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The benefactor Joseph Fisher

Extract from Joseph Fisher – A Pioneer Colonist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

F. R. Fisher
Affiliation:
Adelaide University
Kym Anderson
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Summary

Joseph Fisher was born in Yorkshire on 14 September 1834, to Joshua and Hannah Fisher. Joseph and his parents and sisters sailed for South Australia in the Pestonjee Bomanjee, leaving from London on 11 June and arriving in Glenelg on 12 October 1838, when Joseph was 3 years old.

A family friend, Anthony Forster, probably influenced their decision to choose South Australia. Forster himself travelled to South Australia in early 1841, to take possession for George Fife Angas of the latter's Barossa Estates. This was a fortunate event for Joseph, with whom Forster had a particularly close association both as a friend and mentor consequent upon Joshua's untimely death on 3 September 1841.

Joseph appears to have had the bulk of his schooling at the Oddfellows School and subsequently in Anthony's Forster's old home. He left school at age 12, five years after his father's death, to work in the merchantile business established by Anthony Forster. Two years later Forster took up an offer of a share in the Register and Observer newspapers, and Joseph joined the Register's commercial department. In an interview in 1903 Joseph described his duties as follows:

“I had to assist the bookkeeper, deliver papers, take a turn at the old hand press, occasionally read proofs and also numerous other odd jobs at the office. I frequently remained on duty for 12-14 hours a day and I soon gained a practical knowledge of the work in almost every department of the newspaper office.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Australia's Economy in its International Context
The Joseph Fisher Lectures
, pp. xiii - xxii
Publisher: The University of Adelaide Press
Print publication year: 2009

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