James Gordon Bennett Sr. published the first issue of the New York Herald on 6 May 1835; by 1845, the Herald was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the United States.
Bennett Sr. turned over control of the paper to his son, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., in 1866. It was under Bennett Jr. that the paper financed Henry Morton Stanley's expeditions into Africa to find David Livingstone, resulting in their famous meeting on 10 November 1871.
James Gordon Bennett Jr. was generally known as Gordon Bennett, to distinguish him from his father. He became widely known for his extravagant playboy lifestyle and his shocking behaviour.
The first time the expression appears in print was in 1937, in James Curtis's novel You're in the Racket, Too. According to Wiktionary, the Oxford English Dictionary places the phrase in the 1890s as an alliteration of 'gorblimey' and again to James Gordon Bennett Jr.
In 1924, six years after the death of James Gordon Bennett Jr., the New York Herald was acquired by its smaller rival, the New–York Tribune, to form the New York Herald Tribune. The New York paper ceased publication in 1966, but its European edition was acquired by the Washington Post and the New York Times and renamed the International Herald Tribune (IHT). The IHT is now wholly owned by the New York Times.
© Haydn Thompson 2020