Frederick Vosper - Journalistic Career

Journalistic Career

Early in 1886 Vosper immigrated to Australia, arriving in Maryborough, Queensland in the middle of the year. He worked as a timber miller, drover and miner, before taking a job as a journalist for the Eidsvold Reporter. He later became mining correspondent for Maryborough Chronicle and Colonist, before becoming sub-editor for the Northern Miner in Charters Towers. According to Jaggard (1979), Vosper was heavily influenced by the political opinions and journalistic style of the Northern Miner's owner and editor, Thadeus O'Kane. When O'Kane died in May 1890, Vosper became editor of the Australian Republican, the organ of the Australian Republican Association.

Vosper rapidly developed a reputation as a political firebrand and industrial agitator with a talent for journalism and public speaking. During the 1891 Australian shearers' strike he wrote an editorial entitled Bread or Blood in which he encouraged the strikers to resort to violence if peaceful means provided unsuccessful: "If your oppressors will not listen to reason let them feel cold lead and steel; as they have starved you, so do you shoot them." As a result Vosper was charged with two counts of seditious libel, but acquitted. The following year he was imprisoned for three months for inciting a riot during a miners' strike. At this time Vosper ceased cutting his hair. According to Victor Courtney, "the legend is that when in gaol he received the usual prison crop and he vowed that he would never have his hair cut again."

A passionate supporter of trade unionism, Vosper became closely associated with the Labour movement, but was never a member of the Labor Party because he refused to take their pledge. On those grounds the Labor Party refused him endorsement for the Queensland elections of 1893, and Vosper then left the colony.

After working on Sydney and Melbourne newspapers for a short time, Vosper immigrated to Western Australia in 1892, just as the gold rushes were beginning. In 1893 he arrived in Cue at the invitation of Alexander Livingstone, editor of the Murchison Miner. He briefly worked for the Murchison Miner as well as several other newspapers including Miner's Right, before establishing himself as editor of the Coolgardie Miner. He used the paper to espouse his views on republicanism, Asian immigration and workers' rights. He also argued for electoral redistribution to give the goldfields a fairer representation in the Western Australian parliament. His successor as editor to the Coolgardie Miner was fellow Cornish Australian Henry Kneebone. During 1895 Vosper edited the Geraldton Express for three months while its regular editor John Drew defended a libel action, and over shortly afterwards served briefly as correspondent for the London-based West Australian Review.