Henry Labouchère | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of Parliament forMiddlesex | |
| In office 15 April 1867 – 21 November 1868 | |
| Preceded by | Robert Culling Hanbury |
| Succeeded by | George Hamilton |
| Member of Parliament forNorthampton | |
| In office 27 April 1880 – 12 January 1906 | |
| Succeeded by | Herbert Paul |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 9 November 1831 London, England |
| Died | 15 January 1912(1912-01-15) (aged 80) Florence |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse | |
| Education | Eton College |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | writer, publisher and theatre owner |
| Known for | Labouchere Amendment criminalising male homosexual activity |
Henry Du Pré Labouchère (9 November 1831 – 15 January 1912) was an English politician, writer, publisher and theatre owner in theVictorian andEdwardian eras. He is now most remembered for theLabouchère Amendment, which for the first time criminalised all male homosexual activity in the United Kingdom.
Labouchère, who came from a wealthyHuguenot banking family, was a junior member of the British diplomatic service before briefly serving in Parliament in 1865–68. He lived with the actressHenrietta Hodson from 1868, and they married in 1887. He made a name for himself as a journalist and theatre producer, first buying a stake inThe Daily News and in 1876 founding the magazineTruth, which he bankrolled during an extensive series of libel suits.
In 1880, he returned to Parliament as theLiberal member for Northampton, and became a key figure in the radicalHome Rule wing of the party. He was a controversial figure, and opposition fromQueen Victoria as well as from senior Liberals ensured that he was never given a ministerial position. He became increasingly unpopular because of his opposition to theSecond Boer War, and resigned from politics in 1906, when he left Britain and retired to Italy.
Labouchère was born in London to a family ofHuguenot extraction,[n 1] the eldest of three sons and six daughters[1] of John Peter Labouchère (d. 1863) and Mary Louisanée Du Pré (1799–1863). John, who settled atBroome Hall,[citation needed] was a partner in the banking house ofThomas Hope, and then inDeacon's; his uncle, also calledHenry Labouchère (d. 1869), entered politics and served in Parliament from 1826 to 1859, when he was made a peer as Baron Taunton. Despite disapproving of Labouchère, his uncle helped the young man's early career and left him a sizeable inheritance when he died leaving no male heir.[1] His grandfather Pierre (Peter) César Labouchère was also a partner in Hope's, and married a daughter ofSir Francis Baring. His mother Mary was from an Englishnabob family,[2] the daughter ofJames Du Pré MP, a nephew ofLord Caledon, and his wife Madeline Maxwell, a niece of theDuchess of Gordon.[citation needed]
Labouchère was educated atEton andTrinity College, Cambridge,[3] where, he later said, he "diligently attended the racecourse at Newmarket", losing £6,000 in gambling in two years.[4][n 2] He was accused of cheating in an examination, and his degree was withheld.[6] Leaving Cambridge, he was sent to South America to look after family business interests there; however, he ended up working in acircus troupe in Mexico and lived for several months in anOjibwe camp near Minneapolis.[1]
While he was in the US, Labouchère (without his prior knowledge) was found a place in the British diplomatic service by his family. Between 1854 and 1864, he served as a minor diplomat inWashington, Munich,Stockholm, Frankfurt,Saint Petersburg,Dresden, andConstantinople. He was, however, not known for his diplomatic demeanour, and acted impudently on occasion.[1] He went too far when he wrote to the Foreign Secretary to refuse a posting offered to him, "I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's despatch, informing me of my promotion as Second Secretary to Her Majesty's Legation at Buenos Ayres. I beg to state that, if residing at Baden-Baden I can fulfil those duties, I shall be pleased to accept the appointment." He was politely told that there was no further use for his services.[7]
The year after his dismissal, Labouchère was elected at the1865 general election as a member of parliament (MP) forWindsor,[8] as aLiberal. However, that election was overturned on petition,[1] and in April 1867 he was elected at a by-election as an MP forMiddlesex.[9] At the1868 election he lost the seat by 110 votes.[10] He did not return to theHouse of Commons for 12 years.[1]
In 1867, Labouchère and his partners engaged the architectC. J. Phipps and the artistsAlbert Moore and Telbin to remodel the large St. Martins Hall to createQueen's Theatre, Long Acre.[11] A new company of players was formed, includingCharles Wyndham,Henry Irving,J. L. Toole,Ellen Terry, andHenrietta Hodson. By 1868, Hodson and Labouchère were living together out of wedlock,[12] as they could not marry until her first husband died in 1887.[13] Labouchère bought out his partners and used the theatre to promote Hodson's talents;[14] the theatre made a loss, Hodson retired, and the theatre closed in 1879. The couple finally married in 1887.[15] They had one child together, Mary Dorothea (Dora) Labouchère (1884–1944).[1]
During the break in his Parliamentary career, Labouchère gained renown as a journalist, editor, and publisher, sending witty dispatches from Paris during theSiege of Paris in 1870–1871, noting the eating ofzoo elephants, donkeys, cats and rats when food supplies ran low.[16] This series of articles helped restore the circulation of theDaily News, in which he had bought a stake in 1868. His unflinching style gained a large audience for first his reporting, and later his personal weekly journal,Truth (started in 1876), which was often sued for libel.[17] With his inherited wealth, he could afford to defend such suits.[1] Labouchère's claims to being impartial were ridiculed by his critics, includingW. S. Gilbert (who had been an object of Labouchère's theatrical criticism) in Gilbert'scomic operaHis Excellency (see illustration at right). In 1877, Gilbert had engaged in a public feud with Labouchère's lover Henrietta Hodson.[18]
Labouchère was a vehement opponent of feminism; he campaigned inTruth against the suffrage movement, ridiculing and belittling women who sought the right to vote.[19] He was also a virulent anti-semite, opposed to Jewish participation in British life, usingTruth to campaign against "Hebrew barons" and their supposedly excessive influence, "Jewish exclusivity" and "Jewish cowardice".[19] One of the victims of his attacks wasEdward Levy-Lawson, proprietor ofThe Daily Telegraph.[19] In 1879 there was a much-reported court case following a fracas on the doorstep of theBeefsteak Club between Labouchère and Levy-Lawson. The committee of the club expelled Labouchère, who successfully sought a court ruling that they had no right to do so.[20]
Labouchère returned to Parliament in the1880 election, when he andCharles Bradlaugh, both Liberals, won the two seats forNorthampton. (Bradlaugh's then-controversial atheism led Labouchère, a closet agnostic, to refer sardonically to himself as "the Christian member for Northampton".)[1]
In 1884, Labouchère unsuccessfully proposed legislation to extend the existing laws against cruelty to animals.[21] In 1885, Labouchère, whose libertarian stances did not preclude a fiercehomophobia,[1] drafted theLabouchère Amendment as a last-minute addition to a Parliamentary Bill that had nothing to do with homosexuality.[n 3] His amendment outlawed "gross indecency";sodomy was already a crime, but Labouchère's Amendment now criminalised any sexual activity between men.[n 4] Ten years later the Labouchère Amendment allowed for the prosecution ofOscar Wilde, who was given the maximum sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour.[1] Labouchère expressed regret that Wilde's sentence was so short, and would have preferred the seven-year term he had originally proposed in the Amendment.[1]
During the 1880s, the Liberal Party faced a split between a Radical wing (led byJoseph Chamberlain) and a Whig wing (led by theMarquess of Hartington), with its party leader,William Ewart Gladstone straddling the middle. Labouchère was a firm and vocal Radical, who tried to create a governing coalition between the Radicals and theIrish Nationalists that would exclude or marginalise the Whigs. This plan was wrecked in 1886, when, after Gladstone came out forHome Rule, a large contingent of both Radicals and Whigs chose to leave the Liberal Party to form theLiberal Unionist Party allied with theConservatives.[1]
Between 1886 and 1892, a Conservative government was in power, and Labouchère worked tirelessly to remove them from office. When the government was turned out in 1892, and Gladstone was called to form an administration, Labouchère expected to be rewarded with a cabinet post.[1]Queen Victoria refused to allow Gladstone to offer either Labouchère orCharles Dilke an office, however, as she had a strong personal dislike of them – "she wouldnever allow such horrid men to enter the Govt".[26] Her dislike of Labouchère stemmed from his editorship ofTruth, which she felt had insulted the Royal Family.[27] According to the historianVernon Bogdanor, this was the last time a British monarch vetoed a prime minister's appointment of a cabinet minister.[27][n 5] However, Gladstone may have been happy to drop Labouchère given his lack of political support.[27] Likewise, the new foreign secretary,Lord Rosebery, a personal enemy of Labouchère, declined to offer him the ambassadorship to Washington for which Labouchère had asked.[1]
Through the 1890s, Labouchère was a critic of both Liberal and Conservative Imperial policies; he demanded an enquiry into Rhodesian policy in 1893–94, and in 1895 sat on the commission enquiring into theJameson Raid. However, his position became gradually alienated from his party and from public opinion, as he strongly opposed theSouth African War and argued for peace.[1] His reputation was also tarnished by a series of financial scandals: in 1897, he was accused in the press of share-rigging, usingTruth to disparage companies, advising shareholders to dispose of their shares and, when the share prices fell as a result, buying them himself at a low price. He failed to reply to the accusations, and his reputation suffered.[30] A later pamphlet by Henry Hess ofThe Critic, in 1905, revealed further financial misdealings.[1]
When theLiberal party took power in December 1905, Labouchère was not offered any political office byHenry Campbell-Bannerman, the new prime minister. He was disappointed in this – he had been a strong supporter of Campbell-Bannerman – and retired from Parliament the following month, choosing not to stand at the1906 general election. His only political reward from the new government was aprivy councillorship.[1]
He retired toFlorence, Italy, where he died seven years later, leaving a fortune of half a million pounds sterling[n 6] to his daughter Dora, who was by then married to Carlo, Marchese di Rudini.[1]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forWindsor 1865 –1866 With:Sir Henry Hoare, Bt | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forMiddlesex 1867 –1868 With:George Byng | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forNorthampton 1880 –1906 With:Charles Bradlaugh 1880–1891 Moses Manfield 1891–1895 Charles Drucker 1895–1900 John Greenwood Shipman from 1900 | Succeeded by |
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