Julius Elias, 1st Viscount Southwood
Julius Salter Elias, 1st Viscount Southwood, was a British newspaper proprietor, Labour politician and hereditary peer. He rose from humble origins to become head of Odhams Press, Britain's largest newspaper and printing combine.
Early life and education
Elias was born in Birmingham, the youngest of the seven children of David Elias, a manufacturer and salesman of jet buttons and brooches whose initial success in the 1860s diminished as fashions changed.The family moved to London where his father set up as a newsagent and confectioner at 81 The Grove, Hammersmith. Elias rose at 6 a.m. each morning to deliver newspapers in Hammersmith before going to school.
Elias left school at the age of 13. His first job was doing menial tasks for a small pay of about five shillings per week. After a year, he became an office boy with Carlyle Press in Charterhouse Square, earning around six shillings per week.
In 1984 he began to work as an office-boy at Odhams Bros, then a small printing firm in Hart Street employing about twenty people. When his son began work at Odhams, David Elias returned to the jet business, reviving his links with Whitby and importing large quantities of jet buttons for London dressmakers. Although the family were not wealthy, they were able to live comfortably at Lonsdale Square at Barnsbury, Islington.
Career
Elias 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.