NEWS REVIEW

Printing operations were part of the Convict Establishment's original infrastructure, when in 1854 convicts were instructed in the use of two printing presses. Printing operations at the Establishment soon became so successful that they functioned as the official Government Printer for Western Australia from 1858 until around 1870. This status was rewarded to Fremantle Prison again from 1950, with prisoners printing gazettes, forms, books, letterheads and official documents for the WA government. Around 1960 the printing operation was moved into one of the West Workshops on the Fremantle Prison site. The West Workshops were built between 1900 and 1901, the outcome of the 1898-99 Royal Commission which recommended that more workshops be established at Fremantle Prison.

Many internal documents, forms, and other work was also printed in the Prison's Print Shop, including the successive newsletters published during the twentieth century for prisoners, such as The Newsletter, The Jarrah Post, and Ad Rem. The August 1961 edition of The Jarrah Post records the Print Shop’s output for the 1960-61 financial year as including 196,000 ruled pages, 2,900 mixed cards, 4,000 butter wraps, 400 copies of The Stepping Stone, and 1500 copies of The Jarrah Post. Also produced were address labels, ‘gummed labels’, envelopes, brown paper bags and correspondence pads.

The News Review was a newsletter printed in the Fremantle Prison Print Shop, and distributed around the Prison between 1953 and 1959. It had an informal tone, compared to its predecessor The Newsletter, and appears to have had some prisoner input. Unfortunately none of the articles in the News Review carry an identifiable author’s name, although some pieces carry pseudonyms such as ‘the Bard’ or ‘the Bird’. This makes it difficult to distinguish between prisoners’ stories and those chosen by the Prisons Department.

The News Review carried football fixtures on the front page of every issue. It also contained long, more developed articles than The Newsletter, and had an editorial section. The News Review also included a section from the Alcoholics Anonymous club that operated at Fremantle Prison. These publications also incorporated news excerpts, probably taken from other publications, and was only published in black and white, except at Christmas.