In the 19^th century the best place for connoisseurs of salacious sensation was the Police News. Not to be confused with the Victoria Police Gazette this newspaper had nothing to do with the police. It was a scandal sheet doing the rounds of the courts to find tragedy, murder, adultery, misery, suicide and crime.

It was at one time called the Banner of Truth Police News, a distant antecedent of the major Melbourne 20^th century scandal sheet The Truth.

At a time when the respectable illustrated newspapers boasted beautiful artwork, the Police News depicted the reported crimes and incidents with the most rudimentary images.

Some of the headlines give a clear flavour of the content:

‘Lively scene in a Flinders-Street Hotel – thrashing a traducer.’

‘Delightful dissipation- the ladies’ opium-smoking club.’

‘Ben Judkins threatens to blow out George Coleman’s brain.’

‘A plucky young lady, of Carlton, horsewhipping her dastardly traducer.’

To give some idea of the reliability of the reporting of this journal is a story under the headline: Frightful occurrence at a football match in Carlton.

According to the Police News:

‘a game of manly play becomes lowered to the level of brute ruffianism. One poor fellow of the Melbourne club, named Longden.… sustained life-long injury inflicted by the rowdy violence…of one of the Carlton Imperial team, his eye being literally kicked into his head, and serious permanent injury inflicted on the brain.’

Despite the dire prognostications, Longden took the field the following week.

In October 1876 The Age delivered a withering attack on the ‘foul and unblushing scurrility and lewdness….filthiness and immoral tendencies of the literary garbage which [the publisher] Mr. Lee served up to his readers’ [i]

Lee responded by describing the criticism as ‘Pecksniffian hypocrisy’, assessing them as cowards who ‘cringe, toady, and eat dirt’ rather than upset the rich and powerful. [ii]

Deftly dodging various legal stoushes Lee published to a significant circulation. In exposing the ugly underbelly of respectable Melbourne Lee took credit for:

‘recent heavy defalcations of men in high positions of honour and trust….We will never cease to denounce the sham morality that pervades the vulgar rich, until a manly, healthy, just rule of social ethics shall be substituted for the fraudulent imitation.’[iii]

The relish and hyperbole that he applied to his reporting obscured any social purpose. Indeed his attitude was often unsympathetic. The item A fanatical fool saws his right hand off gave an account of a young man who, having read in the bible, ‘If thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee’, promptly sliced off his right hand. Lee concluded that, ‘our own opinion is that in this case medical and surgical treatment should be accompanied by a long course of severe one-handed labour, to bring the filthy fanatic to his senses.’ [iv]

It had not always been thus. Lee started the Police News at the of age 67, but prior to this he had been a more serious and high minded journalist, publishing The Tasmanian Athenæum, a journal of science, literature and art. Unfortunately sensation proved much more lucrative than art and literature.

The Tasmanian Athenæum struggled on for two years and six volumes with low circulation. The editors, Lee and William Coote, found that in Tasmania there was ‘so little to stimulate intelligent interest we need not wonder at the lack of intelligent enquiry.’ Rather wounded, Lee and Coote felt their efforts to cultivate science and literature were met with the ‘sneers of supercilious ignorance, the opposition of angry and affrighted incompetency’[v]. In Melbourne, 20 years later, Lee had learned his lesson. He aimed low and hit the bulls-eye.

In 1878 his young wife Elena, died aged 35. There followed a year later their infant son and then Richard Egan Lee himself. Even in death the ‘snobocracy’ were unforgiving.

Figaro, in the Telegraph, upon hearing of Lee’s death described him as the

‘proprietor and publisher of that vile print the Police News…. I may tell you that I scarcely ever felt more disappointed over anything than I did that Lee always managed to escape through the meshes of the legal net on the few occasions when it was cast to catch him….I will refrain from pursuing him beyond the grave, merely expressing the hope that the vicious mantle he wore when living has been buried with him. If this should be so, then I, for one, can heartily say, for the good of the community, that Lee’s’ death is not a matter over which I can mourn.’[vi]

The Library has digitised many images from the Police News and the entire paper can be browsed on microfiche in our Newspapers & Family History Reading Rooms.

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Footnotes

[i] The Age, 9 October 1876, p. 2.

[ii] Egan-Lee, R. (1876). Prospectus of a cheap and independent journal, for the people– entitled, The political budget Pecksniff was a hypocritical character in Charles Dickens’s novel The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit

[iii] Police News 26 May 1877 p.2

[iv] Police News 18 March 1876 p.2

[v] Lee, R., & Coote, W. (1853). The Tasmanian Athenæum, Or, Journal of Science, Literature and Art.

[vi] In the barber’s shop. The Telegraph, St Kilda, Prahran and South Yarra Guardian 29 March 1879: p2.