William Edward Vincent was a printer and newspaper proprietor. He left England in 1840, after his elder brother Henry, a Chartist, was gaoled for 'riotous assembly'. He initially went to New Zealand, where he spent over a decade connected with various newspapers, before moving to Sydney in 1853, where he worked as a compositor at the Sydney Morning Herald. In Sydney, Vincent came in contact with the New South Wales pastoralist, politician and northern separationist Clark Irving (1808-1865), with whom he established the Clarence & Richmond Examiner at Grafton, in 1859. Vincent subsequently fell out with Irving on the separation issue, and after selling his interest in the Examiner to Irving, in August 1861, he established the Clarence and Richmond Independent, which ran to some 16 issues at the time of his death. His sons Henry Cleave St. Vincent (1847-1925), Frank Walter Vincent (1850-1903), and Arthur Edward Vincent, (q.v.) later became prominent New South Wales country press figures, and between them established and ran a number of country newspapers.
