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Tuesday 23 September 2014

George Massey Allen

George Massey Allen


George Massey Allen was one of the most controversial newspaper editors South Australia has ever had.
In 1860, Allen worked for The Advertiser but decided he wanted more and left to form the first English language newspaper in the Mid-north, The Northern Star at Kapunda. (The only previous newspapers in the Barossa Valley and Mid North had been German-language newspapers).

Allen was a man of principle, but also very outspoken, which often got him in serious trouble with the law.
His newspapers were often very controversial as he preferred to voice his own opinion, without considering the consequences of his actions.
 This eventually led Allen into a liable case in Kapunda, in which he was declared guilty of liable and slander. His newspaper was cancelled after his conviction, which came with a 6-month gaol sentence.


 After serving his gaol sentence, Allen returned to Kapunda to find that his newspaper The Northern Star had been replaced in his absence with The Kapunda Herald. The new newspaper was incredibly popular and far outsold his former local paper.

Instead of going back into the newspaper business, where his opinions would most likely see him Gaoled again, he instead went into the Hotel business, buying a local Kapunda pub, in which he could voice his opinions all he wanted.
Pub life wasn’t what Allen desired though, and eventually, he moved back to Adelaide in 1867 and founded a new newspaper called The Satirist.
The Satirist was in direct competition with another newspaper The Register, and Allen's former employer, The Advertiser.
 The competition did not phase Allen though, and on at least one occasion, his newspaper outsold both his bigger rivals.
Allen had trouble keeping his opinions to himself. His newspaper lampooned local politicians, events and his rival newspapers and because of Allen's unwillingness to reel in his satiric tongue,  he eventually found himself in court again charged with liable. Not having the finances to keep hiring lawyers, and prosecuted again, with a gaol sentence, he eventually had to shut his newspaper down.

The prospectus of the South Australian satirist read:
The lamentably abject condition of the daily Press of South Australia, its want of political principle, its hypocritical fear and timorousness, has forced upon the proprietors of the Satirist the palpable necessity of launching forth upon the unimpassioned waters of honesty, truth, and fearless independence, a journal whose aim shall be to guide, not truckle to, the public opinion of this colony. ... What, then, is the demand of the hour? To find and to sustain a fearless advocate of the people's rights and requirements, one who will dare to speak and teach the truth ...” (27 July 1867, p. 2)

 Allen was incarcerated for six months by Judge Wearing, his wife and six children, who needed his income to survive, became destitute and relied on the kindness of others.
A parliamentary enquiry ensued, and eventually, a Parliamentary Intervention happened, releasing Allen from Prison.
  Judge Wearing declared he had probably misinterpreted the law somewhat harshly but stated: "the great social advantage which has, I believe, resulted to the public by the cessation of so infamous a print as the Satirist." (South Australian Parliamentary Paper no. 145, 1868/69)


Allen and his wife didn't enter into the media again, instead, they took up another Hotel, The Alexandra Hotel in Rundle Street and lived out the rest of their lives as publicans.

Researched and written by Allen Tiller ©2014

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