A few months after his resignation from the Senate, he was convicted of fraudulent conversion and gaoled for three years with hard labour.

He was one of seven children born to Susanna (née Anderson) and George Benny; his father was a Free Presbysterian minister and schoolteacher.

Following his father's death in 1879, his uncle William Benny paid for his education at Thomas Caterer's Commercial College in Norwood.

In June 1926 Benny was convicted of fraudulent conversion of trust funds[2] and sentenced to three years' gaol, and declared insolvent.

[4] She had in 1919 made history as the first woman to be elected to local government (the Seacliff ward of the Brighton Council) in Australia.