William Gurney Benham

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 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.

Benham's first job was as a journalist in Wiltshire in 1881.{{Cite book|title=Merchant Taylors' School register, 1851-1920|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_4tBAAAAYAAJ|year=1923|page=70|last1=School|first1=Merchant Taylors'|last2=Merchant Taylors' School (London|first2=England)}} In 1884 he took over the family printing business and began his 59-year editorship of the Essex County Standard. 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,{{Cite web|url=http://www.colchester.gov.uk/Info_page_two_pic_2_det.asp?art_id=1783&sec_id=2499|title=Colchester Borough Mayors since 1836|date=9 July 2009|access-date=2 January 2010|publisher=Colchester Borough Council}} in 1933 was appointed to the honour of High Steward of Colchester and was knighted in 1935 in recognition of his public service. He remained editor of the Standard until 1943, 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.

Benham died on 13 May 1944.

Gurney Benham Close, a street in Colchester, and Gurney Benham House, a building on the Colchester Royal Grammar School campus, are named after him.

A "conscientious as well as an excellent scholar",{{Cite book | last1 = Partridge | first1 = Eric | title = Dictionary of Catch Phrases | year = 1986 | publisher = Routledge | location = London | isbn = 978-0-415-05916-9 | page = 251 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nm3jbg0JalMC&pg=PT271 }}{{Cite book|title=Social and cultural institutions|work=A History of the County of Essex (The Borough of Colchester)|volume=9|year=1994|pages=298–303|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22006|editor1=Janet Cooper |editor2=C R Elrington|author1=A P Baggs |author2=Beryl Board |author3=Philip Crummy |author4=Claude Dove |author5=Shirley Durgan |author6=N R Goose |author7=R B Pugh |author8=Pamela Studd |author9=C C Thornton |access-date=2009-04-08}} 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".{{Cite journal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lDzWAAAAMAAJ|journal=The Journal of Education|title=Benham's Book of Quotations: Proverbs and Household Words [review]|year=1949|volume=81|page=56}} For ten years he was also editor of the Essex Review.{{Cite journal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8bA8AAAAIAAJ|journal=The Antiquaries Journal|volume=24/5|year=1944|title=The Antiquaries Journal}}

• Playing Cards: The History and Secrets of the Pack
• Book of Quotations, Proverbs and Household Words (1924, reprinted 1929)
• {{Cite book|title=Dictionary of Quotations|orig-year=1907|year=1948}}{{Cite book | last1 = Partridge | first1 = Eric | title = Dictionary of Catch Phrases | year = 1986 | publisher = Routledge | location = London | isbn = 978-0-415-05916-9 | page = Abbreviations |no-pp=yes |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nm3jbg0JalMC }}
• {{Cite book|title=Prose quotations: classified under prose-headings, and fully indexed|publisher=Cassell|location=London|year=1926}}
• A Short History of Playing Cards
• The Benham Book of Palmistry 1988
• Benham's New Book of Quotations. 1988
• The oath book; or, Red parchment book of Colchester

In 1880 Benham married, firstly, Maria Louisa Quilter, and they had four children: Cecil Edward Gurney Benham (1881–1929), Violet Inez Benham (1882–1968), Gerald Carr Benham (1883–1962) and Charles Benham (1884–1945).Obit in Newsman-Herald, Chelmsford, Essex, England, 16 May 1944 In 1904 he married, secondly, Ethel Hervey Elwes, sister of H. Geoffrey Elwes.{{cite news |title=Colchester Lady's Funeral |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001727/19160411/037/0003 |work=East Anglian Daily Times |date=11 April 1916|page=3}} The couple had three children: Edith Tayspill Benham (1905–1955), Hervey William Gurney Benham (1910–1987) and Maura Elwes Mary Benham (1912–1995).

{{Reflist}}

• [https://archive.org/details/cu31924028079964 The oath book; or, Red parchment book of Colchester] on Archive.org (1907).

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Category:1859 births

Category:1944 deaths

Category:English newspaper editors

Category:English male journalists

Category:English lexicographers

Category:Mayors of Colchester

Category:People educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School

Category:Fellows of the Royal Historical Society

Category:English justices of the peace