opened his co-educational school at Fallowfield, Manchester, and afterwards moved it to Ladybarn House, Withington. For twelve years he directed it with an individuality of method which diffused through the neighbourhood a new educational ideal. Resigning the school to his second daughter in 1886, he thenceforth devoted his leisure to authorship and to travel, publishing in 1889 his chief work, ‘The School: an Essay towards Humane Education,’ a masterpiece of English educational writing, which he described as ‘the fruits of more than forty years of teaching; various in the sex, age, class and nation of its objects.’ In 1893 he published ‘The Student's Froebel,’ adapted from ‘Die Menschenerziehung’ of F. Froebel (1893; revised edit., posthumous, with memoir by C. H. Herford, 1911). This is the best English presentment of the educational doctrine which it summarises and expounds. In 1890 he settled at Paignton in South Devon. In 1902 he published ‘Passages from the Life of an Educational Free Lance,’ a translation of the ‘Aus dem Leben eines freien Pädagogen’ of Dr. Ewald Haufe. He died at Paignton on 27 April 1908, and was buried there. Herford married (1) in Sept. 1848 Elizabeth Anne (d. 1880), daughter of Timothy Davis, minister of the Presbyterian chapel, Evesham, by whom he had three sons and four daughters; (2) in 1884 Louisa, daughter of Francis Carbutt of Leeds, and from 1860 to 1870 headmistress of Brooke House, Knutsford, who died in 1907 without issue. A medallion of Herford by Helen Reed, made in Florence in 1887, hangs in Ladybarn House School, Manchester.
Herford spoke of himself as having been for the first quarter of a century of his teaching an unconscious follower of F. Froebel, and for the following fifteen years his professed disciple. With Pestalozzi he urged the teacher never to deprive the child of ‘the sacred right of discovery,’ and to seek to bring things, both abstract and concrete, into actual contact with the pupil's senses and mind, putting words and names, ‘those importunate pretenders,’ into a subordinate place. Moral training, ‘practised not by preaching and as little as possible by punishment, but mainly by example and by atmosphere,’ he held to be of supreme importance, and its primary purpose to be ‘an intellectual clearing and purifying of the moral sense.’ To physical training (including play, gymnastics, singing, and handwork) he attached importance only less than that which was assigned to moral culture. Himself a teacher of genius, he disdained any compromise with educational principles or conventions of which he disapproved.
[Memoir of W. H. Herford by Prof. C. H. Herford, prefixed to revised edit. of Herford's Student's Froebel (1911); autobiographical statements in preface to The School; family information and personal knowledge.]
HERRING, GEORGE (1832–1906), philanthropist, born in 1832 of obscure parentage, is said to have begun working life as a carver in a boiled beef shop on Ludgate Hill (The Times, 3 Nov. 1906), but this statement has been denied. By judicious betting on horse-races he soon added to his income. He then became, in a small way at first, and in a very large way later, a turf commission agent. In 1855, during his early days on the turf, he was an important witness against William Palmer [q. v.], a betting man, who was convicted of poisoning another betting man, John Parsons Cook. At Tattersall's and at the Victoria Club Herring became known as a man of strict integrity, and was entrusted with the business of many leading speculators, who included the twelfth earl of Westmorland, Sir Joseph Hawley, and the duke of Beaufort. For a short time Herring owned racehorses. In 1874 Shallow, his best horse, was a winner of the Surrey Stakes, Goodwood Corinthian Plate, Brighton Club Stakes, and Lewes Autumn Handicap, four races out of ten for which he ran. Although remaining a lover of the turf and interesting himself in athletics, Herring soon left the business of a commission agent for large financial operations in the City of London, where in association with Henry Louis Bischoffsheim he made a fortune. He was chairman of the City of London Electric Lighting Company, and was connected with many similar undertakings. His powers of calculation were exceptionally rapid and accurate.
Of somewhat rough exterior and simple habits. Herring devoted his riches in his last years to varied philanthropic purposes. From 1899 till his death he guaranteed to contribute to the London Sunday Hospital Fund either 10,000l. in each year or 25l. per cent, of the amount collected in the churches. In 1899, 1900, and 1901 the fund, exercising its option, took 10,000l. annually; in 1902, 11,575l.; in 1903, 12,302l.; in 1904, 11,926l.; in 1905, 12,400l.; in 1906, 11,275l. The form of the benefaction spurred subscribers' generosity. He supported a 'Haven of Rest,' almshouses for aged people at Maidenhead, where he had a house; he started
