Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe

Lore & Background

Harmsworth was born in Chapelizod, County Dublin, the son of Alfred and Geraldine Harmsworth. He was educated at Stamford School in Lincolnshire from 1876 and at Henley House School in Kilburn, London, from 1878. A master at Henley House, J. V. Milne, encouraged him to start the school magazine. Beginning as a freelance journalist, he initiated his first newspaper, Answers, and was later assisted by his brother Harold. He developed the largest periodical publishing company in the world, Amalgamated Press. His half-penny periodicals in the 1890s played a role in the decline of Victorian penny dreadfuls. He bought several failing newspapers, beginning with The Evening News in 1894, and merged two Edinburgh papers to form the Edinburgh Daily Record. On 4 May 1896, he began publishing the Daily Mail. He also initiated The Daily Mirror in 1903, and rescued The Observer and The Times in 1905 and 1908 respectively. In 1908, he also acquired The Sunday Times. He was created a Baronet in 1904, raised to the peerage as Baron Northcliffe in 1906, and created Viscount Northcliffe in 1918. He married Mary Elizabeth Milner on 11 April 1888; they had no children together. The source article states he had four acknowledged children by two different women: Alfred Benjamin Smith (born when Harmsworth was seventeen, mother a maidservant), and three children by Kathleen Wrohan. During the First World War, he criticized the government regarding the Shell Crisis of 1915, directed a mission to the United States in 1917, and was director of enemy propaganda in 1918. By 1914 he controlled 40% of morning, 45% of evening, and 15% of Sunday newspaper circulation in Britain.

Reader's Guide

The source article notes that the peerage was requested by King Edward VII and was alleged to have been purchased, but it remains a matter of speculation. Harmsworth is reported to have joked that when he wanted a peerage he would buy one 'like an honest man.' The article also states that Northcliffe's enemies accused him of power without responsibility, but his papers were a factor in settling the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, and his mission to the United States has been judged successful by historians. He was monolingual and not well-educated, and had a lust for power and money. An intimate friend described him as boyish in concentration and range of intellect.

Did You Know?

• Lord Beaverbrook said Harmsworth was 'the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street.'
• His half-penny periodicals such as Illustrated Chips enjoyed a virtual monopoly of comics in the UK until the 1930s.
• In 1899, he invited Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Sullivan to write 'The Absent-Minded Beggar' for a charitable appeal.
• On 25 February 1917, a German warship shelled his country house Elmwood in an attempt to assassinate him.