Design and Art Australia Online

illustrator, journalist, critic and probably cartoonist, came to South Australia from England in the early 1880s. He spent some time in the bush in South Australia then moved to Sydney in 1885 where he was soon working as a journalist. He wrote drama criticism and was connected with the theatre. From about 1893 he was a writer and illustrator on the Sydney Evening News then moved to its sister publication the Town and Country Journal . His illustrations in the latter include drawings for the story A Lost Island initialled 'H.H.S.’ [sic] 24 December 1898, 34; The New South Wales General Election; The crowd as seen from the windows of the Evening News and Town and Country Journal offices 6 August 1898, 36; Scenes in the New Guinea Gold Country 18 February 1899, 19 (after making a tour); The Proserpine Sugar District, Queensland 12 March 1898, 30 (which he also visited); A Fire Engine Trial 11 March 1899, 27; and “Oh, Go Away, Please” (blond little girl to emu) 23 December 1899, 37.

Spooner may also have drawn cartoons. 'HHS’ initialled several cartoons in the scandalous Dead Bird , e.g. his monogram (almost illegible) is on The Virtuous Evangelist (a clerical gentleman ordering the covering of nude statues in Centennial Park) 21 September 1889, 4.

Spooner left Sydney for Natal in October 1899 in order to cover the Boer War as war correspondent and artist for both his Sydney papers. His illustrations in the Town and Country Journal include A Hot Corner (a Boer war scene) 27 January 1900, 33, and Attack on our convoy at Klip Kraal 12 May 1900, 30. From Estcourt he wrote the first of many widely read war letters {for TCN and/or Evening News ?}. He 'followed the NSW lancers to Cape Town and thence to De Aar, attaching himself to Lord R—'s forces. He accompanied General French into Kimberley and was present at Paardeberg when Cronje surrendered.’

Spooner died in the Deelfontein Hospital of typhoid ('enteric’) fever early in 1900, soon after the British occupation of Bloemfontein, leaving a wife and two small children in Australia. The Town and Country Journal of 26 May 1900, 19, noted in 'Our Late War Correspondent’:

“As 'special artist’ to the Evening News for the last seven years, his drawings have become familiar to many readers, and his work on the Town and Country Journal , with which he was also associated on various occasions, will be remembered, especially in connection with tours in Queensland, in New Guinea, and other parts of the Eastern Archipelago, which resulted in brilliant descriptive articles and excellent sketches from his pen.”

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007