William Kerr was a journalist with the Colonist and then with the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in the colony of New South Wales. Kerr also seems to have had one share in Nathanial Lipscomb Kentish's Sydney Times newspaper.
Kerr reported on Sydney theatre for the Gazette under the editorship of George Cavenagh and was possibly the Gazette’s theatre critic. In 1839 he moved to Melbourne and worked briefly with Cavenagh on the Port Phillip Herald before becoming the editor, in January 1841, of the Port Phillip Herald’s rival the Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser owned by John Pascoe Fawkner. According to Lyndsay Gardiner, in his biography of Kerr published in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘... after 1844, when Kerr and Fawkner quarrelled, Kerr changed [the Patriot’s] policy ... Kerr even used his editorials to vilify its proprietor, Fawkner, who was driven to reply in the columns of the hated Herald.’ Kerr started the Argus in 1846.
Lyndsay Gardiner describes Kerr as a man of strong views and ‘... given to stinging and sarcastic personal abuse of his opponents. Contemporary opinions of him range from “thoughtless and thriftless” to “generous and charitable”.’ This can be seen in his writings on Sydney theatre for the Sydney Gazette.
Sources: Lyndsay Gardiner, 'Kerr, William (1812–1859)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kerr-william-2304/text2981, accessed 3 September 2013; Eric Irvin, Theatre Comes to Australia (1971)
