Design and Art Australia Online

engraver, amateur photographer, newspaper editor and merchant mariner, was master of the “unlucky” convict ship Kains which arrived at Sydney in March 1831 after a lengthy and troublesome voyage from England lasting 246 days. A month later, Goodwin sailed to Van Diemen’s Land and ran the Kains aground on a rock in the Tamar River. After selling the wreck he tried real estate for a time, then briefly edited the Independent , a Launceston newspaper. A coat of arms in his Tasmanian Almanack for 1837, published towards the end of 1836 appears to be his first colonial wood engraving.

On 14 February 1835 the first issue of the Cornwall Chronicle appeared in Launceston under the ownership and editorship of William Mann; but by April Goodwin was editor and soon sole printer and publisher too. Once in the editorial chair he not only changed the tone of the paper but began to include his own woodcut illustrations (from 16 April 1836 to 15 April 1837), replacing them with line engravings from 29 July 1837 to 31 March 1838. Only some of the latter are identified with his initials but almost all the woodcuts are considered to be his work, including The Never Failing Undertaker 1836, which King (p.30) describes as 'the most daring cartoon of the early period’. His first woodcut, accompanying a verse, 'The Sheriff’s Officer’, on the front page of the Cornwall Chroncile on 16 April 1836, was annotated:

A piece of wood that bears the cut of the graver, by chance falling into our hands this week, we were induced to attempt Wood Cutting – and rough as is our first effort in the Art we consign it to the observation of the public.

He goes on to hope that practice will make perfect and he may 'raise the risible muscles of our readers’. Tanner rightly doubts there is any truth in this story whatsoever. He certainly was familiar with the popular English press; his well-known freedom of the press cartoon was lifted from The Political House that Jack Built published in 1819 by William Hone with illustrations by George Cruikshank (who was common game for plagiarising in the Australian colonies). Several other woodcuts protest about local conditions. Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and his successor Governor Sir John Franklin were popular targets for Goodwin’s vitriol, especially the former; there are two versions of Colonel Arthur’s Leeches Sucking the Blood of a Free Colonist . In 1838 13 subscribers cancelled because of the editor’s 'slanderous and malevolent’ attacks on colonial personalities accompanied by 'woodcuts of the most vulgar description’. The line engravings (doubtless included in this condemnation) were no less offensive. Goodwin was twice sued for libel by Matthew Curling Friend whom the Chronicle had accused of sodomy. Friend spent the substantial damages he was awarded in the second case on a spire for the Anglican church at George Town, an act guaranteed further to inflame his adversary. Goodwin also lived in George Town and he loathed Church of England parsons, a sentiment best expressed visually in a woodcut of 25 February 1837, A Parson’s Dream/ Thou Shalt Have None Other God But Me , which shows a tippling clergyman dreaming of the rewards of Mammon, notably £5000 (ill DAA ). Other line engravings on the same topic include A Prelatical Locust (30 September 1837), a locust with a bishop’s mitre, annotated:

And now you’re gorged upon your ceaseless meal.

And, swollen as tuns, you stagger and you reel;

And fill and burst you will, and men will say,

Where has our reason been this many a day?

(ill. Craig, & Coleman & Tanner, 77).

'The Flogging of Joseph Greenwood’, published Cornwall Chronicle 9 September 1837, is an indictment of Thomas Mason, the magistrate who ordered the illegal flogging of a man before he was hanged. ML has the original copperplate, plus an early print and a reprint as the cover of Thomas Mason: Muster Master. A chapter in colonial history , 1874 (ML Am 150, R173 & ML 150/1-2). Although this is probably Goodwin’s best-known cartoon, it is stylistically quite unlike his normal work and Paul Paffen (MU PhD) argues – I think – that the image was not invented by Godwin but was simply a copy of a print published in Hobart Town ten years earlier – possibly drawn by George Frankland .

In 1841 Goodwin advertised for 'the services of a caricaturist who is competent to prepare his work for the wood engraver’ and did little subsequent work for the Cornwall Chronicle , directing his artistic genius towards a new publication. On 3 September 1842 the Cornwall Chronicle announced the imminent appearance of a weekly companion paper, The Trifler and Literary Gleaner , to contain in each issue 'a humourous[sic] tale, with wood-cuts in illustration; and, as occasion may present itself, local characters [Goodwin’s ominous italics] will be faithfully noticed’. It first appeared as the Wednesday edition of the Cornwall Chronicle on 26 October; from 2 November onwards it was an independent paper. No full set is known; six issues, including the first are in the National Library of Australia (2, 9, 12, 16 November 1842 and 28 June and 12 July 1843); some of the original woodblocks are in ML.

Although the Trifler 's woodcuts, some deriving from English illustrations and many re-used several times, were thought 'abominably scurrilous’ by Goodwin’s rival Henry Button , editor of the Launceston Times , they now look more comical, less personal and political than Goodwin’s previous efforts. Moreover, many are English blocks. Still, time blunts local references. As Button described it, the Trifler was occasionally 'illustrated with coarse woodcuts executed by the proprietor, but as far as my recollection goes, they were generally caricatures of local residents who had been unfortunate enough in some way to offend him, and who were then held up to public ridicule’. With hindsight, Goodwin is valued as Tasmania’s first caricaturist; Mahood praises his competence and spirit. His contemporaries, understandably, were less appreciative.

Increasing respectability and an attraction to technological innovations led to other changes of direction. In 1844 Goodwin was working with daguerreotypes. (Newton suggests he may have learned the process in Launceston from G.B. Goodman 's assistant, John Flavelle .) In 1853 he began printing his newspaper on the first steam printing press in the colony. In 1854 he became an alderman of Launceston City Council and a year later was elected to the Tasmanian Legislative Council. He remained editor of the Cornwall Chronicle until his death in 1862 at The Grove, his George Town home, previously owned by his old adversary Matthew Curling Friend. His widow, Sophie, continued to produce the newspaper until 1869, when it was amalgamated with the Launceston Times , then owned by Robert Harris. A box of small woodblocks from Goodwin’s press is in the Mitchell Library; many are English but some are obviously local. Six issues of the Trifler are in the NLA though no complete set is known.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989