Background
Labouchere was born in London, England, United Kingdom, November 9, 1831. Labouchere was the eldest of three sons and six daughters.
journalist politician statesman
Labouchere was born in London, England, United Kingdom, November 9, 1831. Labouchere was the eldest of three sons and six daughters.
Labouchère was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Attached to the diplomatic service from 1854 to 1864, "Labby" ran as a Liberal candidate in the 1865 parliamentary election. Four years later he inherited the fortune of his uncle, Lord Taunton, a Whig politician. After financing various theatrical ventures, he bought a quarter share in the Daily News, the circulation of which rapidly increased when he sent a series of entertaining letters from Paris during the siege which followed the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Later he wrote articles for the World, which exposed the corruption of other financial correspondents, and in 1877 he founded Truth.
Labouchere was the ideal director of a paper with such a name, being fearless and uninhibited. He had no reverence for men or their creeds, and he spoke so candidly that Truth was on very familiar terms with the law of libel. Blackmailers, company promoters, and shady solicitors were exposed in its pages, and as a result Labouchère himself was physically assaulted and was frequently attacked so virulently by other papers that his passion for comedy and combat was sometimes assuaged.
From 1880 Labouchère represented Northampton in the House of Commons, as a Radical. There he spoke as freely as he wrote, exposing the realities behind the shams of political life. Everyone was relieved when he retired from politics in 1905, and Edward VII - having no objection to a viper that could no longer sting - made him a privy councillor.
Labouchère was a firm and vocal Radical, who tried to create a governing coalition between the Radicals and the Irish Nationalists that would exclude or marginalise the Whigs.
Labouchère was a vehement opponent of feminism; he campaigned in Truth against the suffrage movement, ridiculing and belittling women who sought the right to vote. He was also a virulent anti-semite, opposed to Jewish participation in British life, using Truth to campaign against "Hebrew barons" and their supposedly excessive influence, "Jewish exclusivity" and "Jewish cowardice".
Quotes from others about the person
Queen Victoria called him "that horrible lying Labouchère, " and her son Edward VII described him as "that viper, " but their opinions were partial.
Labouchère and Henrietta Hodson married in 1887. Their one child together, Mary Dorothea (Dora) Labouchère, had been born in 1884.