Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe
The Viscount Northcliffe | |
---|---|
Born | Alfred Charles William Harmsworth 15 July 1865 Chapelizod, County Dublin, Ireland |
Died | 14 August 1922 Carlton House Gardens, London, England | (aged 57)
Nationality | British |
Education | Stamford School |
Occupation | Publisher |
Title | 1st Viscount Northcliffe |
Spouse | |
Children | 4 (illegitimate) |
Parent(s) | Alfred Harmsworth Geraldine Mary Maffett |
Relatives | The 1st Baron Harmsworth (brother) The 1st Viscount Rothermere (brother) Sir Leicester Harmsworth (brother) Sir Hildebrand Harmsworth (brother) St John Harmsworth (brother) |
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (15 July 1865 – 14 August 1922), was a British newspaper and publishing magnate. As owner of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, he was an early developer of popular journalism, and he exercised vast influence over British popular opinion during the Edwardian era.[1] Lord Beaverbrook said he was "the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street."[2] About the beginning of the 20th century there were increasing attempts to develop popular journalism intended for the working class and tending to emphasize sensational topics. Harmsworth was the main innovator. He said, "News is something someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising."
Lord Northcliffe had a powerful role during the
His Amalgamated Press employed writers such as Arthur Mee and John Hammerton, and its subsidiary, the Educational Book Company, published The Harmsworth Self-Educator, The Children's Encyclopædia, and Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia. Challenging the dominance in popularity of the "penny dreadfuls" among British children, from the 1890s Harmsworth half-penny periodicals, such as Illustrated Chips, would enjoy a virtual monopoly of comics in the UK until the emergence of DC Thomson comics in the 1930s.[3]
Biography
Early life and success
Born in Chapelizod, County Dublin, the son of Alfred and Geraldine Harmsworth, he was educated at Stamford School in Lincolnshire, England, from 1876 and at Henley House School in Kilburn, London from 1878.[4] A master at Henley House who was to prove important to his future was J. V. Milne, the father of A. A. Milne, who according to H. G. Wells was at school with him at the time and encouraged Harmsworth to start the school magazine.[5] In 1880 he first visited the Sylvan Debating Club, founded by his father, and of which he later served as Treasurer.
Beginning as a freelance journalist, he initiated his first newspaper,
Harmsworth was an early developer of popular journalism. He bought several failing newspapers and made them into an enormously profitable news group, primarily by appealing to the general public. He began with
On 4 May 1896 he began publishing the Daily Mail in London,
During 1899 Harmsworth was responsible for the unprecedented success of a charitable appeal for the dependents of soldiers fighting in the
Harmsworth also initiated
Ennobled
Harmsworth was created a
Marriage
Alfred Harmsworth married
Children
Lord Northcliffe had four acknowledged children by two different women. The first, Alfred Benjamin Smith, was born when Harmsworth was seventeen years old; the mother was a sixteen-year-old maidservant in his parents' home.[1][19] Smith died during 1930, allegedly in a mental home.[20] By 1900, Harmsworth had acquired a new mistress, an Irishwoman named Kathleen Wrohan, about whom little is known but her name; they had two further sons and a daughter, and she died in 1923.[21][1]
Political influence
By 1914 Northcliffe controlled 40% of the morning newspaper circulation, 45% of the evening and 15% of the Sunday circulation in Britain.[22]
Northcliffe's ownership of The Times, the Daily Mail and other newspapers meant that his editorials influenced both "the classes and the masses".[23] That meant that in an era before radio, television or internet, Northcliffe dominated the British press "as it never has been before or since by one man".[24]
Northcliffe's editorship of the Daily Mail in the years just before the
Such was Northcliffe's influence on anti-German propaganda during the World War I that a German warship was sent to shell his house, Elmwood, in Broadstairs,[27] in an attempt to assassinate him.[28] His former residence still bears a shell hole out of respect for his gardener's wife, who was killed in the attack. On 6 April 1919, Lloyd George made an excoriating attack on Harmsworth, terming his arrogance "diseased vanity". By then, Harmsworth's influence was decreasing.
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, from June through to October 1917, has been judged successful by historians.[29]
Northcliffe's personality shaped his career. He was monolingual and not well-educated and knew little history or science. He had a lust for power and for money, while leaving the accounting paperwork to his brother Harold. He imagined himself Napoleon reborn and resembled the emperor physically and in terms of his enormous energy and ambition. Above all, he had a boyish enthusiasm for everything. Norman Fyfe, an intimate friend, described him:
Boyish in his power of concentration upon the matter of the moment, boyish in his readiness to turn swiftly to a different matter and concentrate on that.... Boyish the limited range of his intellect, which seldom concerns itself with anything but the immediate, the obvious, the popular. Boyish his irresponsibility, his disinclination to take himself or his publications seriously; his conviction that whatever benefits them is justifiable, and that it is not his business to consider the effect of their contents on the public mind.[30]
Sport
In 1903 Harmsworth initiated the Harmsworth Cup, the first international award for motorboat racing.[31]
Motoring
Harmsworth was a friend of Claude Johnson, chief executive of Rolls-Royce Limited, and during the years preceding the First World war became an enthusiast of the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost car.[32]
Death
Lord Northcliffe's health declined during 1921 due mainly to a
A monument to Northcliffe at St Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street, London, was unveiled in 1930. The obelisk was designed by Edwin Lutyens and the bronze bust is by Kathleen Scott. His body was buried at East Finchley Cemetery in North London.
Legacy
Historian Ian Christopher Fletcher states:
Northcliffe's drive for success and respectability bounded main outlet in the commercial world of journalism, not the political world the parties and parliaments. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment, underlying the relentless acquisition of newspapers and perfection of their "copy," was the simple incorporation of millions of readers into his press empire.[35]
A. J. P. Taylor, however, says, "Northcliffe could destroy when he used the news properly. He could not step into the vacant place. He aspired to power instead of influence, and as a result forfeited both."[36]
More than anyone [he] ... shaped the modern press. Developments he introduced or harnessed remain central: broad contents, exploitation of advertising revenue to subsidize prices, aggressive marketing, subordinate regional markets, independence from party control.[37]
According to Piers Brendon:
- Northcliffe's methods made the Mail the most successful newspaper hitherto seen in the history of journalism. But by confusing gewgaws with pearls, by selecting the paltry at the expense of the significant, by confirming atavistic prejudices, by oversimplifying the complex, by dramatizing the humdrum, by presenting stories as entertainment and by blurring the difference between news and views, Northcliffe titillated, if he did not debouch, the public mind; he polluted, if he did not poison, the wells of knowledge.[38]
The A. Harmsworth Glacier in North Greenland was named by Robert Peary in his honour. (Northcliffe had provided a ship for the expedition).
Northcliffe lived for a time at 31 Pandora Road, West Hampstead; this site is now marked with an English Heritage blue plaque.
Cultural depictions
Northcliffe was the subject of a number of fictionalized portrayals. One of the earliest was the character of Mr. Whelpdale in George Gissing's 1891 novel New Grub Street. Whelpdale publishes a magazine called Chit-Chat (similar to Northcliffe's Answers), which is aimed at "the quarter-educated; that is to say the great new generation that is being turned out by the Board Schools, the young men and women who can just read, but are incapable of sustained attention".[39]
Arnold Bennett's 1909 West End play What the Public Wants centers on Sir Charles Worgan, a profit-hungry media baron based on Northcliffe. J. B. Fagan's 1910 play The Earth features a satirical version of Northcliffe, Sir Felix Janion, who uses sexual blackmail to prevent the passing of a bill which would provide a minimum wage for his employees.[39]
Promotion of Group Settlement Scheme
Throughout his newspaper career Northcliffe promoted the ideas which resulted in the Group Settlement Scheme. The scheme promised land in Western Australia to British settlers prepared to emigrate and develop the land. A town founded specifically to assist the new settlements was named Northcliffe, in recognition of Lord Northcliffe's promotion of the scheme.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Anthony, Andrew (7 August 2022). "The Chief by Andrew Roberts review – the original alpha Mail". The Observer. The Guardian. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
- ^ Lord Beaverbrook, Politicians and the War, 1914–1916 (1928) 1:93.
- ^ Khoury, George (2004). True Brit: A Celebration of the Great Comic Book Artists of the UK. TwoMorrows Publishing. p. 9.
- ^ "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Retrieved 3 October 2013.
- ^ H. G. Wells, An Experiment in Autobiography, Chapter 6
- ^ Boyce (2004).
- OCLC 38206817.
- ^ Brice, Arthur Montefiore, and H. Fisher. "The Jackson-Harmsworth Polar Expedition, Notes of the Last Year's Work." The Geographical Journal 8.6 (1896): 543–564. online
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1975
- ^ "Victorian Secrets". History of Harmsworth Magazine. victoriansecrets.co.uk. Archived from the original on 27 December 2013. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
- ^ Cannon, John. "The Absent-Minded Beggar", Gilbert and Sullivan News, March 1987, Vol. 11, No. 8, pp. 16–17, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society, London.
- ^ "Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe | British publisher". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
- ^ Boyce (2004).
- ^ "No. 27696". The London Gazette. 15 July 1904. p. 4556.
- ^ "No. 27871". The London Gazette. 5 January 1906. p. 107.
- ^ King, Cecil Harmsworth, The Cecil King Diary: 1970-1974, Jonathan Cape, London 1972, p345.
- ^ "No. 30533". The London Gazette. 19 February 1918. p. 2212.
- ^ Taylor 1996, p. 47.
- ^ Taylor The Great Outsiders pp.10–11
- ^ Taylor The Great Outsiders p. 222
- ^ Taylor The Great Outsiders pp. 47–48 and p. 222.
- ^ Tompson, "Fleet Street Colossus" p. 115.
- ^ Blake, Robert (1955). The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life & Times of Andrew Bonar Law 1858–1918. p. 294.
- ^ Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to End All Peace. p. 233.
- ^ Bingham, Adrian (May 2005). "Monitoring the popular press: an historical perspective". History & Policy. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 9 December 2010.
- ^ Boyce (2004).
- ^ 51°22′26″N 1°26′01″E / 51.3739°N 1.4337°E
- ^ "Kent Today & Yesterday". 1 January 2010. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
- ^ John Cannon, ed., The Oxford Companion to British History (2002) p. 454.
- ^ Hamilton Fyfe, Northcliffe an Intimate Biography (1930) p. 106.
- ^ "Harmsworth Cup | motorboat racing award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
- ISBN 978-1-84046-151-0.
- ^ Brendon 2003, pp. 53–62.
- ISBN 978-0-09-179484-2. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
- ^ Ian Christopher Fletcher , "Northcliffe, Lord" in Fred M. Leventhal, ed., Twentieth-century Britain: an encyclopedia (Garland, 1995) pp 573–74
- ^ A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (1965) p 27.
- ^ P. P. Catterall and Colin Seymour-Ure, "Northcliffe, Viscount". in John Ramsden, ed. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century British Politics (2002) p. 475.
- ^ Piers Brendon, Eminent Edwardians: Four figures who defined their age: Northcliffe, Balfour, Pankhurst, Baden-Powell (1979), pp 25-26
- ^ a b Roberts 2022.
References
- Boyce, D. George (2004). Harmsworth, Alfred Charles William, Viscount Northcliffe (1865–1922). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.
- Brendon, Piers (2003). Eminent Edwardians: Four Figures Who Defined Their Age - Northcliffe, Balfour, Pankhurst, Baden-Powell. Pimlico. pp. 1–64. ISBN 978-1-84413-081-8.
- Fyfe, Hamilton. Lord Northcliffe: An Intimate Biography (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1930)
- Roberts, Andrew (2022). The Chief: The Life of Lord Northcliffe Britain's Greatest Press Baron. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781398508705.
- Taylor, S. J. (1996). The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0297816539.
- Thompson, J. Lee. "Fleet Street Colossus: The Rise and Fall of Northcliffe, 1896-1922." Parliamentary History 25.1 (2006): 115–138. online
Further reading
- Bingham, Adrian. "The Daily Mail and the First World War" History Today (Dec 2013) 63#12 pp 1–8.
- Brendon, Piers. Eminent Edwardians (Secker & Warburg, 1979) ISBN 978-0436068102
- Carson, William English. ''Northcliffe, Britain's man of power (1918) online
- Chalaby, Jean K. "‘Smiling Pictures Make People Smile’: Northcliffe's journalism." Media History 6.1 (2000): 33-44.
- Ferris, Paul, The house of Northcliffe; a biography of an empire (1972) online
- Gollin, A. M. "Lord Northcliffe's Change of Course." Journalism Quarterly 39.1 (1962): 46–52. From journalism to political power in 1903
- Koss, Stephen. The rise and fall of the political press in Britain Vol. 2: the Twentieth Century (1984).
- McEwen, John M. "Northcliffe and Lloyd George at War, 1914-1918." Historical Journal 24.3 (1981): 651–672. Says Lloyd George had real power; that of Northcliffe was an illusion.
- Macnair, R. Lord Northcliffe A Study (1927) online
- Pound, Reginald, and Geoffrey Harmsworth. Northcliffe (Cassell, 1959). online
- Startt, James D. "Northcliffe the Imperialist: The Lesser‐Known Years, 1902–1914." The Historian 51.1 (1988): 19–41. Covers his emphasis on tariff reform, the importance of Canada to the British Empire, and British naval supremacy.
- Sullivan, March (September 1922). "Northcliffe: Living, Dying, Dead". The World's Work: A History of Our Time. XLIV: 648–654. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
- Thompson, J. Lee. Press Barons in Politics 1865–1922 (London, 1996).
- Thompson, J. Lee. "‘To Tell the People of America the Truth’: Lord Northcliffe in the US, Unofficial British Propaganda, June–November 1917." Journal of Contemporary History 34.2 (1999): 243–262.
- Thompson, J. Lee. Politicians, the Press, and Propaganda: Lord Northcliffe and the Great War, 1914-1919 (2000)
- White, William. "Lord Northcliffe and World War I." Journalism Quarterly 34.2 (1957): 208–216. He was intensely anti-German before and during the war.
External links
- Works by or about Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe at Wikisource
- "DMGT, Rothermere and Northcliffe" at Ketupa.net Media Profiles 2006-12-11
- Lord Northcliffe & the 1908 Olympics - UK Parliament Living Heritage
- Who's Who: Lord Northcliffe