Lieutenant Colonel Sir Hector William van Cuylenburg, VD (23 January 1847 – 11 December 1915) was a Ceylonese lawyer, newspaper proprietor and legislator.
Hector William van Cuylenburg was born on 23 January 1847, the son of Dr Petrus Henricus van Cuylenburg, the Assistant Colonial Surgeon in the Colonial Medical Department of Ceylon[1][2] and Eliza Morgan, the fourth of nine children.
[2] After completing his schooling, he served an apprenticeship with Charles Ambrose Lorensz and in 1868 was called to the bar as a proctor.
[1] In 1888 van Cuylenberg together with William Maitland, established the first daily morning paper, the Ceylon Independent, the first edition of which was published on 4 July.
In 1889 a new editor for the paper, George Wall, was appointed, who agitated for a more responsible form of government for the country.