Michael George Mulhall

Michael George Mulhall was born on 29 September 1836 at 100 St Stephen's Green, Dublin. He studied at the Irish College in Rome. With his brother Edward Thomas Mulhall, both recent emigrants from Dublin, he published the first issue of The Standard on 1 May 1861. SILAS calls it the first English-language daily in South America. An Irishman's Diary in the Irish Times says it became Argentina's paper of record abroad, shipping 20,000 weekly copies by 1875, and that a third brother, Francis Healy Mulhall, arrived in 1865.

Michael's opening editorial argued that people of all the British Isles shared one tongue, and he opposed sectarianism. That stance drew attacks. The nationalist historian Thomas Murray, in 1919, called the paper thoroughly English, and in 1921 the Dáil envoy P.J. Little said The Standard voiced Argentine jingoism. The Southern Cross, founded by Fr Patrick Dillon in 1875, was first produced in The Standard's office, and Francis Mulhall was later its editor and manager.

The brothers wrote the Handbook of the River Plate; the Irish Times dates it to 1861, while SILAS counts six editions from 1863 to 1892. Michael retired in 1894 to write statistics. He died at Killiney on 12 December 1900 and is buried at Glasnevin. The Standard outlived him and closed in 1959.