Constituency : Boston 1856-60
Herbert was a Lincolnshire butcher's son brought up in poverty after his father's early death. He started work as a printer's apprentice and eventually started up a printing and newsagents business in Nottingham. With the proceeds of a successful diversion into laxative pills he started the Illustrated London News in 1842, the first newspaper to feature a high volume of pictures to supplement the stories. The paper was an immediate and huge success and Herbert was able to buy up competitors . Although it ostentatiously disavowed party it was generally Liberal in sympathies. Herbert struggled to compose a grammatical sentence himself and it has been suggested that he did not give his talented collaborators enough credit for their contribution.
Herbert was a local philanthropist who gave money to the restoration of Boston Stump and schools and hospitals. He was also instrumental in bringing the railway and a fresh water supply to the town. In 1859 he got Brunel's ship the Great Eastern finished Herbert stood for Parliament in a by-election in 1856 promising a "representative who is at once the product and the embodiment of the progressive spirit of the age ".
In Parliament he ( unsurprisingly ) supported the abolition of the paper duties and the £6 borough franchise as proposed by Russell in 1860.
That year he and his son went to America and both were killed in a shipping accident on Lake Michigan. Two years later a statue to him was raised opposite the church he'd helped to restore. His younger son William later became Boston's MP.
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