William Gurney Benham
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William Gurney Benham | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Gurney Benham c. 1916 | |
| Born | 16 February 1859[1] Colchester, Essex, England |
| Died | 13 May 1944 (aged 85)[2] Colchester, Essex, England[3] |
| Children | Hervey Benham |
Sir William Gurney Benham, FSA, FRHS (/ˈbɛnəm/; 16 February 1859 – 13 May 1944) was a British newspaper editor, published author and three times Mayor of Colchester.
William Benham was born on 16 February 1859 to Edward Benham, a printer, and Mary Carr. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School until 1873[4] and then at Colchester Royal Grammar School, a school about which he has written, of whose old boys' society he was later President and which still has a building named after him.[3]
Career
Benham's first job was as a journalist in Wiltshire in 1881.[4] In 1884 he took over the family printing business and began his 59-year editorship of the Essex County Standard.[4] From 1892 to 1929 he edited the newspaper jointly with his brother, Charles Edwin Benham.
In addition, Gurney Benham was mayor of Colchester three times, for the years 1892/93, 1908/09 and 1933/34,[5] in 1933 was appointed to the honour of High Steward of Colchester and was knighted in 1935 in recognition of his public service.[3] He remained editor of the Standard until 1943,[6] and was a director of the Colchester Gas Company for over forty years, being chairman until his resignation on grounds of ill health the day before his death.[2]
Death and legacy
Benham died on 13 May 1944.[2]
Gurney Benham Close, a street in Colchester, and Gurney Benham House, a building on the Colchester Royal Grammar School campus, are named after him.
Publications
A "conscientious as well as an excellent scholar",[7][6] he is now mainly known through his many publications, many of which are transcriptions of official documents from mediaeval times, particularly those related to his home town of Colchester. He also compiled a number of books of quotations, leading a reviewer in the Journal of Education to comment after his death, "it is remarkable that one man — Sir William Gurney Benham — was able to collect and arrange some fifty thousand quotations and proverbs".[8] For ten years he was also editor of the Essex Review.[9]
- Playing Cards: The History and Secrets of the Pack
- Book of Quotations, Proverbs and Household Words (1924, reprinted 1929)
- Dictionary of Quotations. 1948 [1907].[10]
- Prose quotations: classified under prose-headings, and fully indexed. London: Cassell. 1926.
- A Short History of Playing Cards
- Benham's New Book of Quotations. 1988
- The oath book; or, Red parchment book of Colchester
