AustLit

John Joseph Walsh migrated to New South Wales from Ireland 'in the late 1830s'. In 1841, he settled in Singleton (where he met Charles Harpur, 'whose poetry he admired and encouraged'). In 1844, he re-located to Sydney where he joined J. J. Moore's George Street-based bookselling business.

Walsh moved to Melbourne in 1852 and developed a close relationship with John Pascoe Fawkner. Walsh and Fawkner were involved together in the 1854 The Diggers' Advocate campaign for votes for miners. (In 1873, Walsh married Fawkner's widow, Eliza.) From 1853 to 1859, Walsh also managed a newsagency at 239 Elizabeth Street.

Walsh was politically active. He was secretary of the Victoria Land League and of the Victorian Convention (July-August 1857), and he (unsuccessfully) contested several suburban and country seats at a number of Victorian elections.

Walsh 'edited single issues of the Freesoil Papers for the People (1857) and The Freeholder and Convention Expositor (1858), and published and edited The Convention and True Colonizer'. He also published electors' handbooks and guides.

Source: J. H. Rundle, 'Walsh, John Joseph (1819–1895)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

Sighted: 8 October 2014