| William Gurney Benham | |
| Birth Date: | 16 February 1859[1] |
| Birth Place: | Colchester, Essex, England |
| Death Date: | [2] |
| Death Place: | Colchester, Essex, England[3] |
| Nationality: | British |
| Children: | Hervey Benham |
Sir William Gurney Benham, FSA, FRHS (; 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 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] In 1880 he married Maria Louisa Quilter and had four children: Cecil Edward Gurney Benham (1881–1929), Violet Inez Benham (1882–1968), Gerald Carr Benham (1883–1962) and Charles Benham (1884–1945). [4] In 1904 he married Ethel Hervey Elwes and had three children: Edith Tayspill Benham (1905-1955), Hervey William Gurney Benham (1910-1987) and Maura Elwes Mary Benham (1912-1995).
His first job was as a journalist in Wiltshire in 1881.[5] In 1884 he took over the family printing business and began his 59-year editorship of the Essex County Standard.[5] From 1892 to 1929 he edited the newspaper jointly with his brother, Charles Edwin Benham. A "conscientious as well as an excellent scholar",[6] [7] 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]
In addition, Gurney Benham was mayor of Colchester three times, for the years 1892/93, 1908/09 and 1933/34,[10] 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,[7] 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]
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.