B. C. Forbes

Bertie Charles Forbes (May 14, 1880 – May 6, 1954) was a Scottish-American financial journalist and author who founded Forbes magazine. Born in New Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, he was one of ten children of a storekeeper and tailor and his wife. Forbes attended University College, Dundee, then part of the University of St Andrews. He began his career in 1897 as a reporter and editorial writer for a local newspaper.

In 1901, he moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, to work for the Rand Daily Mail under its first editor, Edgar Wallace. Three years later, he immigrated to New York City, where he worked as a writer and financial editor for the Journal of Commerce. In 1911, he joined the Hearst newspaper chain as a syndicated columnist, and after two years became the business and financial editor at Hearst’s New York American, a position he held until 1916.

In 1917, he founded Forbes magazine and served as its editor-in-chief until his death. In his later years, he was assisted by his two eldest sons, Bruce Charles Forbes and Malcolm Stevenson Forbes. In 1942, he founded the Investors League.

Forbes authored nine books, including Finance, Business and the Business of Life (1915), Men Who Are Making America (1917), and Automotive Giants of America (1925). He died on May 6, 1954, in New York City. In 1988, his body was returned to Scotland and buried in the New Deer Churchyard at Hill of Culsh in New Deer, Aberdeenshire. While living abroad, he returned to his native Buchan every two years, staying at the Cruden Bay Hotel to entertain people from Whitehill with a picnic, a tradition later revived by his son Malcolm in 1987.