Julius Elias, 1st Viscount Southwood

Who is Julius Elias, 1st Viscount Southwood?

Julius Salter Elias, 1st Viscount Southwood, was a British newspaper proprietor and Labour politician. He rose from humble origins to become head of Odhams Press, Britain's largest newspaper and printing combine.

Elias was born in Birmingham, the youngest of the seven children of David Elias, a Whitby a jet salesman. After moving to London where his father had set up a newspaper business, Elias began delivering newspapers in Hammersmith. He left school at the age of 13 to take up a job as a junior clerk at Odhams Bros, then a small printing firm. He worked his way up to become managing director and eventually chairman of the firm, which after a merger with John Bull in 1920 took the name Odhams Press Ltd. He was also managing director and chairman of the company that controlled the Illustrated London News. Elias was raised to the peerage as Baron Southwood, of Fernhurst in the County of Sussex, in 1937. In 1944 he was appointed Chief Whip of the Labour Party in the House of Lords, which he remained until the following year. In January 1946 he was made Viscount Southwood, of Fernhurst in the County of Sussex.

Lord Southwood married Alice Louise Collard, daughter of Charles Stone Collard, in 1906. They had no children. He died from a heart attack at his Highgate home in April 1946, aged 73. The titles died with him.