What is the origin of Weary Willie

I was going through the Southland Times archives and came across the heading Weary Willie and while looking through the letters I found that it was a Weary Willie letter to the editor and then it later started to become the newspaper's heading, I'm really lost on the headspace of who were and why the newspaper would use this name if Weary Willie was an unfortunate soul, the letter to the editor is below, Southland Times 1st of Feb 1882.