People’s Horn Boy

The People’s Horn Boy. Printed and Published at No. 67, Elizabeth-street, Hobart Town, by the Proprietor, Gilbert Robertson, of Hobart Town.

no. 1 (22 Aug. 1834)-no. 17 (13 Dec. 1834)

Weekly gratis advertising sheet issued as a supplement to the True Colonist. Included some editorial comment, mostly attacking the legal profession, and especially T. W. Rowlands. Usually referred to contemporaneously as the Horn Boy.

Issues printed at Bent’s office were: 1-4 (22 Aug-12 Sep. 1834); 15-17 (29 Nov.-13 Dec. 1834). Nos. 5-14 were printed at 6 Collins Street and appeared without the masthead image of the newsboy on horseback. Bent reused this image on Bent’s News 1836-8.

Publication suspended, 13 Dec. 1834.

Ferguson 1802a and 1971a.

Ferguson was confused by a mention of the Horn Boy in the 1835 Hobart Town Almanack, and Van Diemen’s Land Annual 1835.  It was there described it as a ‘now extinct … gratis half-sheet avowedly got up as an assailer of members of the legal profession.’  Ferguson (entry 1971a) assumed this was a different title from Robertson’s supplement and notes it as ‘not seen.’  Entries 1802a (for Horn Boy) and 2093a (Bent’s News) confuse Robertson’s Horn Boy with a similar title later issued by Bent as a supplement to Bent’s News in 1838 of which no copies survive.

Robertson rather pointedly advertised the Horn boy copyright for sale in the Austral-Asiatic Review on 2 and 9 Jan. 1838, just after Bent announced upcoming publication of his own Horn Boy advertising sheet.

Digital version is available on Trove.