Josiah Elliott

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Sir Josiah Elliott (1900–1981), was an American-born Australian politician, who also wrote popular books and articles.

Elliott was born in New England of English parents. After attending private schools he attended Yale University where he studied what would today be called neo-classical economics, under Irving Fisher. He completed his PhD in 1930 shortly after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Over the next few years he made a substantial amount of money investing shrewdly on the stockmarket. He devoted much of his time to his two great passions - he wrote numerous popular articles on business and money-making and also became involved in the eugenics movement, joining the American Eugenics Society and running a successful State branch. Through his writing he became a close friend of H. L. Mencken and other members of the Saturday Night Club. As the 1930s progressed his writing focused increasingly on promoting right-wing policies tinged with racial and eugenic views and also became one of the early predictors of a major clash between the Left and Right in Europe.

In early 1939 he and his wife took out Australian citizenship and moved to Australia. His motive in making this move has long been debated and Elliott himself always refused to comment. Some speculate that financial considerations were the key, but the dominant theory is that he saw it as a "racial duty" to help create a large white population in Australasia. In part this theory is based on his writings, especially those in Eugenical News. He and his wife Mary had five children.

At the outbreak of war, Elliott joined the army, and was taken prisoner of war by the Japanese when Singapore fell in 1942 and was held in the camp at Changi.

At the war's end Elliott's future looked uncertain, but he unexpectedly won a by-election for Sir Robert Menzies' Liberal Party of Australia and briefly joined the Cabinet before retiring in 1958.

Shortly after his retirement from Australian politics, Elliott moved to England and settled in the same Essex village, near Chelmsford from which his parents had emigrated in the 1890s. From here he devoted the remainder of his life to charitable work, particularly in the arts. During his retirement he also wrote the highly-successful memoir Full Circle. Josiah Elliott was knighted in 1968.

He died suddenly of a heart attack in London in 1981.