page_title: John Henniker Heaton
section_title: Australia
hierarchical_section_title: John Henniker Heaton / Australia
caption_attribution_description: Statesmen No.528: Caricature of Mr John Henniker Heaton MP. Caption reads: "International Penny Postage"
context_page_description: Sir John Henniker Heaton, 1st Baronet, KCMG, CB was a United Kingdom Member of Parliament and a postal reformer and journalist in Australia.
context_section_description: Heaton arrived in Australia in 1864. He found employment at first as a station hand and then joined the staff of the Cumberland Mercury, Parramatta. He had further experience as editor of the Penny Post, Goulburn, and the Times, Parramatta, before joining the Australian Town and Country Journal at Sydney about the year 1871. With this job he came under the influence of the Journal's proprietor Samuel Bennett, who Heaton knew as "the best friend I ever had"; on 16 July 1873 he married Bennett's daughter, Rose.
  In 1879 he published The Australian Dictionary of Dates and Men of the Time. In 1880 he stood for parliament for the electorate of Young, and was defeated by a few votes. In the following year he went to England and represented New South Wales as a commissioner at the Amsterdam Exhibition of 1883. He also represented Tasmania at the international telegraphic conference held at Berlin, and made his first mark as a reformer by obtaining a reduction in the cost of cable messages to Australia.
caption: "International Penny Postage". Caricature by Spy published in Vanity Fair in 1887.
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