The son of a civil engineer, Charles Watson Vosper, Frederick Charles Burleigh Vosper was born in St Dominick Cornwall in England and educated at Truro. He immigrated to Bolivia at the age of 15. Few other details of his early life are known, but in 1885 he was at Devonport serving with the Royal Navy on the training ship Lion.
Frederick Charles Burleigh Vosper – Photo SLWA
Early in 1886, Vosper immigrated to Australia, arriving in Maryborough, Queensland in the middle of the year. He worked as a timber miller, drover and miner, before taking a job as a journalist for the Eidsvold Reporter, Qld. He later became mining correspondent for Maryborough Chronicle and Colonist, before becoming sub-editor for the Northern Miner in Charters Towers. Vosper was heavily influenced by the political opinions and journalistic style of the Northern Miner’s owner and editor, Thadeus O’Kane. When O’Kane died in May 1890, Vosper became editor of the Australian Republican, the newspaper of the Australian Republican Association.
Vosper rapidly developed a reputation as a political firebrand and industrial agitator with a talent for journalism and public speaking. During the 1891 shearers strike he wrote an editorial entitled Bread or Blood in which he encouraged the strikers to resort to violence if peaceful means provided unsuccessful: “If your oppressors will not listen to reason let them feel cold lead and steel; as they have starved you, so do you shoot them.” As a result, Vosper was charged with two counts of seditious libel, but acquitted. The following year he was imprisoned for three months for inciting a riot during a miners’ strike. At this time Vosper ceased cutting his hair. According to Victor Courtney, “The legend is that when in jail he received the usual prison crop and he vowed that he would never have his hair cut again.
A passionate supporter of trade unionism, Vosper became closely associated with the Labour movement but was never a member of the Labour Party because he refused to take their pledge. On those grounds, the Labor Party refused his endorsement for the Queensland elections of 1893, and Vosper then left the colony.
After working on Sydney and Melbourne newspapers for a short time, Vosper immigrated to Western Australia in 1892, just as the gold rushes were beginning. In 1893 he arrived in Cue at the invitation of Alexander Livingstone, editor of the Murchison Miner. He briefly worked for the Murchison Miner as well as several other newspapers including Miner’s Right, before establishing himself as editor of the Coolgardie Miner. He used the paper to espouse his views on republicanism, Asian immigration and workers’ rights. He also argued for electoral redistribution to give the goldfields a fairer representation in the Western Australian Parliament. His successor as editor to the Coolgardie Miner was fellow Cornishman, Henry Kneebone During 1895 Vosper edited the Geraldton Express for three months while its regular editor John Drew defended a libel action, and shortly afterwards served briefly as a correspondent for the London-based West Australian Review.
Offices of the Coolgardie Miner, Sylvester Street, Coolgardie – Photo SLWA
Between 1894 and 1897, Vosper was the organiser and travelling spokesman for a number of political movements. In Coolgardie in December 1894, he established the Anti-Asiatic League, which aimed to maintain living standards by excluding “cheap coloured labour”. In November 1895 he was a spokesman for the National League, which agitated for increased political representation for the goldfields. He became a leading figure in the Gold Diggers’ Union and the Goldfields Protection and Advancement League and was founder and spokesperson for the Electoral Registration League, which sought to help remotely located miners to register to vote.
On 4 May 1897, Vosper was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly in the seat of North-east Coolgardie as an independent. At the time he was well known throughout the Eastern Goldfields; according to Jaggard (1979), he was the most widely known public figure apart from the premier, John Forrest.
Vosper addressing group on miners 1898 – Photo SLWA
John Forrest and he had a fierce rivalry as this article in the Sunday Times shows:
SUNDAY VOSPERS: 1900
‘Typical for this contemporary humour was a two-part dissertation titled A New Geography of Western Australia – For Beginners, published in November 1900. Although it allegedly illustrated the dominant features of important and unimportant, towns in WA, it said more about the prejudice of Fredrick Charles Burleigh Vosper, the newspaper’s outspoken owner. This is his opinions of the state and some of its towns’
- Western Australia is an island entirely surrounded by Sir John Forrest. It is bounded on the north by Perth railway station; on the south by the Swan River; on the west by Subiaco and other barbarous regions; and on the east by the tram sheds. Its natural production are agents, lawyers, sharebrokers, stone-brokers and members of parliament. The seat of government is at Bunbury.
- Perth is a city that labours under the delusion that it is the capital of WA. In reality, it is a private estate owned by Alexander Forrest and the WA and Perth Discount banks.
- Fremantle is a large and flourishing village with a large harbour. This harbour is so large that it is bounded on the west by Madagascar and on the north by the Indian Empire. The principal products of the place are convicts and lunatics of the manufacture of which it has a monopoly.
- Geraldton is a township well suited for the glass-blowing industry, the raw material (sand) being very plentiful. Nearby are the Green-enough Flats, so called because they returned Pennefather to parliament.
- Bunbury is the capital of Western Australia and the place that produced John Forrest. Fatigued by this gigantic effort, the inhabitants have produced nothing since.
- Broome is a place inhabited by Japanese’s who subsist by taking in each other’s vices. They also take anything else that comes their way.
- Coolgardie is a large and flourishing town, most of which is let, and the remainder to be let alone. It is the natural home of the wild cat (felis ferox) which is abundant in the neighbour.
- Busselton is so called because of its extremely busy and bustling nature. Its streets are generally empty. The principal product is Vasse butter, commonly called Vasseline.
- York is the home of the Mongers, stinkwort, and other noxious weeds. The favourite oath of the inhabitants is “Damn the Avon”
- Kalgoorlie is a large city whose inhabitants grow Boulder every day. The feminine population of Brookman St are remarkably chaste- that is they are chased frequently. There are no pubs or sly grog shops and the people are docile, contented and, above all, sober.
- Boulder City is a pot that embraces or takes in the Kalgoorlie Goldfields. This is not the only thing it embraces or takes in but that is another story.it is remarkable for the coolness and salubrity of its climate, its freedom from dust, the delightful sea breezes always on the tap and the beauty of the scenery. It possesses more public men and public houses to the square yard thank other city of its size. And where the one is the other will be found in the widst thereof.
- Norseman is the only place in Western Australia that does not want a railway.
- Roebourne, Derby and Wyndham are the Triple Gates of the Infernal Regions. The principal products are delirium tremens and empty bottles.
- Albany is inhabited by Albanians. Albanians are usually brigands but in Albany they confine themselves to hotel-keeping.
- Peak Hill is a place where the heavens above and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth are owned by one company.
The Sunday Times concluded this effusion with a footnote: “If this office is not torn down before next Sunday, other towns in WA will be described with equal accuracy. Frank Dunn (Editor)
To take his seat in parliament, Vosper moved to Perth. On 11 November 1897, he married a widow named Venetia Ann Nicholson, and shortly afterwards he used her capital to establish The Sunday Times. He became its editor after his partner, Edward Ellis, died in 1898.
Vosper joined the Parliamentary Goldfields Party almost immediately after his election, agreeing to work for payment of members, restriction of Asian immigration, better electoral representation for the goldfields, reductions in tariffs and amendments of mining laws. In addition to working for these goals, Vosper also pushed for the construction of a railway between Esperance and Coolgardie, votes for women, and compulsory arbitration. From May 1898, Vosper pushed for an inquiry into mental health policy and the treatment of female patients at the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum. In 1900 he was also instrumental in winning the insertion of a minimum wage clause into government contracts.
Vosper was a member of the 1899 select committee appointed to examine the terms under which Western Australia was invited to participate in the Federation of Australia. Although his sympathies were unquestionably in favour of federation, he became convinced of a number of flaws in the terms, and campaigned for a ‘No’ vote. He argued that Western Australia should federate, but only after securing a guarantee that an intercontinental railway would be build at the cost of transport infrastructure.
Vosper is also implicated in what was in effect personal attacks on C Y O’Connor in the last years of his life, with criticisms of O’Connor and the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. A subsequent government inquiry found no wrongdoing by O’Connor, but rather by an employee. Vosper died 14 months before O’Connor’s suicide, and O’Connor is recorded as a mourner and wreath contributor at Vosper’s funeral. In 1900, Vosper’s seat was abolished in a redistribution, so he decided that he would stand for a seat in the Senate instead. He began an election campaign, but early in January 1901, he became acutely ill with appendicitis.
Memorial of Frederick Vosper Karakatta Cemetery:- Billion Graves
He died in Perth on 6 January, just five days after the 1 January 1901 Proclamation of the Commonwealth of Australia in Sydney, and was buried in the Roman Catholic section of Perth’s Karrakatta Cemetery. He was only 31 years old. According to Victor Courtney, “Undoubtedly leadership of the Labour Party and Premiership of the country would have come his way in the course of political events had he lived.”
Gindalbie/Vosperton:- is an abandoned town in the Goldfields region of Western Australia. It is situated about 35 km NE of Kanowna along Donkey Rocks Road. The town’s name is Aboriginal in origin and is the local name for the area. The town was gazetted on 9 September 1903. While in planning, the name of Vosperton was proposed in honour of the editor of the Coolgardie Miner, Frederick Vosper, who became the MLA for North East Coolgardie in 1897. The planned boundaries and area of the town were changed in 1900.
References:- Wikipedia.org, Landgate.com.au, Allan B Doig, Victory Courtney (Editor of the Sunday Times) and Thomas Finn, nephew of Vosper.
Moya Sharp
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