When David John James Hogarth stood beside the grave of his little daughter Alice in 1890, he could never have imagined that within three years he too would be laid to rest beside her.
Born in Hobart in 1856, David was the eldest of seven children of tailor David Hogarth and Eliza Whitbourne. It was said the family descended from the celebrated English artist and satirist William Hogarth, but David forged a reputation entirely his own.
At just eighteen he began his journalism career with The Mercury before moving to Victoria and later purchasing the struggling Colac Reformer and the Port Fairy Gazette with partner H. J. Richmond. Taking over editorial management, David helped revive the paper at a time when it had lost many supporters. During his twelve years in Colac he became deeply involved in the life of the town and was respected as both a businessman and a community-minded citizen.
Friends remembered his kindly disposition and courteous manner. Beneath the determined newspaperman was a compassionate man devoted to family. He and his wife Sarah Eleanor Bowman lost their beloved daughter Alice Dora to tubercular meningitis in 1890, a heartbreak from which the family never fully recovered.
By 1892 David’s health had begun to fail, though few realised how gravely ill he was. He died at Elliminyt in 1893 aged only thirty-seven, leaving Sarah widowed with two young children.
His will revealed the depth of his character. After carefully providing for his wife, children, widowed father and devoted sister, David left money to Dr Barnardo’s London home for “waifs and strays,” ensuring even vulnerable children he would never meet were not forgotten.

Research by Merrill O’Donnell

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