Background
Henry Edwin Fenn was born in the Saint Pancras district of London in 1850 to John Fenn and Mary Ann Fenn.
Henry Edwin Fenn was born in the Saint Pancras district of London in 1850 to John Fenn and Mary Ann Fenn.
Fenn married Blanche Julia Crispin in the Saint Pancras district of London in 1874. They had six children of whom one pre-deceased them. Fenn spent his career reporting on divorce and probate cases in the London courts, including 30 years with The Daily Telegraph, which culminated in the publication of Thirty-five years in the divorce court in 1910.
lieutenant combined pen-portraits of leading lawyers at the divorce bar with anecdotes and stories of cases heard and Fenn"s observations on human nature, private investigators, and the role of the press in judiciously editing the facts of the more salacious cases in their reporting.
The Yorkshire Post noted that 35 years in the courts had made Fenn cynical and led him to the conclusion that money was a greater motivating factor in cases than sentiment. The Daily News (London) felt that Fenn had sacrificed accuracy for readability and that many of his anecdotes were hardly new.
They sympathised with Fenn"s need to "eke out his scanty material with quotations hardly less trite than some of his anecdotes". Fenn died at his home at Carlton Road, Tufnell Park, London, on 3 November 1913.
Fenn was a fellow of the Institute of Journalists, a member of The London Press Club, and the senior member of the Council of the Newspaper Press Fund.