'A journal devoted to sport and drama' The Dead Bird may be considered a 'low brow' newspaper, comprising a full page feature section titled 'Can Anybody Tell Us...', a regular page of jokes and humorous stories, and several pages focusing on sports in general, and with a partiuclar focus on horseracing.
Many of the stories and jokes published relate to issues around courtship, husbands and wives (and male/female relationships in general), women's rights (and in partiuclar complaints about fashion standards), infidelity and other aspects of social life typically avoided by other 'reputable' newspapers and magazines of the period.
The 'Bird' also regularly included a page devoted to illustrations of sporting women - invaribaly in tight-fitting, low cut sports attire. Featured sports included rowing, boxing and roller skating.
The Bird O' Freedom
1891
Sydney
:
Herbert Allan Ridsdale
,
1891-1896
Z1633875
1891
newspaper
(14 issues)
'A journal devoted to sport and drama,' the Bird O' Freedom follows on from The Dead Bird (it later became The Arrow). In response to the moral indignation and outcries from various quarters generated during The Dead Bird's brief publication period, the editor and publishers of The Bird O' Freedom made a number of references to its circulation and content: 'It's enormous circulation and phenomenal success. Every inch of its columns is eagerly read by thousands of readers in all parts of Australasia. So great has been its sale that envious persons have used every endeavour to keep it down but to no avail. ... It is neither obscene nor offensive, and it reaches everywhere, and all the time' (23 December 1893, p1).
