Henry Labouchère

Who was Henry Labouchère?

Henry Du Pré Labouchère was an English politician, writer, publisher and theatre owner in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He lived with the actress Henrietta Hodson from 1868, and they married in 1887.

Labouchère, who inherited a large fortune, engaged in a number of occupations. He was a junior member of the British diplomatic service, a member of parliament in the 1860s and again from 1880 to 1906, and edited and funded his own magazine, Truth. He is remembered for the Labouchère Amendment to British law, which for the first time made all male homosexual activity a crime.

Unable to secure the senior positions to which he thought himself suitable, Labouchère left Britain and retired to Italy.