Elisabeth Murdoch (philanthropist)

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch
Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, opening a drug rehabilitation centre in Melbourne, May 2005
Born	(1909-02-08) 8 February 1909 Melbourne, Australia
Occupation	Philanthropist

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch AC, DBE (born 8 February 1909), philanthropist, is the widow of Australian newspaper publisher Sir Keith Murdoch and the mother of international media proprietor Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch was born Elisabeth Joy Greene in Melbourne to an Australian mother and an upper-class father from England. She was educated at St Catherine's School in Melbourne and at Clyde School. She married Keith Murdoch, 23 years her senior, in 1928, and inherited the bulk of his fortune when he died in 1952. When he was knighted, she became Lady Murdoch, and retained that title after his death, until she was appointed a Dame in 1963.

Family

Murdoch's parents were Rupert Greene, a Melbourne merchant of Irish descent, and Marie Grace de Lancey Forth of Warrnambool, Victoria of English descent. Virtually nothing is known of her father's background. Her maternal ancestry has been traced to England and Scotland in the seventeenth century. Both of her maternal grandparents were born in Victoria. Her great-grandfather, Frederick Henry Alexander Forth (1808–c.1876) served as Lieutenant Governor in the West Indies, and as a member of Hong Kong's Legislative Council, although he lived latterly in Tasmania. His wife was Caroline Jemima Sherson, who was baptised December 28, 1810 at St Marylebone, London. Her great-great-grandfather was Nathaniel Parker Forth (1744–1809), sometime Minister Plenipotentiary to the courts of Versailles and Madrid.

Apart from Rupert, her children are Janet Calvert-Jones, Anne Kantor and Helen Handbury (1929-2004). In a 2003 interview she said she had sixty-four descendants, and as of 2004 she had at least one great-great-grandchild. Her namesake granddaughter, Elisabeth Murdoch, is prominent in the British business world and is married to Matthew Freud, having previously been married to Elkin Pianim, the son of Ghanaian financier Kwame Pianim.

Philanthropy

Apart from raising her children, Murdoch has devoted her life to philanthropy. Before her marriage she worked as a volunteer for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She joined the management committee of the Royal Children's Hospital in 1933, serving as its president from 1954 to 1965.

A 2003 article in the Melbourne newspaper The Age (see link below) 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. Few of Melbourne and Australia's most cherished institutions, from the Royal Children's Hospital to the Australian Ballet and the Botanic Gardens, have not benefited from her involvement. But Dame Elisabeth also devoted herself to less popular causes: prisoners, children in care, those battling mental illness and substance abuse."

Murdoch retains a substantial stake in the Murdoch family's media businesses, and uses the proceeds to fund her extensive donations to charity. She is said to have considerable influence with her son Rupert Murdoch, which she usually exercises in the direction of moderation. She is known to have disapproved of the behaviour of some of his British tabloid newspapers, and as a result Rupert is reputed to have reined in some of their sexual content.

File:Murdochfamily.jpg

Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch with son Rupert Murdoch and one of their daughters in 1937, departing Melbourne by sea for Britain

Murdoch is a life-governor of the Royal Women's Hospital. She is Patron of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and of the Australian American Association (Victoria), founded by her husband. She was a founding member of the Deafness Foundation of Victoria. The first woman on the council of trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria, Murdoch was a founding member of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop.

The garden at Murdoch's property, Cruden Farm at Langwarrin, near Frankston (south-east of Melbourne), is one of Australia's finest examples of landscape gardening and is regularly open to the public. It was originally designed by Edna Walling. Murdoch is a popular figure in the area, where she has donated to many local charities, and is known locally as "the Dame."

Honours

Murdoch is a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). She also holds an award from the French government for funding an exhibition of works by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin in Melbourne in 2002. She is an honorary fellow of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, and funded and helped to establish the Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture and the Australian Garden History Society.

In 1968 Murdoch was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University of Melbourne in acknowledgement of her contributions to research, the arts and philanthropy. Trinity College, Melbourne installed her as a Fellow in 2000. Following extensive donations to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, a Tasmanian species of Boronia (B. elisabethiae) was named after her. In 2004 a high school, Langwarrin Secondary College, was renamed Elisabeth Murdoch College to honour Murdoch's work within the local community.

As of 2008 Dame Elisabeth remains in good health, maintaining a busy schedule of committee meetings and charity functions. This high level of charity work earned her the Victorian of the Year award in 2005 at the age of 97.

References

• Ancestry of Rupert Murdoch
• A tapestry portrait of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch may be seen here.

External links

• interview June 2008 - Enough Rope