists”.⁴⁸ He maintains that his newspaper is “determined, at all risks, and at all hazards, vigilantly to guard the interests of the public—to expose vice, and quell iniquity”.⁴⁹

Unsurprisingly, Johnson’s enemies in Sydney society included the small community of solicitors who were colleagues of Robert Johnson. Consequently, Thomas Johnson was “considered such a ‘worthless fellow’ that he could not get legal representation during the case”.⁵⁰ The acting attorney-general, Sir Roger Therry, referring to Johnson’s qualifications as a surgeon, said it was “a painful thing to be obliged to pray for judgment against a man of such apparent respectability … who was a member of an honorable profession, by the practice of which he might have acquired a comfortable and honorable maintenance”.⁵¹ Johnson and Brown pleaded guilty to the charges of offensive libel and were convicted, Johnson receiving a two-year sentence at Newcastle Gaol and Brown and Gogerly a year each at Berrima.

In “The Foundations of Australian Defamation Law”, Paul Mitchell discusses the importance of the Johnson, Brown and Gogerly cases.⁵² The first elected legislative council, set up in 1843, was tasked with reforming libel law in NSW, in particular to consider assimilating libel to slander and establishing that truth must be told without malice.⁵³ The member for Durham County, Richard Windeyer, also a barrister, used the Satirist case to illustrate his point.⁵⁴ The Sydney Morning Herald reported Windeyer’s argument regarding the clause dealing with truth, criticising newspapers such as the Satirist for “raking up the faults and frailties of individuals with a view to extort money, and to shock the decorum and undermine the sociality of the community”.⁵⁵ Windeyer railed against the short-lived newspaper and against Johnson as editor, and the Sydney Morning Herald reported his speech at length: “There was no doubt that the Satirist had been the instrument by which money had been extorted from many parties, who had rather pay than have the secrets of their private life unveiled. The unworthy editor of that abominable publication had availed himself of this scandalous means of extortion, and so strong was the feeling against him in consequence, that when brought up for judgment, he was unable to obtain the assistance of counsel to speak for him, no member of the bar being found to accent the degrading office of defending him.”⁵⁶

In August 1847, “Mr Windeyer’s Libel Act” was passed, establishing the legal principle that truth was not a defence for defamation in criminal or civil cases and that published material must also be in the public interest.⁵⁷

Johnson warrants a paragraph in the 1862 book The History of New South Wales, by the journalist and newspaper owner Roderick Flanagan. However, Johnson is referred to not by name but as “the editor of an obscene publication called the ‘Satirist’”, who published “vileness in pursuit of money and celebrity”.⁵⁸ Flanagan notes this editor was also a qualified surgeon, but claims he did not practise because he was “too much a man of fashion for his legitimate calling”.⁵⁹ At the time Flanagan left Australia in 1860 after 20 years in NSW and Victoria, Johnson was well known in Sydney as both a practising surgeon and a former newspaper editor. As a Sydney newspaperman himself, Flanagan is bound to have known or at least known of Johnson, though Flanagan worked for loftier publications, including the Empire, from 1852, of which he became editor before moving to the Sydney Morning Herald in 1854.

The two-year sentence imposed upon Johnson sees him clearly being made an example of by the judiciary as part of a desire for Australia to appear, in the eyes of the mother country, worthy of its own legislative assembly. As McKenzie argues, “In the new civil climate, reminders of an unsavoury past were unwelcome. It was Johnson’s misfortune to have fatally miscalculated the spirit of his age.”⁶⁰ The sensationalised Herald editorial claimed Johnson’s publication would hold the entire colony up to ridicule in England: “This is, in heart-sickening verity, the deepest stain ever cast upon our social character. This brands us more deeply than ever with the odium of Botany Bay depravity. This proves that there is a more deadly taint in the bosom of our community, than we had ever been willing to suspect. This will afford an unspeakable triumph to our enemies in the mother country, and expose us to the scorn and execration of even our best wishers in virtuous England.”⁶¹

Anglocentric NSW society was determined to fight what it saw as the colony’s “unruly elements”. As Russell describes them, they were “convicts, assisted emigrants, Irish settlers, goldseekers, ‘cocky’ farmers and aspiring tradesmen, with their vulgar wives … Such groups could serve as scapegoats for whatever seemed less than ‘civilised’ in the colonial project”.⁶²

In 1840s Australia, still tied to an English ideal, Johnson was unusual, unveiled criticisms of snobbery and class systems being risky in popular media before the 1880s. Johnson was conscious of the fear among the landed and monied class that what would later become identified as Australian larrikinism and distrust of authority threatened societal order as they knew it. The working class was beginning to realise the power of collective action with, as Martin Crotty argues, “interests and values directly opposed to those of bourgeois society”.⁶³ The organisation of amateur sports was considered by the establishment as essential to the new colony, “a necessary reminder of the civilised society from whence they came”.⁶⁴ Yet it was “civilised society” for the few, as illustrated by early sporting entities such as the Sydney Turf Club, formed in 1825, whose “membership was dominated by the cream of local society (such as it was)”.⁶⁵ Even the choice of sporting activity was ruled by class, exemplified by the insistence of the Sydney elite that they would not swim in the sea, because that was where convicts swam.⁶⁶ From its beginnings in Australia, also, the press was divided: the established “quality” press—a term still used today, which is mired in connotations connecting it with the social elite—and the new independent upstarts, the would-be mass-market press that aimed to appeal to the working class.⁶⁷

Johnson’s rebuttal preceded Thomas Hughes’s seminal 1857 novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and historical criticism of the “muscular Christianity” of the ruling class,⁶⁸ but it can be seen as a forerunner to such critiques. Johnson clearly saw the notion of the “sporting gentleman” in enabling a hierarchical society that penalised the masses and entitled the few. While not a lone voice, Johnson was a highly visible and outspoken one, seen as turning upon his own class. He paid a high price in his conviction and imprisonment, and the Satirist was closed.

Johnson and the Early Sporting Press

The year Johnson arrived in NSW, 1841, was a significant one for the Australian press: John Fairfax and Charles Kemp bought the Sydney Herald for £10,000,⁶⁹ renaming it the Sydney Morning Herald, as it remains today. The “quality press” of the day carried few sports reports, preferring stories about politics, court cases, police reports, auctions, shipping, and events in New Zealand. Much of the content was reprinted from other newspapers, journals and circulars, keeping to a minimum the number of reporters it needed to employ.⁷⁰ Though it was considered respectable and reliable, the Sydney Morning Herald was also criticised as dull.⁷¹ As I previously mentioned, sport—although already popular in Australia with large numbers of spectators and players—was not even reported on.⁷² Johnson recognised a need for a new type of Australian newspaper, a livelier publication with sports news and commentary that would reflect a colony that favoured outdoor pursuits, and that would interest men of all classes. Women did not count.⁷³

In October 1844, Johnson was granted early release from prison after serving 18 months⁷⁴ and immediately applied for his certificate of discharge from the 1842 insolvency order.⁷⁵ The Johnsons’ second son, Charles Revel, was born at Newcastle on 6 November 1844 (thus conceived during Johnson’s incarceration, presumably the result of a conjugal visit), and the family moved to the new suburb of Ashfield in inner-west Sydney. Any happiness was short-lived, however, as their elder son, Frederick, died on 16 July 1845, aged two years and four months.⁷⁶ (Fortunately, there was later some good news—in 1847, Harriet gave birth to a third son, Henry Herbert Blake Johnson.)

In January 1845, Johnson founded his most successful venture, Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, published weekly on Saturdays as a one-folio broadsheet. It was modelled after the phenomenally successful British publication Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (1822–1886). Surprisingly, given the success of sporting newspapers in Britain from the 1820s, they had not caught on in Australia, but Johnson was determined with his own version of Bell’s Life to show that they could. From the first editorial, he emphasised local sport as a priority: “Our efforts will chiefly be directed to the sports of Australia—though the project, it is hoped, will not merely embody entertainment.”⁷⁷ Johnson continued his campaign—evident throughout his newspaper career—to expose injustice and corruption in sport as a microcosm of wider NSW society. An example is in a leader in Bell’s Life on corruption in racing, in which he exposes the practice of renaming fast horses between meets so they could spuriously enter races for those who had never won a prize: “Thus he sneaks all over the interior … picking up the little fish intended to encourage the local ‘flats’ in the improvement of the breed of horses.”⁷⁸ He warns that anyone who does this “may rely upon having the branding iron applied” if he discovers their identity, because corruption is detrimental to the sport, giving “the canting and pseudo moralizing hypocrite grounds for the general condemnation of the sport and those who are devoted to it”.⁷⁹

Cashman dismisses Johnson’s newspaper from consideration as a sports publication on the grounds that it was “focused mainly on horse-riding”.⁸⁰ To test Cashman’s assertion, I conducted a content analysis of every edition of Bell’s Life in 1847 (see Figure 2), which reveals it actually covered a wide range of sports. There were 238 sports stories published that year, excluding results lists. Turf was indeed the most popularly reported single sport, but it made up only half the sports stories. The other 50 per cent covered a wide range of sports, including “the ring” (boxing), then shooting and boating a long way behind. “All others” in the graph include general sports opinion pieces, sports poetry, aquatics, hounds, hunting, bowling, pedestrianism (athletics), field, cocking, cricket and even bull fighting (two reports from Spain). I contend on this evidence that Bell's Life is worthy of being considered a sports newspaper: although it did consider racing its specialty, it purveyed many other sports of interest to Australian readers.

Figure 2. Stories by sport type in Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 1847. Content analysis based on data from https://trove.nla.gov.au/archives.

In February 1847, Johnson acquired a business partner, George Ferrers Pickering,⁸¹ to lead the newspaper’s “literary and sporting departments”.⁸² This move, Johnson said in his editorial, was in line with his intention to focus on “Sporting Intelligence”.⁸³ In this way, Pickering became one of Australia’s first specialist sports editors, thanks to Johnson recognising that sport sold newspapers, because “every man takes (or wishes it to be thought so) some interest in the sporting world”.⁸⁴ The partnership with Pickering proved fleeting. In 1848, he bought Johnson out, announcing the new joint proprietor as Charles Hamilton Nichols.⁸⁵ Their parting was acrimonious: Pickering brought at least two court cases against Johnson in 1848 and 1849, one for libel and assault, both of which found Johnson guilty but resulted only in fines.⁸⁶

Johnson moved on to found the Sporting Times, and in his opening editorial on 1 July 1848, he addressed sports supporters as “that liberal-minded body [of readers]”, noting that “to fill up that blank which our secession has been said by corteous [sic] friends to have created in the Sporting Chronicles of this country, is our present purpose”.⁸⁷ Despite “numerous promises of support”,⁸⁸ the newspaper lasted only seven editions, publishing its last on 12 August. The following year, Johnson founded Australia’s first Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Times (though it was actually published on Saturday night due to trading restrictions).⁸⁹ The Bathurst Advocate reported that the first edition of the Sunday Times (18 June 1849) was “very well got up, and will fill up a gap in our newspaper literature”, and that the proprietor was “possessed of superior talent”.⁹⁰ Unfortunately, the Sunday Times was also defunct less than a month later—a victim of “Sabbatanarism”, according to Mayer⁹¹—no doubt leaving Johnson once more in debt. He tried yet again with Australasian Sporting Magazine from November 1850 to January 1851, focusing on horseracing, and for which he was the editor but not the publisher. Interestingly, it was not an independent publication, being “under the patronage of His Excellency Sir Charles Fitzroy and the Australian Jockey Club”,⁹² which seems at odds with Johnson’s anti-establishment spirit. Unfortunately, this publication was also fleeting, closing after just four monthly editions. Johnson now returned to his surgical profession.

The Goldfields Surgeon

Gold was discovered in NSW in 1851, and Johnson joined the thousands who streamed to the goldfields. He set up as a surgeon along the Turon River and lived in the town of Sofala. There was plenty of work there for a surgeon. The town’s population escalated sharply as prospectors arrived, and the Royal Hotel, a post office and a general store were built.⁹³ Ever resourceful, Johnson also tried gold prospecting, securing a claim at Oakey Creek, where men hoping to get lucky shovelled dirt all day from holes up to 4.6 metres deep.⁹⁴ His prospecting, though, was unproductive, and Johnson continued his primary career as a surgeon. He was also a keen sportsman who in 1851–1852 owned a horse called Jorrocks, “the veteran of a hundred well contested fields”,⁹⁵ recognised as “Australia’s first celebrity horse”.⁹⁶ Though Johnson did not come up with the name of the horse, it would have greatly appealed to him—Jorrocks “the Cockney fox-hunter” was the name of a fictional character of the British satirical writer R. S. Surtees (1805–1864), who focused on satirising the snobbery he saw in upper-class types and their chosen sports.⁹⁷

Johnson’s many surgical successes at and near Sofala were reported in newspaper stories in 1851 and 1852, and he appeared regularly in gossip columns. Sensationally, on 20 January 1852, the Sydney Morning Herald erroneously reported Dr Johnson had died on the Turon goldfields.⁹⁸ Three days later, the Empire and other papers had to issue a correction.⁹⁹ Johnson’s surgical career really took off when a hospital at Sofala was set up in late 1852, funded by subscriptions including one guinea from Johnson himself.¹⁰⁰ The Sydney Morning Herald in February 1853 reported the hospital as being particularly well run by Johnson and its management committee.¹⁰¹ The newspaper relates the heroic actions of Johnson as one of the first practising surgeons on the local goldfields: proper surgical instruments were scarce, and Johnson had to improvise with a razor and butcher’s saw to perform amputations.¹⁰²

After two years on the goldfields, however, Johnson moved back to Sydney and placed an advertisement in Bell’s Life to announce that he would consult from his house on Goulbourn Street, including free advice for the poor.¹⁰³ Perhaps Johnson was too kind in giving free treatment, because in 1855, he was declared insolvent for the second time.¹⁰⁴ Fortunately, he could continue to practise as a surgeon, earning extra money by appearing as a medical expert in court cases.

Johnson died in hospital on 30 July 1863 after an unspecified illness. No extant death certificate is available (they were not required in those days), but his burial certificate notes his age as 44, although all family genealogical sites state his birth as being 1817,¹⁰⁵ which would make him 45 or 46 at death. Bells’ Life, still owned by Pickering and Nichols, published an obituary. The writer, probably Pickering, could not resist a final dig: “Had he in his earlier career dedicated his talents to his profession, and not entered on literary pursuits, all who know him will acknowledge that he was destined to attain an eminence in his profession in this colony over others, not possessing half of his abilities, who have achieved it … Had he but embraced his opportunity, he would have commanded not only full success in the practice of his profession, but have also occupied a high social position.”¹⁰⁶ The article acknowledges Johnson as a skilled anatomist and maintains that “as a scholar, there were not many to equal him in this colony”.¹⁰⁷ Although ostensibly it praises Johnson’s writing for “the thunder of his satire”, even likening him as a fellow Irishman to the poet Tom Moore, it also notes that the subjects of his wit ensured he was “often placed in unpleasant difficulties”.¹⁰⁸ While it does not say what Johnson’s illness was, the article laments the loss of his “fine commanding appearance” and notes it must have been difficult for his friends “to observe the change” as “disappointment in his profession bowed him down”—what this disappointment was remains a mystery.¹⁰⁹

According to an advertisement in Bell’s Life regarding an appeal for Johnson’s family, he left behind eight destitute children.¹¹⁰ As well as Johnson’s own two surviving biological children, these include the orphans of his late sister-in-law and her husband, who had both died young. The ad was posted by Pickering and Nichols, who ran a benefit fund through the newspaper.¹¹¹ Tragically for the children, Johnson’s widow, Harriet, died just five weeks after him on 8 September 1863, aged 43, “after a long and painful illness”.¹¹² It is unknown if there was any connection to her husband’s illness, such as a contagious disease. Family understanding is that the children were taken in by Harriet’s sister, Elizabeth Vander Polder (née Peek, née Willmot, 1820–1874).¹¹³

Johnson’s Contributions Considered

The dichotomy in Johnson’s life is that he was at once part of the establishment, and yet outside it. As a surgeon, an educated white male of some financial means, he had entree to the bourgeoisie and even upper-class society. However, as a member of the independent press who lampooned that very society, he was by his own choice not part of it. Although he gave up newspaper editing in 1851 and practised as a surgeon for his remaining 12 years, his foray into popular media was seen by critics as compromising his chances of being considered “respectable”.

While Adair and Vamplew note Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer as remarkable in the promotion of early organised sport among British Australians,¹¹⁴ they do not name Johnson as the founder or recognise his attempt to use sport to illuminate the breakdown of the class system. Similarly, in mentioning the newspaper as part of an early “strong specialist sporting press”, Stoddart sees it as merely a mainstream voice that promoted a hegemonic cultural perspective that saw sport “amongst the main conservative forces in Australian life”.¹¹⁵ While this view might be true of later mass media, it fails to recognise the contribution of Johnson and the early sporting press as independent and controversial—or as a site of contestation of imported class hierarchies. Johnson was convinced that a popular press should include a variety of sports content and that sports journalism needed a specialist editor (his reason for going into business with Pickering at Bell’s Life). He believed sports should sit beside other news as an important part of Australian life for all classes. He also recognised the potential of a Sunday press, an idea ahead of its time in Australia, one reason all but one of his newspapers were short-lived.

Johnson was remarkable in setting himself up as an editor and proprietor who was anti-establishment and anti-status quo, and who believed in the press’s watchdog role as a voice of the people to expose corruption. As his obituary in the newspaper he founded, Bell’s Life, attests, “He displayed his ability in unkennelling and laying bare to public observation and execration all denominations of humbug; and, in his allusions, hit off the foibles and offensive vanities of many of our public men.”¹¹⁶ That much of the sports reporting in his newspapers focused on racing and boxing, in those days both highly corrupt, is an irony that could not have escaped him. Nevertheless, he recognised that sport’s mass popularity with audiences was important to a developing (pre-Federation) “Australian” character. As he said in a leader in 1845, in which he wrote about “the newspaper mania” in NSW, every group had its voice: “from the Prize Ring to the Pulpit;—and, if religious feeling is to be extended in the anticipated ratio, there will probably be more hard hitting, and more rancorous animosity displayed in the latter than the former”.¹¹⁷

During the economic depression of the 1840s, when Johnson started the Satirist, he aimed to expose what he saw as the corrupt element of the ruling class in Sydney society, including lawyers, judges and politicians. While much of the content is gossipy and rude, the short-lived publication is important in Australian newspaper history as a forerunner to continuing debate in Australia regarding the fundamental democratic institution of a free media. Johnson denounced censorship of the press by governing bodies: “When that liberty is infringed upon, it is very certain that the cause of freedom stands in imminent peril.”¹¹⁸ His prison sentence for libel was used by the establishment as a caution to a burgeoning press that authorities felt was becoming too uppity. On one side of the debate were the wealthy and powerful colonialists, including conservative newspaper proprietors, who were eager to prove to Britain that they ran a “civilised” modern society, and who believed the role of the press was to run propaganda that would serve as evidence. On the other side were the independent press pioneers, newspapermen such as Johnson, who imagined a new society, one that exposed “humbug”—and eschewed the British class system that ensured privilege for only the few. From the outset in NSW, Johnson could have lived a comfortable life as a gentleman surgeon whose services were in constant demand. He could well have been part of the so-called establishment himself. Even though he did practise as a surgeon, he chose also to follow his passion of establishing an outspoken and free press, to fight against inequality, classism and elitism, even after being incarcerated for the material he published.

This article aims to foster a broader discussion recognising the importance of Johnson and his contemporaries in an analysis of Australian sports media pioneers. That many of these pioneers were not exclusively journalists, but, like Johnson, also had other careers, should also be considered. Another example is his one-time business partner and later nemesis Pickering, who was also a playwright, poet and member of the NSW Legislative Assembly representing Goldfields North. Johnson was part of a new breed of journalists in the colonies: not for them the slavish following of cultural mores of a Britain many called “Home”, even generations after emigrating. Johnson and his ilk worked to establish a print media that was distinctly Australian: spirited, unconventional and proudly outspoken.

Acknowledgements

I thank descendants of Thomas Revel Johnson in Australia and New Zealand who have generously shared documents, manuscripts, publications, websites and family knowledge of their ancestor.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Satirist and Sporting Chronicle, “Address,” 4 February 1843, 1; Mark Rolfe, “The Pleasures of Political Humour in Australian Democracy,” Journal of Australian Studies 34, no. 3 (2010): 368.

2 Please note that I refer to Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer as Bell's Life after its first mention; for clarity, however, I refer to Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle in full.

3 Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1964), 10.

4 Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 125.

5 Brian Stoddart, Saturday Afternoon Fever: Sport in the Australian Culture (North Ryde: Angus & Robertson, 1986), 34.

6 Stoddart, Saturday Afternoon Fever, 34.

7 Stoddart, Saturday Afternoon Fever, 34.

8 Cashman, Paradise of Sport (Sydney: Walla Walla Press, 2010), 131–44.

9 Cashman, Paradise of Sport, 131–32.

10 Cashman, Paradise of Sport, 131–32.

11 Cashman, Paradise of Sport, 132.

12 Cashman, Paradise of Sport, 132.

13 Denis Cryle, Disreputable Profession: Journalists and Journalism in Colonial Australia (Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 1987).

14 Mayer, The Press in Australia.

15 R. B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976), 115, 230. However, Walker erroneously states that Johnson was “a somewhat disreputable solicitor” (115).

16 W. McDonald, B. Avieson, and K. Davies, Australian Colonial Narrative Journalism (Sydney: Macquarie University, 2015).

17 Neville Meaney, “‘In History’s Page’: Identity and Myth,” in Australia’s Empire, ed. Deryck Schreuder and Stuart Ward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 364.

18 A sketchbook containing the portrait of Johnson, among other NSW identities, was sold at auction in Melbourne on 28 March 2019 to the National Library of Australia for $85,909.09 (Menzies, lot 65, Sketchbook 1850–57), https://www.menziesartbrands.com/items/sketchbook (accessed 19 October 2022).

19 At this time in Ireland, birth certificates were not registered by the state, and parish churches kept christening records, though many have been destroyed. Genealogical sites list Johnson's birth as 1817. See, for example, “Dr Thomas Revel Johnson, Free Settler ‘Sea Horse’ 1840,” Geni, accessed 19 October 2022, https://www.geni.com/people/Dr-Thomas-Revel-Johnson-MRCS-AKAThomas-Revel-Guest-II/6000000036610418328. His jail record also notes his birthdate as 1817.

20 “Dr Thomas Revel Johnson”.

21 Revel Guest and Angela V. John, Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the 19th Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 130.

22 National Archives (UK), “Will of Thomas Revel Guest of Cardiff, Glamorganshire,” 1835.

23 Liam Kennedy and Martin W. Dowling, “Irish Prices and Wages in Ireland, 1700–1850,” Economic and Social History 24 (1997): 62–104.

24 National Archives (UK), “Will of Thomas Revel Guest”.

25 National Archives (UK), “Will of Thomas Revel Guest”. Thomas’s sister, Sarah, also received £2,000, with provision for her education and maintenance until age 24, when she could claim the capital.

26 National Archives (UK), “Will of Thomas Revel Guest”.

27 View the Royal College of Surgeons archives at http://www.rcseng.ac.uk. I received this information in personal correspondence with Geraldine O’Driscoll, Library & Surgical Information Services, The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 26 April 2012.

28 “Family Notices,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1842, 3.

29 Joseph Fowles, Sydney in 1848 (Sydney: J. Fowles, 1848), 29.

30 “Tuesday,” Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 1842, 2.

31 “Advertising,” Australian, 20 February 1843, 3.

32 Paul Mitchell, “The Foundations of Australian Defamation Law,” Sydney Law Review 28 (2006): 493.

33 Mayer, The Press in Australia, 212–13.

34 “Cricket,” Satirist and Sporting Chronicle, 11 March 1843, 4.

35 “Cricket,” Satirist, 4 March 1843, 3; and 11 March 1843, 4.

36 “Rifle Shooting,” Satirist, 4 March 1843, 4.

37 “Address,” Satirist, 4 February 1843, 1.

38 Peter Coleman, Obscenity, Blasphemy, Sedition (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 2000 [1962]).

39 Rolfe, “The Pleasures of Political Humour,” 368.

40 Martha Rutledge, “Johnson, Robert Ebenezer (1812–1866),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1972, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/johnson-robert-ebenezer-3862 (accessed 21 August 2023).

41 “Supreme Court,” Australasian Chronicle, 20 April 1843, 2. In 1851, however, Lang was found guilty of publishing a malicious libel and jailed for four months. See D. W. A. Baker, “Lang, John Dunmore (1799–1878),” Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1967).

42 Satirist, 18 March 1843, 1.

43 Satirist, 18 March 1843, 1.

44 Satirist, 4 February 1843, 1.

45 Kirsten McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820–1850 (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2004), 160.

46 Penny Russell, “Unsettling Settler Society,” in Australia’s History: Themes and Debates, ed. Martyn Lyons and Penny Russell (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005), 36.

47 Satirist, 4 February 1843, 2.

48 “The Liberty of the Press!!!,” Satirist, 18 March 1843, 1.

49 “The Liberty of the Press!!!,” 1.

50 Rolfe, “The Pleasures of Political Humour,” 368.

51 “Supreme Court,” 2.

52 Mitchell, “The Foundations of Australian Defamation Law,” 493.

53 Mitchell, “The Foundations of Australian Defamation Law,” 491.

54 Mitchell, “The Foundations of Australian Defamation Law,” 492.

55 “Legislative Council,” Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 1846, 3.

56 “Legislative Council,” 3.

57 J. B. Windeyer, “Windeyer, Richard (1806–1847),” Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1967).

58 Roderick Flanagan, The History of New South Wales: With an Account of Van Diemen’s Land [Tasmania], New Zealand, Port Phillip [Victoria], Moreton Bay, and other Australasian Settlements: Comprising a Complete View of the Progress and Prospects of Gold Mining in Australia, vol. II (London: Sampson Low, 1862), 70.

59 Flanagan, History of New South Wales, 70.

60 McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies, 153.

61 “The Obscene Publications,” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 April 1843, 2.

62 Russell, “Unsettling Settler Society,” 36.

63 Martin Crotty, Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity 1870–1920 (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 15–16.

64 Stoddart, Saturday Afternoon Fever, 16.

65 Stoddart, Saturday Afternoon Fever, 16.

66 Daryl Adair and Wray Vamplew, Sport in Australian History (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997), 4.

67 Stoddart, Saturday Afternoon Fever, 84.

68 Crotty, Making the Australian Male, 99.

69 Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1964), 12.

70 Mayer, The Press in Australia, 12.

71 Mayer, The Press in Australia, 13–14. Mayer cites comments in the 1880s and 1890s, particularly in regard to long columns of political reports, but coverage in the conservative press was similarly longwinded in unbroken columns of type in the 1840s.

72 Mayer, The Press in Australia, 13–14, 212–13.

73 In Johnson’s time, sport was considered unsuitable for women: organised women’s sports did not begin in Australia until the late 19th century. See Angela Burroughs, “Women, Femininity and Sport: The Contribution of the ‘New Woman’ to Nationhood,” in Sport, History and Australian Culture: Passionate Pursuits, ed. Richard Cashman and Rob Hess (Sydney: Walla Walla Press, 2011), 78–91.

74 Coleman, Obscenity, Blasphemy, Sedition.

75 “Applications for Certificates,” Australian, 8 November 1844, 3.

76 “Family Notices,” Morning Chronicle, 16 July 1845, 3.

77 Bell's Life, 4 January 1845, 1.

78 Bell's Life, 18 January 1845, 1.

79 Bell's Life, 18 January 1845, 1.

80 Cashman, Paradise of Sport, 132.

81 Pickering remained at Bell’s Life until 1868, but was also a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly 1865–1868. He died in Levuka, Fiji, in 1876. See “Mr George Ferrers PICKERING,” Parliament of NSW, https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/formermembers/Pages/former-member-details.aspx?pk=189 (accessed 4 September 2023).

82 Bell's Life, editorial, 20 February 1847, 1.

83 Bell's Life, editorial, 20 February 1847, 1.

84 “Sportsmen,” Bell's Life, 13 March 1847, 2.

85 “Bell’s Life in Sydney,” Bell's Life, 10 June 1848, 1.

86 “Supreme Court,” Bell's Life, 25 November 1848, 2; “Ruffianism,” Bell's Life, 3 March 1849, 2.

87 Sporting Times, 1 July 1848, 1.

88 Sporting Times, 1 July 1848, 1.

89 Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 115.

90 “Police Office,” Bathurst Advocate, 23 June 1849, 2.

91 Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia (Melbourne: Landsdowne Press, 1968), 22. This is another example of Johnson being ahead of his time. Mayer points out that Sunday newspapers did not take off in Australia until the 1880s.

92 “The Australasian Sporting Magazine,” National Library of Australia, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/499490?lookfor=title:%22australasian%20sporting%20magazine%22&offset=1&max=1 (accessed 19 October 2022).

93 “Sketches from the Turon Gold Fields, New South Wales,” Illustrated London News, 21 August 1852, 124–25. The current Royal Hotel in Sofala is not this original, but was constructed in 1862. Likewise, the old building known today as the General Store was built in the 1860s.

94 “The Turon Diggings,” Empire, 29 September 1851, 3.

95 “Domestic Intelligence,” Moreton Bay Courier, 13 March 1852, 3. The horse, which raced until it was 19, was in its later years affectionately known in the press as “old Jorrocks”.

96 Mikhala Harkins and Laura Breen, “Australia's First Celebrity Racehorse,” National Museum Australia, accessed 19 October 2022, https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/collection/highlights/portrait-of-jorrocks.

97 Carl B. Cone, “The Genesis of John Jorrocks, Fox-’unter,” The Kentucky Review 3, no. 3 (1982): 20.

98 “The Turon,” Sydney Morning Herald, 20 January 1852, 2.

99 “The Turon,” Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January 1852, 3.

100 “Advertising,” Bell's Life, 13 March 1852, 3.

101 “Sofala. Notes from the Turon,” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 February 1853, 2.

102 “Sofala. Notes from the Turon,” 2.

103 “Advertising,” Bell's Life, 2 July 1853, 4.

104 “Insolvent Court,” Empire, 4 September 1855, 7.

105 “Dr Thomas Revel Johnson”.

106 “The Late Mr. Thomas Revel Johnson,” Bell's Life, 1 August 1863, 3.

107 “The Late Mr. Thomas Revel Johnson,” 3.

108 “The Late Mr. Thomas Revel Johnson,” 3.

109 “The Late Mr. Thomas Revel Johnson,” 3.

110 “The Orphan Children (8) of the Late Thomas Revel Johnson,” Bell's Life, 29 August 1863, 2.

111 “The Orphan Children,” 2.

112 “Family Notices,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 September 1863, 1.

113 Elizabeth Van de Polder,” Geni, accessed 19 October 2022, https://www.geni.com/people/Elizabeth-Van-de-Polder/6000000042047758176.

114 Adair and Vamplew, Sport in Australian History, 24.

115 Stoddart, Saturday Afternoon Fever, 84, 88–89.

116 Bell's Life, 1 August 1863, 3.

117 Bell's Life, 11 January 1845, 1.

118 “The Liberty of the Press!!!,” 1.