Thomas Curson Hansard (6 November 17765 May 1833) was an English pressman, son of the printer

Luke Hansard Luke Hansard (5 July 1752 – 29 October 1828) was an English printer. He printed the '' Journals of the House of Commons'' from 1774 until his death. His son Thomas Curson Hansard took over the business, and added the name "Hansard" to the title ...

Life

In 1803, he established a press of his own in

Paternoster Row Paternoster Row was a street in the City of London that was a centre of the London publishing trade, with booksellers operating from the street. Paternoster Row was described as "almost synonymous" with the book trade. It was part of an area ca ...

. In the same year, William Cobbett, a newspaperman, began to print the ''

Parliamentary Debates ''Hansard'' is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printe ...

''. At first, these were not independent reports, but were taken from newspapers' accounts of parliamentary debate. In 1809, Hansard started to print Cobbett's reports. Together, they also published a pamphlet describing an incident in which German mercenaries had flogged British soldiers for mutiny; as a result Hansard was imprisoned on 9 July 1810 in

King's Bench Prison The King's Bench Prison was a prison in Southwark, south London, England, from medieval times until it closed in 1880. It took its name from the King's Bench court of law in which cases of defamation, bankruptcy and other misdemeanours were hea ...

for

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defi ...

. In 1812, facing bankruptcy, Cobbett sold the publication to Hansard, who continued to publish it for the rest of his life. In 1829, he added his own name to the parliamentary proceedings, giving it the title ''

Hansard ''Hansard'' is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official prin ...

'' that it bears to this day. TC Hansard was the author of ''Typographia, an Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Art of Printing'' (1825). Hansard is buried in Kingston Cemetery.Burial records: Hansard, Thomas
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Firm

The original business remained in the hands of his younger brothers, James and Luke Graves Hansard (1777–1851). The firm was prosecuted in 1837 by

John Joseph Stockdale John Joseph Stockdale (1770, 1776Stockdale (1990) ''p.''30 or 1777 – 16 February 1847) was an English publisher and editor with something of a reputation as a pornographer. He sought to blackmail a number of public figures over the ''memoirs ...

for printing by order of the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

, in an official report of the inspector of prisons, statements regarded by the plaintiff as

lous. Hansard's sheltered itself on the ground of parliamentary privilege, but it was not until after much litigation that the security of the printers of government reports was guaranteed by statute in 1840. After 1889 the debates were published by the Hansard Publishing Union Limited.

References

External links

A history of Hansard from The Australasian and Pacific Hansard Editors' Association
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hansard, Thomas 1776 births 1833 deaths English printers