Top 10 Astonishing Facts about Dame Elisabeth Murdoch

Top 10 Astonishing Facts about Dame Elisabeth Murdoch

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch was the matriarch of the English-speaking world’s most pervasive media empire. She instilled toughness in her son Rupert by tossing him as a child into the deep end of a cruise ship’s pool to teach him how to swim,

Dame Elisabeth Joy Murdoch was an Australian philanthropist and matriarch of the Murdoch family.

She was the widow of Australian newspaper publisher Sir Keith Murdoch and the mother of international media proprietor Rupert Murdoch.

She became one of Australia’s leading philanthropists and spent many years working with charities on behalf of botanical gardens, tapestries and deaf children.

Dame Elisabeth was best known for her sharp views on her son and his business and personal decisions.

As Rupert Murdoch built his holdings to include newspapers, movie and TV studios, broadcast and satellite channels and digital media on four continents, his mother gave a series of interviews over four decades in which she questioned his acquisitions, criticized his divorce from his second wife, sarcastically called him “that wretched boy of mine” and said that “making money is not greatness.”

Here are the top 10 astonishing facts about dame Elisabeth Murdoch

 

 

1. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Was a Renowned Philanthropist

 

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch was the ‘queen of Australia’s philanthropic community. She supported 110 charitable organisations annually.

Well known for her compassion and modesty, she has offered her support to more than 100 charities. She also helped create the Royal Children’s Hospital in Australia and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

“Be optimistic – and always think of other people before yourself,” she is quoted as saying in an interview on her 100th birthday.

An article in The Age from 2003 said, “Few can rival Dame Elisabeth’s enormous contribution. Her interests are so many they need to be alphabetically catalogued: academia, the arts, children, flora and fauna, heritage, medical research, social welfare,” as well as less popular causes like “prisoners, children in care, those battling mental illness and substance abuse.”

2.  Elisabeth Murdoch was a Daddy’s Girl

 

Elisabeth Joy Greene was born in 1909 and grew up on her family’s Melbourne homestead, Pemberley, which was surrounded by a gardens on Toorak Road.

She once said: “My world was my parents’ garden.”

Her father had a mischievous spirit and even allowed her to puff on his pipe and chew tobacco.

But Dame Elisabeth’s father struggled with gambling issues, which caused money difficulties for her family.

Her mother’s caring nature and concern for others set an example Dame Elisabeth would carry throughout her life.

3. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Married a man 23 years her Senior

At the age of 19, Elisabeth Greene first stepped out with the 42-year-old Keith Murdoch.

Melbourne’s most eligible bachelor had spied Dame Elisabeth’s photograph in a society magazine and insisted on meeting the young beauty.

The pair were married in 1928, with the bride electing to wear her sister’s hand-me-down wedding dress.

Mr Murdoch’s wedding gift to his young wife was Cruden Farm, on the outskirts of Melbourne, in Langwarrin.

The property has been Dame Elisabeth’s home for over 80 years and it was there she and her husband raised their four children.

4.  The Queen made Elisabeth Murdoch Dame

She was the widow of Australian newspaper publisher Sir Keith Murdoch and the mother of international media proprietor Rupert Murdoch. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1963 for her charity work in Australia and overseas.

Dame is an honorific title and the feminine form of address for the honour of damehood in many Christian chivalric orders, as well as the British honours system and those of several other Commonwealth countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, with the masculine form of address being Sir.

In terms of the hierarchy, a damehood is the female equivalent of a knighthood, so the title of Dame is equivalent to Sir. 

5.  She is the Mother of Rupert Murdoch

She was the widow of Australian newspaper publisher Sir Keith Murdoch and the mother of international media proprietor Rupert Murdoch. the most successful media magnate of his generation.

Rupert Murdoch, in full Keith Rupert Murdoch, is an Australian-born American newspaper publisher and media entrepreneur who founded (1979) the global media holding company the News Corporation Ltd.—often called News Corp.

 Its sale resulted in the creation of Fox Corporation, which included Fox News and other TV channels.

6. Dame Elisabeth Predicted Rupert Murdoch’s Legal Scandal

Among the people who warned Rupert Murdoch over the years about the dangers of muckraking tabloid journalism was his mother.

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch told her son not to buy News of the World – the paper now at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal. Dame Elisabeth was a revered figure in Australia, along with Rupert Murdoch’s father, Keith, a prominent newspaperman himself.

In the book, A Winning Streak: The Murdochs, Dame Elisabeth told author Julie Browning that her son’s acquisition of New of The World nearly “killed” her.

She expressed her concerns about the tabloid at the time, but Rupert assured her that he was merely providing millions of readers with the content they wanted.

7. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Inherited a Fortune

Elisabeth married Keith Murdoch, on June 6th, 1928 after their fairytale romance that began when a photo of her in Table Talk magazine caught his eye.

As a wedding present, he gave her a sprawling estate at Langwarrin, near Australia’s southeast coast. They called it Cruden Farm, after the ancestral parish of his Scottish forebears, and it became the seat of Murdoch family life for generations.

Although much of her husband’s wealth went into taxes, she inherited shares in his media company, News Limited, and its subsidiaries; a Melbourne magazine, and a newspaper in New South Wales.

The Adelaide News and Sunday Mail went to her son and became the foundations of his international media empire.

8.  Dame Elisabeth Murdoch was Frugal

Her husband amassed a newspaper and radio empire in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane and became a political power broker. 

She was also alert to her husband’s self-indulgence. During the Depression,  the Murdochs hired men desperate for work to build stables and other outbuildings at the farm.   She was aghast when her husband drove up one day in a Rolls-Royce. She ordered him to return it.

And she herself was frugal. For decades, according to The Australian, a national broadsheet, she refused to have heating in the house, resisted hairdressers and one year gave up a trip abroad to pay for a pool in the garden.

The newspaper said she preferred to spend money on the garden rather than herself.

9.  Melbourne gave her the Key to the City

“The honour of representing a city as tremendous as Melbourne is a prize in itself.” Councillors, council officers and members of the public can nominate people worthy of the title.

They receive a Key to the City and a commemorative certificate in a public ceremony, but no other material benefits.

At age 94, Dame Elisabeth was awarded a key to the City of Melbourne, and responded with an ever-modest thank you, saying “I just wonder what it means. Will I get a free parking space?”

The Keys to the city came with no perks. The honour of representing a city as tremendous as Melbourne is a prize in itself.

10.  Dame Elisabeth lived for 103 years

 

Born on January 8, 1909, she died at a ripe old age of 103.

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch died peacefully at her home Cruden Farm, a wedding present from her late husband, in Victoria, Australia.

She was the mother of four, with Rupert, Anne Kantor and Janet Calvert-Jones as her surviving children.

Her eldest daughter, Helen Handbury, died in 2004. Among her 77 living descendants, five of them are great-great-grandchildren.

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A pillar of Melbourne society for most of the 20th century, Elisabeth Murdoch was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1963. The reason was for her wide-ranging charitable and voluntary work, in particular for establishing an institute for research into children’s health problems.

Yet she was best known as the mother of Rupert Murdoch, the most successful media magnate of his generation.