Where does the saying “Gordon Bennet” come from.
Bertieman.
A British Doper may be along in a minute to correct my guess, but my WAG is there was no such person as Gordon Bennett. A person who has stubbed his toe and has launched into the mildly blasphemous “GAWD!” realises his very religious Great Aunt is present, and quickly adds "…on Bennett. It’s just an arbitrarily common-sounding name.
According to Bill Bryson’s Made In America, and this site, from the antics of James Gordon Bennett II, son of the founder of the New York Herald.
“Bennett’s flamboyant lifestyle (he dithered away $40 million dollars by the time he died in 1918) made his name a household word. The earliest use of “Gordon Bennett” as an exclamation is found in print only very recently, in 1983, but popular sayings may thrive by word of mouth for many years before they are written down. “Gordon Bennett!” almost certainly actually came into spoken use during Bennett’s life”… "“Gordon Bennett” probably arose simply as a convenient euphemism for another common British expression of surprise: “gorblimey,” or what Americans know in its shortened form as the quintessential Cockney expression, “blimey!” "