Henry Seekamp

Henry Erle Seekamp (1829 - 19 January 1864) was a journalist, owner and editor of the Ballarat Times during the 1854 Eureka Rebellion in Victoria, Australia.

The newspaper was fiercely pro-miner, and he was responsible for a series of articles and several editorials that supported the Ballarat Reform League while condemning the government and police harassment of the diggers.

After an embarrassingly public squabble with visiting actress Lola Montez and the court case that resulted from it, he sold The Times and left Ballarat.

He was also responsible for printing the Ballarat Reform Charter and the many flyers advertising speakers and dates for the "monster meetings" organising support prior to the rebellion.

[6] red coats [ie.soldiers] in the Camp rushed in to gaze on this wild elephant, whose trunk it was supposed, had stirred up the hell on Ballaarat... his energy was never abated, though the whole legion of Victorian red-tape wanted to dry his inkstand, and smother his lamp in gaol.

(Ballarat Times, 30 September 1854) In increasingly strident editorial tone the four-page weekly broadsheet newspaper criticised the Government and supported the diggers movement.

In 1856 Seekamp wrote a scathing review in the Ballarat Times of visiting actress Lola Montez and her erotic Spider Dance, criticising her for immorality.

After taunting him onstage, Montez accosted him while he was drinking at a local hotel, chasing and beating him with her riding whip; Seekamp responded in kind, and the pair had to be separated by onlookers.

[21][22] This widely publicised, embarrassing incident and the consequent loss of popularity combined with Seekamp's failing health, led to the final sale of the Ballarat Times in October 1856.

Seekamp's advertisement in The Courier in 1862 [ 18 ]