With Joseph Gibbs, Alfred Henry Massina, and William Clarson, Joseph Shallard took over a failed Melbourne printing business in 1859, initially trading as Clarson, Shallard and Co. In the early 1860s it was decided to start a firm in Sydney, and from 1866 Shallard became the partner of Joseph Gibbs in the Sydney operation. About 1877 he returned to Melbourne, where he died four years later.
Shallard had emigrated to Australia sometime in the 1850s. In his native Worcester he had been a tailor by profession, and in view of his background it seems likely that his contribution to the Sydney printing and publishing firm of Gibbs, Shallard & Co. was principally financial and/or managerial rather than technical. According to the ADB biography of Alfred Henry Massina, Shallard withdrew his financial involvement in the partnership in 1876. This may have related to an investment in the Melbourne based firm of Clarson, Massina and Co., which had been separate from the Sydney office since about 1866. In any case, the Sydney firm continued to trade under the name of Gibbs, Shallard & Co. until it was taken over in 1892 - more than a decade after Joseph Shallard's death.
