James Henderson

James Henderson (26 November 1823 – 24 February 1906) was a British newspaper and magazine proprietor and publisher, who was influential in developing the popular press and comics in Britain. He established James Henderson & Sons Ltd, which published many newspapers and magazines as well as books and postcards.

Biography

Henderson was born in Laurencekirk, near Montrose in Scotland. After working for his father, a saddle maker, he took a post with the local newspaper, the Montrose Standard. He then moved to Glasgow where he worked on the North British Daily Mail and for a publishing company, before setting up his own business. In 1855, he launched the Glasgow Daily News, the first daily penny newspaper in Britain, and The Weekly News and General Advertiser. However, neither succeeded for long, and his business collapsed.

He moved to England and worked at the Leeds Express and Manchester Guardian. At the Guardian, he was sent into the Lancashire towns to find out whether there was a demand for the daily newspaper to be circulated there. He found that there was little demand for a daily newspaper, but that "what was wanted was a weekly paper which, whilst giving a certain amount of news, should contain a considerable proportion of light amusing reading."

Accordingly, Henderson founded his own journal, The Weekly Budget (originally The North British Weekly Budget), in Manchester in January 1861. The newspaper contained both news items and fiction, and sold well. Its success led Henderson to move to Red Lion Court in Fleet Street in London in 1862, and by the end of the following year the Weekly Budget had a claimed circulation of 150,000, rising to 300,000 in subsequent years.

Henderson and his family moved to Dulwich in 1864. He had a large villa, Adon Mount, built for himself, and developed neighbouring fields into a residential area. He also started the South London Press and Evening Mercury newspapers, and several other magazines including The Key, The Orb, and the Household Monthly Magazine. Writer Denis Gifford considered Funny Folks to be the first British comic, and benefitted from innovations in the use of cheap paper and photo-zincography printing.

Another publication by Henderson was Scraps, a compendium of items aimed at children, many from foreign sources, and published between 1883 and 1910. When Harmsworth published the similar Comic Cuts a few years later, Henderson sued him for plagiarism. Henderson also published the popular magazine Nuggets, which featured cartoons and stories about a fictional family of Irish immigrants in London, the Hooligans, which would now be considered examples of anti-Irish bigotry. – took over several of the magazines and later became chairman of the family company, James Henderson & Sons Ltd, which was formally established in 1899. Another brother, Winfred Stanley Henderson (1869–1941) was managing director of the company.