As part of my looking into how the news of the Madeleine Smith trial got to Australia I thought I’d break the reports of the trial down by date and place of publication.

And it’s quite striking – the first reports of the outcome of the trial  were published in Melbourne on 04 September 1857, but the news didn’t get to Sydney until 08 September, and to Hobart (or indeed Newcastle) until September 12^th,  neatly reflecting the fact that there was effectively no railway network in Australia in 1857, and most travel between population centres in the eastern states, which were of course separate colonies, was by coastal steamship ….