“The Wizard of the South. - By the Labuan has arrived a gentleman named Jingle, who has done great wonders in the art of necromancy, and obtained for himself during his peregrinations through the provinces the unenviable notoriety of being the Father of Dr. Lang's whitewashed.* Mr. Jingle, we observe, by our advertising columns, intends astonishing the townsfolks, by exhibiting to-morrow evening, at the Theatre Royal; where, as he intends displaying, among other wonders of his art, several of Professor Anderson's finest tricks, as performed before the Queen at Balmoral, there is no doubt but that he will have a goodly audience to witness them.”

The Barque 'Labuan' is listed as arriving in Sydney from The Downs (London) on May 8, 1850, but with only a single passenger listed, one James Carey. Previous to that, it arrived at Port Phillip from Plymouth (Britain) more than a year earlier, in February 1849 with over 200 passengers. Shipping Lists indicate nobody of the name Jingle or a "calling (vocation)" which matches a theatrical performer, lately of the Theatre Royal, Liverpool, or not. The nearest match, based on the name ‘Charles’, would be Charles M. Fife, a Surry farmer aged 24. This is the only reference found online to Mr. Jingle, so if his affairs were known in other regions (the advertisment says this is his first appearance), they are at present lost to history.

* The reference to "Dr. Lang's whitewashed" arises from a letter to the editor of the Advertiser a week or so earlier, from Rev. John Dunmore Lang, the outspoken Presbyterian minister and activist. In it, Lang claims that, though insolvent in earlier life, he had repaid every debt, unlike those who fell back on the insolvency laws to escape their creditors and were thereby "whitewashed". The implication seems to be that Jingle was the master of such tactics.

In Charles Dickens’ fictional “Pickwick Papers” there also appears a strolling actor and an engaging charlatan and trickster, whose name is Mr. Jingle.