McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Northcliffe, Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount, 1865-1922
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1865-1922
History
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, was born on July 15, 1865, at Sunnybank, Chapelizod, near Dublin, Ireland.
He was a British journalist and newspaper and publishing magnate. He was educated at Henley House School, Hampstead (1878), where he published the school magazine. By 1880, he was an occasional reporter on the Hampstead and Highgate Express. He also contributed articles to The Cyclist and Wheeling, The Globe, the Morning Post, and the St. James's Gazette. A bout of pneumonia brought on by cycling from Bristol in the rain and with insufficient food resulted in his doctor's ordering him in 1885 to leave London. He moved to Coventry, where he worked for Iliffe & Sons and wrote two books, "One Thousand Ways to Earn a Living" and "All about Railways." Harmsworth was an early developer of popular journalism. He bought several failing newspapers and made them into an enormously profitable newsgroup, appealing to the general public. He began with The Evening News in 1894 and then merged two Edinburgh papers to form the Edinburgh Daily Record. In 1896, he began publishing the Daily Mail in London and, in 1903, he founded the Daily Mirror, relaunched in 1904 as the Illustrated Daily Mirror. He rescued the financially failing Observer (1905), The Times (1908) and acquired The Sunday Times (1908). Northcliffe had a powerful role during the First World War, especially by criticizing the government regarding the Shell Crisis of 1915. In 1918, he became a Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, a role that used his journalistic skills. In 1905, Harmsworth was raised to the peerage as Baron Northcliffe, and, in 1918, he was created Viscount Northcliffe, of St. Peter's in the County of Kent, for his service as the director of the British war mission in the United States. The subsidiary of the Amalgamated Press, the Educational Book Company, published "The Harmsworth Self-Educator," "The Children's Encyclopedia," and "Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia."
In 1888, he married Mary Elizabeth Milner (1868–1963), and they had no children together. He had an illegitimate son with Louisa Jane Smith (1864-1931) and another three children with Kathleen Wrohan (1873-1923). He died on August 14, 1922, in London, England.