CHAPTER LV.
A BUNDLE OF OLD ADVERTISEMENTS.
ON the principle of noscitur a sociis there is no surer mode of ascertaining the feelings of a community at any particular period than a study of its newspaper advertisements; for they are, to all intents and purposes, its companions for the time, and the media through which are ventilated its wants and wishes, its frivolities and perplexities. This department of an extensively circulated journal may not be inaptly assimilated to a telephonic gallery, by whose agency, opportunities, and facilities of inter-communication are afforded, applicable to universal use. This species of literature reflects with more fidelity than any other the conditions of individual and general temperament, and as a social, economic, and even political weather-guage, is as unerring as the reading of the barometer, or the pulsations in the human system.
If London, Paris, Berlin or Vienna, as they are now seen, could have access to a newspaper press issued during the first years of their existence, what curious untold relics of rare historical value, would not their advertisement columns reveal! In this respect Melbourne was peculiarly fortunate, for in less than a year after the fixing of its township it had its newspaper, such as it was, with its advertisement columns as indicators of the form and pressure of the hour. The site of Melbourne was determined on, on the 4th March, 1837; the first sale of Crown lands was held on the 1st June following, and the 1st January, 1838, witnessed the birth of Fawkner's puny journalistic manuscript bantling, the Melbourne Advertiser. Except a three months' hiatus, caused by the temporary cessation of the first newspaper, which was terminated by the establishment of the Port Phillip Gazette the connection has never once been cut to the present moment, when the journalism of Melbourne may fairly compete with kindred institutions throughout the world. I have prepared a collation from a series of old advertisements, which cannot be read with other than a strange interest, because of the beginnings of businesses, professions, and other avocations to which they refer. It would be a matter of no concern now to hear of the arrival of a lawyer, a doctor, a monthly nurse, an undertaker, a barber, an apothecary, or a tailor, or the importation of a stallion, a piano, or a cask of whisky; but a notice of the individuals who were the first to engage in such and other enterprises in the colony, is a very different thing, and to the antiquarian, the general reader, and the investigator of the wonderful progression of Melbourne in a short half century, such facts, though apparently trivial in themselves, cannot be devoid of interest.
In the chapter on journalism, reference is made to the advertisements published in the Advertiser, and in the early numbers of the Gazette and Patriot. The town was very limited, the population small and sparse, and trade and commerce inconsiderable, until the close of 1838, when the settlement began to make head-way. At first the advertising notices were principally devoted to announcements from storekeepers (as sellers wholesale and retail were then styled), Fawkner's Hotel, and shipping agents; but gradually the area was enlarged, and one by one new arrivals popped into print, and put forth their claims for public patronage. The first of the "barber" fraternity opened shop (24th October, '38), as "John Lamb, hairdresser, in Collins Lane, near the Royal Highlander." This Lamb, by no means as sheepish as his name might imply, in course of time cut his connexion with the painted pole, and took to billiards and grog selling. As "Jack Lamb" he was well known on the early turf, was once the landlord of the Albion Hotel, in Bourke Street, and as a billiard player his brand was A1.
