The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Haddon, Frederick William
Haddon, Frederick William, editor of the Melbourne Argus, was born on Feb. 8th, 1839, at Croydon, Surrey, and educated at private schools. He was for some time simultaneously Assistant-Secretary of the Statistical Society of London, and of the Institute of Actuaries of Great Britain and Ireland. He also assisted to edit the Journal of the Statistical Society, and wrote on statistical subjects in several London journals. Leaving England at the age of twenty-four, he arrived in Victoria in Dec. 1863; under engagement to the proprietors of the Argus, of which he was first a contributor and afterwards sub-editor. He was appointed editor of the Australasian early in 1865, and editor of the Argus, a position which he still holds. On Jan. 1st, 1867, Mr. Haddon visited India, the continent of Europe, and England in 1874, returning to Australia by way of America. He revisited England in 1879 on account of ill-health, and was requested to informally champion the views of the Victorian Constitutional party in influential quarters at home, in opposition to the Berry embassy, which was then in London. In pursuance of this object, he interviewed nearly all the leading British statesmen and metropolitan editors, wrote letters to the Times and other journals, and published a pamphlet giving a history of the Constitutional difficulty in Victoria, which was laid before the British Cabinet and sent to every member of both Houses of Parliament, and the editor of every political newspaper in Great Britain. Mr. Haddon returned to Victoria after the conclusion of the embassy, in 1879. He has been twice married.