From Australia’s Jewish past

Benjamin Isaacs – an extremely idealistic figure of Australasian press history

Benjamin, son of Jacob and Esther Isaacs, was born in London on 17 March 1796 in Whitechapel, London, England.

He was educated at the Blue Coat School, London, and, following this, he served as a printing apprentice with Benjamin Rose Gookman of Bishopsgate. In 1832, he left England for Australia, leaving his wife and six children behind. Sometime after he arrived in Sydney, Benjamin received word of his wife’s death, which had been caused by the plague that had overtaken London at the time. She unfortunately died whilst nursing others affected.

He married again, and a further two children were born. Benjamin travelled back to England with his family for a time and returned to Sydney, arriving sometime in 1839, bringing his wife and family, plus the two youngest children from his first marriage. The remaining members of his first family followed shortly after. He also carried a letter of introduction, a record of which was published in The Australian Newspaper in January 1840, which read as follows:

‘’Sir, I have received a letter from my son, James Tegg of Sydney, stating that he was sadly distressed for compositors and pressmen to carry on the trade as a printer, and to find ready employment in this environment. I am, yours respectfully, Thomas Tegg’’.

This was addressed to the Colony Agent for Emigration.

Before leaving London, Benjamin received ten pounds from Mr Thomas Tegg. In due course, Benjamin met with James Tegg Junior, who unfortunately failed to employ him.

He was, however, successful in obtaining work with a former employer. At that time, there had been trouble between the compositors (a person who arranges type for printing or keys text into a composing machine). He started work with Edward Smith Hall, an influential editor and owner of The Sydney Monitor, a prominent newspaper known for its fiery advocacy for press freedom, which later became the Sydney Morning Herald.

The compositors had asked for an advance of five shillings, which had been refused. They accordingly stopped work and initiated what is known as the first strike in the printing business in NSW. This was recorded in The Australian in January 1840. It is believed that certain parties endeavoured to have a Bill put through the Legislative Council, making the combination of workmen legal. There were at the time, eighty to ninety compositors employed. Their wages amounted to one pound fifteen to two pounds per week, while expenses were as follows:- single board and lodging – one pound to one pound ten per week; three buckets of water costing three pence; and a four-pound loaf of bread, was two and sixpence.

Benjamin travelled to New Zealand in June 1842 and, as a printer, he was engaged for four months on The Bay of Islands Observer at Kororareka. He gained invaluable experience directing his own destiny, independent of his previous occupation as a compositor working for a wage. He then returned to Sydney and opened a letterpress printing business at 26 Bent Street, which then became the site of the Government Printing Office. Although he stumbled at the next hurdle to pioneer the first newspaper at Parramatta, the Parramatta Courier, on 13 May 1843, he showed an uncommon determination to succeed by revisiting Kororareka, New Zealand, on the recommendation of a local businessman keen to promote the tiny settlement and his own interests. The empty promises of his advisor remained unfulfilled. After just three months controlling The Bay of Islands Advocate, he was compelled to retrace his steps to Parramatta in early 1844, where, with the assistance of Benjamin Bailey, they ran the Western Advertiser.

Later that year, Benjamin took on extra work for an employment agency in Parramatta. He also founded the Bathurst Advocate, the first issue of which was printed on 5 February 1848. He gained the distinction of being the first to carry the press over the Blue Mountains. Its life there, under the name Bathurst Advocate, was short-lived, the last issue being on 29 September 1848.

On 6 October 1849, under the guidance of William Farands and, with the new name of the Bathurst Free Press, Benjamin and he were involved in a series of libel suits brought against Benjamin by the Chief Constable. The paper went on to be known as the Western Advocate, is was reduced to once weekly on a Saturday.

Benjamin briefly returned to Sydney before relocating to Windsor, where he established The Windsor Telegraph, Pitt Town, Richmond, and Wilberforce Advertiser in the winter of 1850 with Charles Albemarle Layard as editor. This untimely decision was doomed to stall, as the district still lacked sufficient support for a local newspaper, and Benjamin, to earn a living, continued to work as a printer.

By the end of the winter in 1852, Benjamin had moved to Goulburn, printing and publishing The Goulburn Times and Southern Mining Journal with John Hugh Polson as its editor, competing against an already firmly established local newspaper.

When the death knell sounded for his Goulburn newspaper in February 1857, Benjamin flirted with the publication of The Telegraph, A Mining, Agricultural, and Family Journal at Castlemaine, Victoria, together with his son-in-law. This merely marked the conclusion of his career in the dissemination of news. This brought to a close Benjamin’s direct involvement with newspaper production, a connection that spanned more than 15 years in New Zealand, New South Wales and Victoria.

Some years after the loss of his second wife, Benjamin married for a third time. He passed away at his residence in North Street, Windsor, on 8 February 1881.

Benjamin’s contribution to the fledgling provincial newspaper press in New South Wales, and to a lesser extent Victoria and New Zealand, cannot be underestimated. This man brought the first printing press over the Blue Mountains. He was directly associated with a total of 10 newspaper enterprises, of which he was the owner, printer and publisher of seven, printer and publisher of one and printer of two.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:  National Library of Australia; Charles Sturt University Output; Austlit.edu.au; Antiques Reporter; Wikipedia

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