Vere Foster Editor & Author

Vere Henry Louis Foster was born in Copenhagen in 1819, while his father was serving as British Minister to Denmark. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and after graduation, entered the Foreign Office where his promising career as a diplomat was put aside once he returned to Ireland, in 1847. The rest of his life was dedicated to helping his countrymen. He contributed towards building school houses in rural Ireland-he devised economic, but very effective school books, and tried to better the lot of the poorly paid Irish school teachers. For over forty years Vere Foster gave freely of his own money until his death in 1900. During his life he assisted around 25,000 people to start a new life in the Americas and it is believed he spent approximately GBP100,000-a huge amount at the time-on other charitable endeavours while he himself lived on very modest means.