A conman in 1890s Australia

1890 Sydney, Australia: The first edition of the Australian Workman, official organ of the Trades and Labour Council (TLC) in Sydney (a founding organisation of the Australian Labor Party), following the demise of the Australian Radical almost exactly a year earlier.

The first editor was Rev. Dr (Theodore) Oswald Keating, MA, DD, LLD, who had just stepped off a clipper ship from Britain in July and had some writings published in Truth's earliest numbers. The proprietors of the Australian Workman were impressed with him and under the circumstances of the Maritime Strike of 1890, pleased to have a clergyman's name on the masthead. By the end of October, the 'clergyman' was suing the newspaper for 5 pounds for wrongful dismissal.

Dr Keating was in fact Joseph James Crouch, a forger and conman who had impersonated clergy of various denominations for thirty years, been imprisoned a number of times, and robbed and abandoned a widow he had married for money in England. In the US in 1881 he had conned many, including the prominent American clergyman Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who lent him money as well as his pulpit ...

Tagged: historical, trivia, progressive, labor, history, australia