NORTHCLIFFE 



VISCOUNT NORTHCLIFFE 



H. W. Wilson, of the Editorial Staff of The Daily Mail 



Further references to Lord Northcliffe's activities are made under 

 Daily Mall; Propaganda ; Times. See also Journalism ; Newspaper 



Alfred Charles William Harms- 

 worth, Viscount Northcliffe, of St. 

 Peter, in the county of Kent, 

 British newspaper owner, was born 

 at Chapelizod, Dublin, on July 15, 

 1865. His father, Alfred Harms- 

 worth, was a barrister-at-law of 

 the Middle Temple. * His mother, 

 Geraldine Mary Maffett, was a 

 daughter of a well-known banker. 



NorthcliSe. Alfred Harmsworth in 1895 



As a child he showed a bent for 

 journalism, and hi 1878 started a 

 school magazine at Henley House 

 School, W. Hampstead. When 

 only 15 he received his first paid 

 employment as a journalist in work 

 for G. S. Jealous, the editor of The 

 Hampstead and Highgate Express, 

 an acquaintance of his family, and 

 in 1881 he began to contribute to 

 various periodicals for young 

 people, and to newspapers as a 

 "free-lance" journalist, also at this 

 time travelling extensively on the 

 Continent. At the age of 17 Sir 

 W. Ingram, then proprietor of The 

 Illustrated London News, made 

 him assistant-editor of Youth, and 

 he meantime developed his work by 

 contributing to other newspapers. 

 After a severe attack of pneumonia 

 in 1884, he was ordered to live out 

 of London. 



He went in 1885 to Coventry, 

 where he worked for Iliffe & Sons, 

 who owned numerous publications, 

 among them the leading cycling 

 weekly and The Midland Daily 

 Telegraph. He was offered a part- 

 nership by Mr. Iliffe, but declined, 

 and in 1887 returned to London 

 and founded a publishing business. 

 In 1888 he established the weekly 

 journal Answers (q.v.), which 



* In some copies of our first impression 

 he is, by an error in revision, wrongly 

 described as a solicitor and recorder of 

 Dublin. Ed. 



achieved great financial success, 

 and was the forerunner of many 

 other periodicals, the profits from 

 which soon reached 50,000 a year. 

 Answers was floated as a limited 

 company and was thus the germ 

 of the gigantic business of the 

 present Amalgamated Press. 



Between 1889 and 1894 Alfred 

 Harmsworth travelled widely 

 throughout the empire and the 

 U.S.A. In 1894 he and his brother 

 Harold, afterwards Viscount Ro- 

 thermere (q.v.), acquired the London 

 Evening News, which was then in 

 a bankrupt condition. It was re- 

 organized and speedily became a 

 'prosperous newspaper. The same 

 year he financed the Jackson- 

 Harmsworth Arctic Expedition, 

 which under F. G. Jackson win- 

 tered in Franz Josef Land and ex- 

 plored that desolate archipelago 

 At the general election of 1895 he 

 stood as one of the two Conser- 

 vative candidates at Portsmouth, 

 polling 9,717 votes against the 

 10,451 and 10,255 of the two Lib- 

 erals elected. 



On May 4, 1896, he founded The 

 Daily Mail, a halfpenny morning 

 newspaper on boldly original lines, 

 giving compactly all the news 

 which at that date was found 

 in its penny competitors. Its 

 appearance revo- 

 lutionised British 

 journalism : the 

 methods which 

 Alfred Harms- 

 worth introduced, 

 and his system of 

 arrangement, 

 have since been so 

 universally copied 

 that modern news- 

 paper readers find 

 it difficult to real- 

 ize how far-reach- 

 ing was his 

 influence. But it 

 may generally be 

 said that for the 

 next 25 years he 

 led every great 

 newspaper enter- 

 prise, and that 

 his brain was 

 inexhaustible in 

 innovations, im- 

 provements, and 

 surprises. 



The newest 

 machinery was in- 

 troduced ; the system of distribution 

 perfected ; and at the outbreak of 

 the Boer War the sale of The Daily 

 Mail had risen to 700,000 daily, 

 at times reaching the then unpre- 



NORTHCLIFFE 



cedented total of 1,100,000. The 

 net daily sale is now over 1,350,000 

 copies, though owing to the enor- 

 mous advance in cost of paper 

 and labour the price had to be 

 raised to a penny on March 5, 

 1917. In 1905 he established a con- 

 tinental edition of The Daily Mail 

 in Paris ; and as from 1900 the 

 paper had also been produced in 

 duplicate in Manchester each night, 

 it was now issued from three 

 different offices, covering the whole 

 of Western Europe. In 1903 he 

 founded The Daily Mirror, dispos- 

 ing of it in 1914 to his brother, 

 Viscount Rothermere. In 1904 he 

 had received a baronetcy, followed 

 in 1905 by a peerage. 



With his brother, Lord Rother- 

 mere, he acquired in 1906 a large 

 tract of forest, with lakes, water 

 power, and rivers, for the manufac- 

 ture of paper, and organized the 

 Anglo -Newfoundland Development 

 Company. In 1908 he became chief 

 proprietor of The Times. 



At the outbreak of the Great War 

 the newspapers under his control, 

 and known throughout the world as 

 " the Northcliffe Press," included 

 The Times, The Daily Mail, Evening 

 News, and Weekly Dispatch, and 

 the Overseas Daily Mail. Lord 

 Northcliffe's influence abroad and 

 throughout the Empire was great, 

 owing to the foresight and patriot- 

 ism which he displayed and the 

 enormous net sales of his news- 

 papers. He had warned the British 



Photo, 

 Hoppe 



