Trial of Patrick J. Whelan for the Murder of the Hon Thos D'Arcy McGee

Here we have an example of photojournalism before photojournalism was entirely practical. It would still be a few decades before the halftone process made it efficient and therefore cost-effective to print photographs and text side-by-side. In this report of the trial of Patrick J. Whelan, there is a a single albumen print pasted onto the report. Compare this to later examples of photojournalism, such as Life and The Fight for Apartheid!.

A related example from the history of photography is Alexander Gardner’s “Execution of the Conspirators” from 1865. When Gardner’s photographs of the execution were reproduced as woodcut illustrations in Harper’s Weekly on 22 July 1865, the periodical boasted that “the present perfection of the art of photography enables an illustrated paper like ours to depict persons and events with the utmost precision.” 

A full scan of the report is available through the Internet Archive.