Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 3

[trade dispatches]

A case of interest to jobbing offices was heard in the City of London Court recently (says the Effective Advertiser.) Mr James Savage, 41 High Street, Kensington, was sued by Messrs Potter for 14s 6d, goods supplied. The plaintiffs did some printing for the defendant, and sent him a proof, telling him that unless it was returned in three days the work would be proceeded with. The proof was not sent back, and when the work was proceeded with the defendant said it was incorrect. The Provisional Registrar found for the plaintiff.

A business note from the Waipawa Mail is written in one of the neatest memo-heads we have seen. The job is in plain black, bordered with Stephenson & Blake's combination rules, with an advertisement on a plain panel in the centre. It is simplicity itself, and is all the more effective on that account. We think we recognize the hand of Mr Mogridge, one of the best job printers in the colony, in this design. If the Waipawa folk go farther than the local office for their work, the great probability is that they will fare worse, so far as quality is concerned.

In our January issue we stated, on the authority of a cable message, that the notorious O'Donovan « Rossa » had taken action against the New York Herald for libel. The telegram was incorrect—the action was really taken against Herman Ridder, proprietor, and Cassidy, editor of the New York Catholic News. The article—if it had referred to anyone else than O'Donovan—would certainly have been a libel of the first class. « It accused him of inviting a gang of ruffians to desecrate his first wife's grave out of spite to her relatives; of being afraid of collecting an insurance policy on the life of his second wife; of refusing his starving son ten cents though asked for God's sake to buy him a sandwich; and of allowing that son to die in a charity hospital and be buried in Potter's Field. The article further accused him of defrauding servant girls by taking their money and giving them bogus passage certificates to bring relations from Ireland, and charged him with giving secret credentials to James Macdermott to betray and sell men into penal servitude in British prisons. Finally, the article accused Rossa of pocketing $2000 for his individual benefit which had been given him to send to the worse than widowed and orphaned dependents of the men whom he and Macdermott consigned to a living grave. » O'Donovan (his name is not Rossa) claimed $100,000 damages. The suit came on on the 13th June, and was dismissed. It was proved that plaintiff has received $500 from Patrick Ford, of the New York Irish World, for the family of a prisoner in an English gaol, of which he only disbursed $300. The defendant caused a great sensation in court by submitting a letter dated April 1st, 1889, stating that Rossa was in receipt of secret service money from the British Government. This information, however, requires confirmation. The British Government are not likely to have had anything to do with so unconscionable a scoundrel. The date of the letter is significant, and it was written by a noted practical joker—Mr Labouchere.

« Mr Henry Brett, the proprietor of the Auckland Star, the principal New Zealand daily, who arrived in London yesterday morning on a visit to the old country, was one of the pioneers of journalism in the antipodes. Nearly a decade ago he left his home in Folkestone a very young man indeed, with nothing but pluck and brains and that everlasting quill to make his fortune in the colonies. Content with a modest beginning, he undertook the work of a city shipping reporter on the only paper Auckland possessed at that time, and in this capacity he soon obtained a reputation as a pushing and energetic young journalist. His progress was rapid, but not sufficiently so for the ambitious young man, who soon determined to start on his own account. He took a small back office, improvised some furniture, and there wrote the copy and corrected the proofs of the first copy of the Star. » So says the London Star, and after this astounding piece of history, we are not surprised to come to « the conclusion of the whole matter » —namely that « most colonials are staunch Gladstonians » —which is quite as true as the rest of the paragraph. There is not a single fact correctly stated in the whole story. Mr Brett could never have given such a ridiculous account of his own history, and the full credit must therefore be given to the imaginative reporter of the Star. The Star is not the principal New Zealand daily, and takes the second place in its own city. Mr Brett was not a pioneer of journalism in New Zealand. Journalism had lived and flourished for more than twenty-five years, and each big city had its daily papers, when he arrived. The Star's « decade » is twenty-five years. Auckland has never had less than two papers for more than forty years, and when Mr Brett joined the Herald as shipping reporter, instead of it being the only paper, the city possessed three dailies, or, counting the short-lived Morning News, four. Mr Brett did not take a small back office and start on his own account. He did not write the copy and correct the proofs of the first copy of the Star. He had nothing to do with its establishment. It was started by Mr G. M. Reed (now of the Melbourne Standard) and Mr W. T. Ferrar. Mr Reed's able writing made the paper a success, and Mr Brett afterwards became a partner by purchasing Mr Ferrar's half-share for £300. For many years the firm was « Reed & Brett. » We were well acquainted with these facts at the time, and remember them well, but for some of the minor details we are indebted to our well-informed contemporary, the Pahiatua Star.