BENNETT, JAInts GonooN, b. Scotland, Sept. 1, 1795. d. N. Y., June 1, 1872. Ile was intended for the primp/2,6d by Sent hint to a Roman Catholic 8CM.
inary; but in 1819, he migrated to America, and began teaching in Halifax, N. S. In the autumn of that year, he reached Boston and too. the situation of proof-reader in a publishing house, and while there made his first literary venture in fugitive poems. In 1822, he was on the Charleston Courier as Spanish translator and special writer. Corning to Ned York, he undertook to start a commercial school, but abandoned the idea and took to lecturing on political economy. In 1825, he owned the New York Courier, a short-lived Sunday journal: Then he became a casual reporter and writer, now techni cally- called a " Bohemian;" in 1826, lie obtained regular employment on Snowden's _National Advocate, and was active as a politician. In 1827, he wrote for the _Yew York Enquirer, edited by -Mordecai M. Noah, and in 1828 was its Washington correspond eut. The next year the Enquirer was united to the Courier, and in the autumn B. became associate editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer. In 1832, in consequence of a difference of opinion about the U. S. bank between him and James Watson Webb, the responsible editor, B. left the Courier and Enquirer, and in October issued the ./Yew York Globe, which lived four weeks. He next appeared as a share-owner in the Penn sylvanian, of Philadelphia, and in 1833 was chief editor. In 1834, he returned to New York, and on Wednesday morning, May 6, 1835, he issued from the basement of No. 20 Wall street, No. 1 of the Herald, price one cent. It had four pages of four columns each, the whole surface of print being a little less than 33 sq.ft., of which one quarter was occupied by advertisements. The Herald ismesnow (1880) on Sundays occasionally sheets of 24 pages of 6 columns, or 144 columns, having a printed surface of 48 sq.ft. of which two thirds are taken by advertisers. The cost of advertising in the first number was 50
cents for 16 lines; at present the same number of lines costs $'6.40. In the opening edi torial, B. announced his independence of parties, cliques, and factions, and proposed to publish simply an independent newspaper. On the llth of the month the second num ber was issued, and contained the " money," or " Wall street" article, a department now indispensable to a morning newspaper in any commercial city. For some time all the editorials, reports, etc., were written by the editor himself, who often wrote in the first person, and with a pungency that secured attention and circulation. Ile took imme diate advantage of ocean steamers and the telegraph to secure news, and his paper reported through Morse's experimental wires the first speech ever sent by telegraph to any journal, that of John C. Calhoun on the war with Mexico. The Herald was the first daily paper to issue on Sundays, and the first to publish on every day in the year. Hesitating at no trouble or expense, and availing himself of the steamship, the telegraph, the horsc-express, and the post-office, B. soon made the Herald widely known as what he meant it to be—a newspaper, to increase the importance and value of which was the sole ambition of his life. He left two children, a daughter and James Gordon, Jr., bequeathing the Herald entire to the son, who continues it with the spirit and enterprise of the founder.
I3ENNETT„Toux HuurrEs, 1812-75; b. London. He was educated at Exeter and Edinburgh, and studied in Paris and Germany. He was for 26 years professor of the institutes of medicine in Edinburgh university. He was an able teacher, and his origi nal investigations entitle him to a high place in the history of medicine. His best known publications arc Clinical Lectures, Treatise on Physiology, and lext-Book of Physiology.