Andrew Garran

Andrew Garran (19 November 1825 – 6 June 1901), English-Australian journalist and politician, was the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald from 1873 to 1885.

Garran was born in London in 1825. He was educated at Hackney Grammar School in the Hackney borough of London, and at Spring Hill College, Birmingham. He also attended a theologial college in Norfolk, where he trained to be a Congregationalist minister. He later studied at the University of London, graduating with a Masters of Arts degree in 1848. Due to poor health, he spent eighteen months as a private tutor in the Madeira Islands seeking a better climate, returning to London the following year. In 1850 he moved to Australia, where he settled in Adelaide, South Australia.

On arrival in Adelaide he worked briefly as a minister, and from 1851 to 1852 he wrote for the short-lived weekly newspaper Austral Examiner, before it closed due to the Victorian Gold Rush, which saw many people migrate to the Victorian goldfields. Garran himself travelled to Victoria, where he was a tutor in the town of Ballan. He returned to South Australia in 1854, where he became the editor of the South Australian Register. In the same year, he married Mary Isham, with whom he would have one son and seven daughters.

Andrew and Mary Garran left South Australia in 1856 for Sydney, New South Wales, after John Fairfax offered Andrew the position of assistant editor at the Sydney Morning Herald. The family lived in a terrace on Phillip Street, near Martin Place, where they kept a dairy cow, which would graze during the day in The Domain. While working for the Herald, Garran studied at the University of Sydney, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1868 and a Doctorate of Laws in 1870. When the editor of the Herald, John West, died in December 1873, Garran was promptly promoted. Garran was one of the earliest supporters of the federation of Australia, and used his position in the media to advocate the cause, writing many editorials in favour of federation. He served as editor until 1885, when poor health forced him to resign, after spending nearly thirty years at the newspaper.

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