AustLit

In 1842 the Attorney General charged Edward Alcock, printer and publisher of the Colonial Observer newspaper, with publishing a libel against the administration of justice in the colony. The libel appeared in an article 'The Late Executions for Piracy' published in the Colonial Observer (30 November, 1842): 641.

There were two trials in January and April 1843 which were reported in the Sydney newspapers of the time in articles and letters.

Parts of the charges were whether the defendant (Edward Alcock) was actually the printer and publisher of the Colonial Observer. As this correspondence (referring to a previous Australasian Chronicle report on the trial) shows, the Observer was careful to keep the name of John Dunmore Lang separate from the ownership or publishing functions of the newspaper.

Not all columns and correspondence on the two trials are indexed separately in AustLit