Hello Toby.
With the printed word in the 1880's, especially with smaller print shops [Carterton ?] it is often possible to see a variation of type fonts and point sizes in one article.
It could have been just a simple case of running out of hand set pound characters and substituting with a suitable alternative.
In the 1970's I was in a local print, type setting jobbing room, where two Dairy Factory reports were being set up and proofed over several weeks on shelves under the table, while the local newspaper was being worked on above. But by then they had the advantage of an inhouse lineotype and an intertype, to be casting the rows of type that they neded. All up something like a couple of tons of printer's lead.
Alan.
