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On This Day in 1865: Lord Northcliffe, godfather of the tabloids, was born
Wednesday 15 July 2026 9:54 am | Updated: Wednesday 15 July 2026 9:59 am
On This Day in 1865: Lord Northcliffe, godfather of the tabloids, was born
By: Eliot Wilson
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Add as a preferred source on Google26th July 1911: Irish journalist and newspaper magnate Alfred Charles William Harmsworth (1865 - 1922), 1st Viscount Northcliffe, at Brooklands race course with Lady Nancy Astor (1879 - 1964) and her husband 2nd Viscount Waldorf Astor (1879 - 1952). They are waiting for the aviators to arrive for the Daily Mail £10,000 Round Britain Race. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
Alfred Harmsworth, founder of the Daily Mail, was born into poverty on this day and went on to change the face of the British media and become enobled as Lord Northcliffe, writes Eliot Wilson
Newspapers go back as far as the early 17th century, with general agreement that the first was the Strasbourg-based Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, first published in 1605. But it would be another three centuries before the world would see the first newspaper magnates.
Max Beaverbrook, Arthur Sulzberger, Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, Jeff Bezos, even William Randolph Hearst: all of these media titans trod a path first taken by Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, born today in 1865 in Chapelizod, on the outskirts of Dublin.
Harmsworth was the first child of 28-year-old barrister Alfred Harmsworth and Geraldine Maffett, 26, daughter of a land agent. Before he reached his second birthday, the Harmsworths had left Ireland and moved to London, but their fortunes became increasingly dire because of Alfred Sr’s “fondness for alcohol”. Their poverty was not alleviated by the fact that 13 more children followed Alfred Jr; to keep them warm at night, they were sometimes wrapped in – ironically – newspaper.
He began his life in the milieu of genteel........
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