The Truth, in name but not in nature

1890 Mid-August: Truth, a journal published in Sydney, Australia, first hit the newsstands. A former actor-turned-journalist, William Nicholas Willis, founded it, and Adolphus George Taylor and William Patrick Crick were its other leading lights from the beginning. John Napoleon Norton (pictured), who had a gossip column in the first edition, was Associate Editor by the following month and went on quickly to become its most famous editor, amassing considerable wealth, influence and notoriety on the way. One of its earliest contributors was Australian poet Henry Lawson. The first issue preceded the Maritime Strike of 1890 by a fortnight and the earliest issues commented on the labor unrest.

There had been a preceding paper of the same name in Sydney, founded in 1879, a little more than two years after Henry Labouchere began his Truth journal in Britain. However, it was short lived, but it was a progenitor in name and the fact that it, too, was a guttersheet.

In its early days, Willis's Truth, like Smith's Weekly and The Bulletin a republican paper with a larrikin spirit, was published out of Waters Lane, off King St, between George and Pitt. The office was strongly fortified, mostly with copious amounts of spiritous liquor. On one occasion, due to defamation suit with an Englishman named Seymour Allen, the Truth office was besieged by sheriffs and Taylor wrote in the paper, " ... the first private detective, or detective's bravo, that puts unlawful hands on our castle, will sleep with his fathers ..." He added a PS: "The staff will meet for revolver Duties after Church Parade to-morrow. By Order."