Lifestyle
Original Succession: 2 Murdochs and the murders that made them moguls
This week's Lost Australian History begins with a very powerful man who, despite age and ailment, builds a populist media empire based on scandals and true crime. But it's not Rupert Murdoch that Forgotten Australia podcaster Michael Adams is telling the story of - it's his father Sir Keith Murdoch.
By Michael Adams
It’s been a momentous time for the Murdochs, with nonagenarian Rupert stepping aside as chairman of News Corp in 2023 and making way for his son Lachlan. Given Lachlan’s age – a mere 52 – and his inheritance – vampire DNA, political power, untold billions – he might be in charge until well into the 2070s.
After all, the last time the Murdoch empire prepared for a new leader was this week in 1952.
Death of a mogul
On 4 October 1952, Sir Keith Murdoch, chairman of the Herald newspaper in Melbourne, died in his sleep at his family farm in Langwarrin. He was 66.
Sir Keith was lionised in the Australian press – the language uncannily close to how Rupert was described recently when he stepped aside. The Argus, a rival to the Herald, told readers:
"Australian journalism has lost its most massive, its most controversial, and its most adventurous figure by the death of Sir Keith Murdoch. It would be idle to pretend he was universally liked, though he claimed the loyalty, perhaps the devotion, of many men who worked as his associates or subordinates. It would be equally idle to pretend that the Australian newspaper world has bred any other leader of comparable imagination, strength and vision."
There were plenty of ‘what-ifs?’ in the coverage.
What if #1 – Murdoch: the sparkie
Born in 1886, Sir Keith’s parents had supposedly wanted him to be an electrical engineer. Instead, in 1903, he’d chosen journalism as a career and started as a reporter for The Age. He took to it with passion and professionalism.
What if #2 – Murdoch: the leftie
In the pre-WWI period, as a parliamentary reporter, Keith become close to leading Labor figures, including prime ministers Andrew Fisher and Billy Hughes. He was such a leftie that when the Australian Workers’ Union was starting a newspaper in Sydney in 1914, Keith accepted the post of chief of staff. But the First World War caused the AWU to drop the newspaper plan.
As The Argus noted: "What might have been if Murdoch has become a Labor journalist is matter today of purely academic speculation. But it is not to be doubted that the course of Australia’s history would have been altered."
What if #3 – Murdoch: the historian
Keith went for the job of Commonwealth War Historian but this role went to Charles Bean. This meant Murdoch remained free to actually become more influential as a war reporter when his ‘Gallipoli Letter’ exposed the debacle in the Dardanelles and helped change to course of history. The Gallipoli Letter made his name.
But it was his friendship in London with English press baron ‘Mad’ Lord Northcliff that moulded his career. It was this tycoon who’d offer the young Australian unforgettable advice on how to increase a newspaper’s circulation: “Find a good murder story.”
A good murder #1
Keith returned to Melbourne in January 1921 and was made editor of Melbourne’s evening paper The Herald. But he didn’t really distinguish himself. In Keith’s first 12 months, he only boosted circulation from 120,000 to 128,000.
Then he found a good murder.
The Gun Alley murder that gave the Murdoch's their first taste of populism
Early in the morning of Saturday 31 December 1921, the body of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke was found in Melbourne’s Gun Alley (now 80 Collins Street).
Alma had been raped and murdered.
The Age and The Argus had already hit the streets. So the Herald had the scoop all to itself that afternoon and evening and Keith let his sensational tendencies run wild.
Keith's editorial included: ‘A monster exists in this city free to indulge bestial and brutal instincts, the monster who murdered little Alma Tirtschke in the heart of the city.’
A newspaper crusade
The Herald went on a crusade and Keith even offered a separate reward for information leading to a conviction. Circulation skyrocketed and this new style of coverage put the police under immense pressure to make a quick arrest.
In this environment, detectives nabbed wine bar owner Colin Campbell Ross, who denied he’d anything to do with the girl’s death.
This development saw Keith put out a special edition of The Herald that made the paper part of the story – and let readers know that the Murdochs would not be beaten when it came to news.
The charge of murder was not laid until some time after the ordinary final edition of The Herald went to press, and it was then determined at short notice to publish a special edition.
The well-organised arrangements of The Herald publishing department and its motor fleet were put to a special test. Supplies of the papers were distributed throughout the city and suburbs by means of train, tram, and motor services, the distribution extending as far as Geelong, Ferntree Gully and Olinda, and to Ballarat.
The papers in every place were eagerly purchased, and newsboys were rushed. The public Interest continued unabated, so much so, that it was decided to issue a special edition at midday, containing a full report of the proceedings in the city court, and interesting sketches and photographs.
The Herald’s coverage included potentially prejudicial photos of Ross, given witnesses might be asked to identify him in open court. Certainly, the paper’s minute-by-minute coverage helped create the widespread conclusion that he was guilty.
At Ross’s murder trial, the jury was also presented with hairs found on a blanket in the accused’s home that a scientist swore came from Alma’s head.
This just confirmed what many people already ‘knew’, thanks to the wild newspaper coverage.
An innocent man hanged
Colin Campbell Ross was convicted. Still protesting his innocence, he went to the gallows on 24 April 1922. Nearly 75 years later, librarian Kevin Morgan found those hair samples in an old criminal file and convinced the police to have them DNA tested. They weren’t Alma’s — and in 2008 Colin Ross was posthumously pardoned.
How the Gun Alley murder made Murdoch #1
But back in 1921, Keith Murdoch had gotten what he wanted. The Herald’s circulation surged over the 4 months from murder to trial, hitting a peak of 235,000 before steadying to 140,000. Critics derisively called The Herald’s headquarters the ‘Colin Ross Memorial Building’ for how Murdoch had used the case for revenue and reputation.
Within a few years, he’d grown the paper’s circulation to 200,000 and used its profitability as a war chest to stage the company’s takeover of Melbourne tabloid the Sun-News Pictorial. Keith was on his way to becoming a media mogul. Born in 1931, his son Rupert was raised to be his successor.
Rupert on the rise
This week in 1952, Keith’s reign ended in his sudden death – and that paved the way for Rupert to take control of his father’s media empire.
Or what was left of it.
Keith had shuffled off this mortal coil with a lot of debt. So the family had to sell their stake in The Herald and in its Queensland newspaper interests. That left them with a little South Australian company called News Limited, which only published the Adelaide News.
Rupert, who, while studying at Oxford had a bust of Lenin in his room, and who was nicknamed ‘Red Rupert’ for his leftie proclivities, officially joined the Adelaide News in September 1953. For the rest of the 1950s, he showed he had the same newspaper nous as his dear departed dad. Yet the Adelaide News remained the family’s only substantial media asset.
In May 1960, Rupert took a huge gamble on himself when he entered the competitive Sydney market by acquiring the struggling tabloid The Daily Mirror, which was consistently smashed in circulation by its rival The Sun. Two months later, Rupert hadn’t turned the Mirror’s fortunes around. Then he found a good murder.
A good murder #2
As had been the case with his father, the victim was a child.
On 7 July 1960, 8-year-old schoolboy Graeme Thorne was kidnapped from a street in Bondi.
Just over a month earlier, the boy’s parents, middle-class Bondi couple, Bazil and Freda Thorne, had won first prize in the £100,000 lottery that’d been set up by the NSW government to help pay for the Sydney Opera House. Now the kidnapper demanded a £25,000 ransom or ‘the boy will be fed to the sharks’.
Five weeks after Graeme disappeared, on 16 August 1960, Mr and Mrs Thorne received the worst news possible. Their boy’s decomposing body had been found. He’d died from asphyxiation and/or a head injury.
An extraordinary police investigation would lead to the extradition from Sri Lanka, arrest, trial and conviction for murder of Stephen Leslie Bradley.
How the murder made Murdoch #2
Just as Alma Tirtschke had been the true-crime cornerstone for his father’s empire, Rupert Murdoch used the Graeme Thorne case to set himself on the path from small-time newspaper owner to global media mogul. On 7 July 1960, it’d been Daily Mirror reporter Bill Jenkings who’d scooped his rivals to get the story of the kidnapping and the ransom demand. It was a front-page sensation.
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In his 1992 memoir As Crimes Go By, Jenkings recalled: “The Thorne kidnapping was splashed all over the front page of the late edition of the mirror, leaving The Sun well in our wake.”
In the days and weeks that followed, the reporter and his colleagues scored successive scoops and this firmly established the Mirror as a rag to be reckoned with. In his book Jenkings explained: “You could say the Mirror had one foot in the grave at the time, and it was this continuing story that saved us from annihilation.”
Rupert Murdoch was a hands-on owner, leading editorial conferences and planning the coverage and allocation of resources. Like dad Keith 40 years earlier, he made the Mirror part of the story, and, much as he would decades later with Fox News, he turned his star reporters into crusading personalities while denigrating his newspaper competitors.
Dubbing Jenkings and the 6 other men on the Graeme Thorne case as “The Unbeatables”, Murdoch ran their photo with the headline: “The Men Who Are Giving You The Facts!” He wrote the accompanying article that boasted his Mirror team had reported every angle of the case first – often 2 days before its competitors – and that every other newspaper was simply playing catch-up
Bill Jenkings was nothing if not a fan of Rupert Murdoch; the introduction to his book was written by his former boss turned billionaire. But even this loyal tabloid man baulked at what Murdoch did later in the Thorne case.
Jenkings had learned police were about to issue a warrant for Bradley. But his police contact had told him this in confidence, saying it couldn’t see print because it might tip off the wanted man. When Jenkings let something vague slip in the Mirror office the next morning, he told his editor it couldn’t be used because it might blow the case and forever ruin his reputation with the cops.
Rupert Murdoch overrode him – and ordered that the next edition’s front page would carry the news. Murdoch saw this as another chance to crush The Sun – and even picked up the phone to order advertising time on radio stations to trumpet the ill-gotten scoop.
But Rupert Murdoch knew better than anyone how such a story could translate into power and profits.
In The Daily Mirror, Murdoch was credited by The Economist as inventing the modern tabloid. The paper made him a player and its profits helped him purchase The Dominion in New Zealand in 1964 – his first international acquisition – and launched The Australian later that year – cementing himself as Australia’s most powerful mogul.
The rest is history.
Melbourne’s shooting scandal mystery
On 4 October 1923, Keith Murdoch had another sensational story for his photo-heavy Herald in a double tragedy in South Melbourne.
The previous day, two women – Catherine Doherty and Mary Lay – had been shot dead in the front room of a house in Nelson Road. Edward Doherty – Catherine’s husband – had escaped unscathed. His revolver had been used to kill both women.He had fired the weapon and he had gunpowder residue on his hands.
The Herald had the crime scene on its front page the next morning – and the case would grip Melbourne as more details were reported in the weeks that followed.
It seemed Mr and Mrs Doherty had an unhappy marriage due to his philandering. In the front room, Mary, who was Edward’s ‘platonic’ friend, had supposedly been remonstrating with him about his treatment of Catherine.
Mary had threatened to get her brother Charlie to shoot Edward. In response, Edward had pulled out his revolver and said he’d use this if Charlie tried anything.
That was when Catherine had rushed him and they’d struggled for the gun. She had wrested it away.
As Edward told it: ‘The next thing I knew was that Mrs Doherty was shooting. When Mrs Lay was shot she fell into my arms. My wife was standing in the middle of the room.’
His wife had then shot herself.
‘When I next saw her she was lying on the floor near the fireplace. I picked her up and placed her near the soft [sic]. I then left the room and went to the front of the house. Then I returned to the room and picked up the revolver. I reloaded it. I was pretty excited, and had an idea of ending myself at the time. While I was reloading it a shot went off accidentally.’
But Edward had gone to seek help. He said: ‘After returning from seeing Dr. Drew I think that I placed the revolver on my wife's dress.’
The Herald headline of 17 October 1923 – “Who Fired Shots?” – gave voice to the very reasonable doubts harboured about Edward Doherty’s story.
But the coroner returned an open verdict at the inquest, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to establish how the women had died.
Edward Doherty wasn’t charged with anything other than having an unlicensed pistol.
Australia’s royal realisation… and reigning records
King William IV died on 20 June 1837, succeeded by his niece Princess Victoria. There was much sorrow and rejoicing in the United Kingdom as the news spread. But it spread slowly – very slowly – to the far-flung colonies.
And Australia was the farthest flung of the lost, so it wasn’t until this week - 8 October – in 1837 that a British ship bearing the bad news reached Sydney after a long voyage. For the past 4months, the colonials had been toasting and praying for a rather dead king!
Queen Victoria would rule for 63 years and 216 days.
When she died 1901, Australia knew about it within hours, having been in telegraphic communication with the world for nearly 3 decades.
Queen Victoria’s great-granddaughter, Elizabeth, would beat her record: ruling from 1952 to2 022. We’d learn about her death in milliseconds.
Interesting fact: Taken from the death of their respective fathers, the duration of QEII’s rule – from 8 February 1952 to 8 September 2022 – totals 25,780 days, while Rupert Murdoch’s reign as News Ltd boss – from 4 October 1952 to 20 September 2023 – totals 25,918 days. So Rupert outlasted the Queen in his reign over modern media.
The Queen and the crocodile
Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Australia on 5 October 1982 for the opening of the Australian National Gallery. But Her Maj didn’t fly into Canberra and head directly to view Blue Poles. Instead, her RAAF jet flew 21 hours from London to Darwin. Among her first duties? Visiting the Darwin Museum to see the preserved carcass of Sweetheart, the city’s most notorious crocodile.
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Viva Republica ... not!
By 5 October 1993 Australia was ready for a Republic. Not least because the previous year had been the royal ‘Annus Horribilis’ of scandal. Prince Andrew had gotten divorced from Sarah Ferguson, soon to appear topless and toe-kissed in the tabloids. Prince Anne then divorced Mark Phillips. And to cap it off, Prince Charles and Princess Diana split, amid tabloid revelations of taped calls – dubbed ‘Squidgygate’ and ‘Camillagate’ to their respective lovers.
But even so a Republic wasn’t going to be a slam dunk. On 5 October 1993, after 4 months, the 9-member Republic Advisory Committee released its report on options for cutting the apron strings to Mother England and her Queen. The Sydney Morning Herald headline captured the chaos: ‘Blueprint for our republic - brawling flares as politicians ignore Turnbull’s appeal for calm’.
It was an all-in partisan bunfight from day one.
Malcolm Turnbull, chairman of the committee, that day told the National Press Club that Australia would definitely be a republic by the year 2100. But if it was to come sooner – by 2001 – then its supporters would have to fight hard. Supporters did work hard for the next 6 years. Spoiler alert: in the November 1999 referendum on the Republic, Australians voted resoundingly against the proposedc hanges to the Constitution. ‘No’ got nearly 55%. Of the states and territories, only the ACT voted ‘Yes’.