Henry Corbet

Between 1846 and 1849, Corbet edited the Steeplechase Calendar and collaborated with William Shaw (editor of The Mark Lane Express since its foundation in 1832) and Philip Pusey in an investigation into tenant rights.

In 1848, with Shaw, he produced an extensive Digest of Evidence on the Agricultural Customs of England and Wales[3] which, together with the prize essay of 1847, became a standard reference text on the subject.

[4] Corbet spent the rest of his working life at the Mark Lane Express, retiring from its editorship, and the secretaryship of the London Farmers Club, in 1875 as his health failed.

In 1859, he was appointed auditor to the Royal Agricultural Society of England after it was discovered that the secretary, James Hudson, had embezzled £2,000 of the year's show receipts.

The gentleman-tenant question was emerging, and Corbet wrote a prize essay on the subject during his first year in office – the judges were Lord Portman, Philip Pusey and William Shaw.

The essay was published in the spring of 1847 and, in the following year, at the request of Pusey, Corbet undertook, in conjunction with Snow, a digest of evidence on the Agricultural Customs of England and Wales – a work of immense labour.

[8] In 1853 Corbet was invited by the proprietors of The Mark Lane Express to write leaders and reports of agricultural meetings for that paper, and this gradually led to his undertaking the editorship.

[7] During the cattle plague crisis of 1865–66 Corbet criticised the role of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, which had been unable to supply the decisive lead needed.

With typical outspokeness he complained of the chamber's 'second-hand sayings and doings', its 'burlesque airs of importance', and its 'egregious system of puffing'..."[10] For many years Corbet acted as a judge of riding horses at shows held in different parts of the country.