Frederick Clifford

Frederick Clifford, KC (1828–1904) was an English journalist, known also as a barrister and legal writer.

Life Born Frederick Catt at Gillingham, Kent, on 22 June 1828, he was fifth son of Jesse Catt a Kentish man by his wife Mary Peirce. After private schooling, he started before he was twenty in provincial journalism. In 1852 he settled in London and joined the parliamentary staff of The Times, of which his elder brother George was already a member at this time both he and George renounced the name Catt and adopted Clifford as their surname. This employment he combined with other work. He retained his connection with the provinces by acting as London correspondent of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, a conservative journal, and in 1863 he became joint proprietor of the paper with William Christopher Leng.

In the 1851 Census, he is still listed as Frederick Catt, Editor of the Eastern Counties Herald, whilst living as a lodger in Hull.

In 1866 Clifford went to Jamaica to report for The Times the royal commission of inquiry into the conduct of Governor Edward John Eyre. He helped in 1868 to found the Press Association, an institution formed to supply newspaper proprietors of London and the provinces with home and foreign news, and he acted as chairman of the committee of management during two periods of five years each, finally retiring in 1880. In 1877, with the failing health of the editor, John Thadeus Delane, Clifford was transferred by The Times from the reporters' gallery of the House of Commons to Printing House Square; and he acted as assistant editor until his own bad health caused him to resign in 1883.

His fourth son, Colonel Sir Charles Clifford, KBE, CMG, LLD, JP (1860-1936).