INGRAM, Herbert (1811-1860), of Loudwater, Rickmansworth, Herts.

Founder and proprietor of the Illustrated London News, Ingram, who possessed a ‘capricious’ temper, was a self-made man and a popular Liberal MP for his native town, who took a particular interest in financial debates.1Gent. Mag. (1860), ii. 555. Born in Boston of ‘humble parentage’, his father and namesake, a butcher, was dead before Ingram’s first birthday.2Annual register (1861), 449; I. Bailey, Herbert Ingram, Esq., MP, of Boston (1996), 23. After a ‘rudimentary education’, he was apprenticed as a printer at the age of fourteen, and after working in London, 1832-34, and Nottingham, in the latter place with his brother-in-law Nathaniel Cooke, Ingram became an agent for patent pills.3Annual register (1861), 449; Bailey, Herbert Ingram, 2-3, 24-5, 31-44. According to his bitter rival Henry Vizetelly, Ingram was a big-headed man with ‘large coarse features’, but the journalist Edmund Yates described him as ‘a little bright man, with bright eyes, sharp features and a decided manner’.4Both qus. in ibid., 7.

The newspaper which made Ingram’s fortune, the Illustrated London News (ILN), launched in May 1842, had originally been conceived to focus on crime and sports, but friends and colleagues persuaded him to adopt a more respectable tone.5Ibid., 67-8, 70-1, 83; M. Jackson, The pictorial press (1885), 295-6. In partnership with Cooke and his other brother-in-law, William Little, Ingram attracted a staff of talented writers and illustrators and, taking advantage of the development of wood engraving, the newspaper became a publishing phenomenon.6Cooke was married to Ingram’s sister; Ingram was married to Little’s sister. The advantages of wood engraving were manifold: it had produced far higher print runs than other reproductive methods; was cheaper; and could be printed at the same time as the text, the woodblock effectively acting as a large piece of type: W. Chatto, Gems of Wood Engraving from the Illustrated London News (1849), 28; [H. Cole], ‘Modern Wood Engraving’, London and Westminster Review, xxxi (1838), 265-280 (at 268, 272-3). The average weekly circulation of the ILN was 75,000, but it often rose above this, as during 1851 when its coverage of the Great Exhibition ensured that its sales exceeded 200,000.7Based on the yearly and quarterly newspaper stamp returns: PP 1852 (42), xxviii. 504-5; 1854 (117), xxxix. 484; 1854 (238), xxxix. 507; 1854-55 (83), xxx. 499; 1854-55 (438), xxx. 511. For the circulation after stamp duties were abolished in 1855 see Printers’ Register, v (1867), 130. Ingram consolidated the ILN’s market position by exploiting new printing technology, acquiring paper mills in 1848, and ruthlessly buying out or forcing out competitors.8Although wood engraving was cheaper compared to other methods, it was still expensive enough to prevent really cheap competitors entering the market, and too slow to permit daily publication. Ingram bought out and ran down the Pictorial Times, and later acquired a stake in the Illustrated Times, which he had earlier attempted to ruin by setting up cheap rivals. It was not until the establishment of the Graphic in 1869 that the ILN faced a formidable competitor. Bailey, Herbert Ingram, 88, 94-6, 98-107; H. Miller, ‘Printed images and political communication in Britain, c.1830-1880’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2009), 69-70, 84-7. Despite his success, Ingram, in the words of one of his journalists, Charles Mackay, remained a ‘daring speculator’, whose other ventures, such as the daily London Telegraph, were often failures.9C. Mackay, Forty years’ recollections (1877), ii. 67; Bailey, Herbert Ingram, 93. The London Telegraph lasted from 1 Feb. 1848 to 9 July 1848: F. Boase, Modern English biography (1897), ii. 14.

Ingram used his wealth to purchase an estate in 1846 at Swineshead Abbey, Lincolnshire, from whence his ancestors allegedly sprang, and to act as a public benefactor for his native town, where he was instrumental in the establishment of a reservoir and numerous railway lines.10Bailey, Herbert Ingram, 5, 45-63; Gent. Mag. (1860), ii. 554; Illustrated London News (1860), xxxvii. 285. Combined with the purchase of the Boston Guardian in 1854, which he converted into a Liberal newspaper, Ingram was well-placed to take advantage of a vacancy in the town’s parliamentary representation which arose in 1856. However, he left nothing to chance and brought up the ‘entire staff’ of the ILN and many other famous London journalists to campaign on his behalf.11Morn. Chro., 3 Mar. 1856; Mackay, Forty years’ recollections, ii. 67. After pledging support for Palmerston’s government and administrative reform, Ingram easily defeated his Conservative opponent and was re-elected unopposed at the general election the following year. His popularity helped unite a fractious local Liberal party and return a second Liberal in 1859.12Morn. Chro., 26 Feb. 1856, 3 Mar. 1856; Morn. Post, 7 Mar. 1856; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 28; J. Vernon, Politics and the people (1993), 60, 169, 186, 272.

In Parliament, Ingram gave general support to the Liberal government, but told a Boston audience in 1857 that despite opposing Cobden’s Canton motion, 3 Mar. 1857, he was no ‘mere Palmerstonian’ and voted against the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, which prompted the resignation of Palmerston’s ministry.13The Times, 24 Mar. 1857. He was especially interested in financial questions, above all the paper duties, which he had described as ‘the most obnoxious tax which existed’ in his maiden speech, 19 May 1856.14Hansard, 19 May 1856, vol. 142, c. 361. As a producer and consumer of paper, Ingram had an economic interest in their repeal, but also argued in his longest speech, 21 June 1858, that the duties produced little revenue and retarded the spread of knowledge to working-class readers.15Hansard, 21 June 1858, vol. 151, cc. 110-19. The duties were later repealed, but at the third reading of the bill, 8 May 1860, Ingram ‘got into the wrong lobby - & thus cost his party two votes’.16The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, ed. T. Jenkins, Camden Society, 4th series (1990), xl. 122. Ingram was also a critic of the Bank of England, insisting that the national debt should be handled by the state rather than a private institution.17Hansard, 6 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, cc. 314-15. In supply debates Ingram pressed for increased education grants and supported the funding of a new gallery for historical portraits.18Hansard, 10 Aug. 1857, vol. 147, c. 1317; 21 June 1858, vol. 151, cc. 150-1.

Despite his public reputation and status, Ingram’s personal and business affairs were deteriorating. With a few exceptions, such as Mackay, his quarrelsomeness alienated many friends and journalists.19Gent. Mag. (1860), ii. 555-6. His partners were unhappy with existing arrangements and had long suspected that Ingram was siphoning off money from the ILN through the paper works.20Bailey, Herbert Ingram, 138-9. Ingram forced out Cooke in 1853, and relations between him and Little, to whom he owed £10,000 (a sum that was never repaid), worsened after he found out about Ingram’s sexual assaults on Emma, the wife of Little’s brother, which had taken place in 1851 and 1857. Although he offered an insincere apology, Ingram believed himself to be the wronged party, and evicted Emma and her husband from their home, which they rented from him, and physically assaulted his partner. Little subsequently left the partnership, but out of residual loyalty did not expose Ingram’s transgressions, which only became public knowledge almost 150 years later.21Ibid., 138-61. Ingram’s problems were aggravated after the suicide of the Irish MP and fraudster John Sadleir, 16 Feb. 1856, an acquaintance who had used his name in the flotation of a number of bogus companies. This connection enabled a number of investors to successfully sue Ingram to recover some of their money, although the judge cleared the newspaperman of any personal wrongdoing.22Ibid., 162-3; Mackay, Forty years’ recollections, ii. 68-9; DNB (1892), xxix. 13-14; J. O’Shea, Prince of swindlers: John Sadleir MP, 1813-1856 (1999), 233-4.

Seeking to recuperate after the trial, and also arrange pictures for the Prince of Wales’s forthcoming tour, Ingram travelled to North America. He boarded a steamer around the Great Lakes, which sank, 8 Sept. 1860, after a collision, resulting in Ingram’s death and that of his eldest son and namesake. His body was subsequently retrieved and buried in Boston, where a statue was erected in 1862, in St. Botolph’s churchyard, where it still stands.23Bailey, Herbert Ingram, 164-72. The ownership of the ILN passed to his surviving sons and widow, whose affairs were managed by Sir Edward William Watkin, a railway entrepreneur and Liberal MP for Great Yarmouth, Stockport, and Hythe, whom she later married.24Ibid., 192; M. Stenton and S. Lees, Who’s who of British MPs (1978), ii. 364. His second son William James Ingram (1847-1924), sat as a Liberal for Boston, 1874-80, 1885-86, 1892-95, and was created a baronet in 1893.25Ibid., 188; Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 1070.