Elisabeth Murdoch (senior)
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Dame Elisabeth Murdoch AC, DBE (born February 8, 1909), philanthropist, is the widow of Australian newspaper publisher Sir Keith Murdoch and the mother of international media magnate Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch was born Elisabeth Joy Greene in Melbourne, Australia to an Irish Protestant father and an upper-class English mother. She was educated at St Catherine's School in Melbourne and at Clyde School. She married Keith Murdoch, 22 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 her own right.
Murdoch's parents were Rupert Greene, a Melbourne merchant, and Marie Grace de Lancey Forth of Warrnambool, Victoria. Apart from Rupert, her children are Janet Calvert-Jones, Anne Kantor and Helen Handbury (1929-2004). She has a large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and as of 2004 at least one great-great-grandchild. (In a 2003 interview she said she had 64 descendants.) 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.
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.
Murdoch is a life-governor of the Royal Women's Hospital. She is Patron of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. 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."
[edit] 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.
In her late nineties Murdoch 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.
[edit] References
