Pattie Fotheringhame
(c. 1852 - 1955), Australian Editor, Journalist, Newspaper Proprietor and Print Journalist
Pattie Fotheringhame (née Lewis, 10 January 1853 – 19 July 1955), commonly referred to as Mrs J. Fotheringhame, was a journalist in Sydney, Australia, who wrote for The Bulletin as "Mab". She has been described as Sydney's first woman journalist.
History
Fotheringhame was a daughter of James Lewis ( – ) and Mary Ann Blanshard (c. 1819 – 23 August 1894) of Escrick, near York, England.
She began her writing career with children's stories for the Sydney Mail, and was invited to join the staff of that paper, but accepted a counter-offer by her brother-in-law William Henry Traill to join the Sydney Bulletin, of which he was editor and part-owner.
Her first assignment, as an inexperienced 17 year old, was as founding editor of the "Women's Letter" society column, under the byline "Mab" in 1881, in competition with Mrs. Gullett's page in The Daily Telegraph.
Working at the Bulletin brought her into contact with many of Australia's leading writers and artists: Henry Lawson, Harold "The Pilgrim" Grey, Victor Daley and George Augustus Sala.
She left journalism after marrying James Fotheringhame, introducing as her replacement the vivacious Ina Wildman who, writing as "Sappho Smith", had an illustrious career before dying of nephritis.
Around 1891 she purchased the children's monthly magazine Young Australia from Louisa Lawson (mother of Henry Lawson), and ran it for 20 years with Josephine Fotheringhame, her sister-in-law, as editor.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pattie Fotheringhame” as (c. 1852 - 1955), Australian Editor, Journalist, Newspaper Proprietor and Print Journalist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as (c. 1852 - 1955), Australian Editor, Journalist, Newspaper Proprietor and Print Journalist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q101580019. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1853, 1955, 1819 and 1894.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pattie Fotheringhame” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.