HENRY

See also:

• HENRY DUNCKLEY (1823-1896)

DUNCKLEY (1823-1896)  , English journalist, was born at Warwick on the 24th of December 1823 . Educated at the Baptist college at Accrington, Lancashire, and at Glasgow University, he became in 1848 minister of the Baptist church at Salford, Lancashire . Here he closely investigated the educational needs of the working-classes, embodying the results of his inquiries in an essay, The Glory and the Shame of Britain (1851), which gained a prize offered by the Religious Tract Society . In 1852 he won the Anti-Corn-law League's prize with an essay on the results of the free-trade policy, published in 1854 under the title The Charter of the Nations . In 1855 he abandoned the ministry to edit the Manchester Examiner and Times, a prominent Liberal newspaper, in charge of which he remained till 1889 . For twenty years he wrote, over the signature " Verax," weekly letters to the Manchester papers; those on The Crown and the Cabinet (1877) and The Crown and the Constitution (1878) evoked so much enthusiasm that a public subscription was set on foot to present the writer with a handsome testimonial for his public services . In 1878 Dunckley, who had often declined to stand for parliament, was elected a member of the Reform Club in recognition of his services to the Liberal party, and in 1883 he was made an LL.D. by Glasgow University . He died at Manchester on the 29th of June 1896 .