JOHN FAIRFAX
| First name | JOHN |
|---|---|
| Last name | FAIRFAX |
| Country of Origin | ENGLAND |
| Date of Birth | 10/24/1805 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1838 |
| Submitted by | JOHN FAIRFAX |
Story
John Fairfax was born in 1805, the son of William and Elizabeth Fairfax of Warwick, England. At the age of 12 John was apprenticed to a bookseller and printer at Warwick, and when he was 20 went to London where he worked as a compositor in a general printing office and on the Morning Chronicle. A year or two later he established himself at Leamington, as a printer, bookseller and stationer. There, on 31 July 1827 he married Sarah Reading, daughter of James and Sarah Reading. He became the printer of the Leamington Spa Courier, and in 1835 he purchased an interest in another paper The Leamington Chronicle and Warwickshire Reporter. In 1836 he published a letter criticising the conduct of a local solicitor who brought an action against him. Though judgment was given for the defendant the solicitor appealed. Judgment was again given for Fairfax but the costs of the actions were so heavy that he was compelled to go insolvent. He decided to make a fresh start in a new land, and in May 1838 sailed for Australia on the ‘Lady Fitzherbert’ with his wife and three children, his mother and a brother-in-law.
Fairfax worked as a compositor for some months, but early in 1839 was appointed librarian of the Australian Subscription Library, forerunner to the Public Library of NSW. He joined forces with Charles Kemp, a member of the staff of the Sydney Herald, to purchase the Herald for the sum of £10,000. The paper was bought on terms, friends helped the two men to find the deposit, and on 8 February 1841 they took control as proprietors. The paper was renamed ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’ in 1842 and when Kemp decided to retire John Fairfax together with his eldest son, Charles Fairfax, bought Kemp\’s interest in 1853. In the previous year John had visited England and seeking out his old creditors repaid every man in full with interest added.
Since then, succeeding generations of Fairfaxes controlled the destinies of The Sydney Morning Herald until John Fairfax Limited went into receivership in 1990. However the organisation survived and in 2007 John B Fairfax and his oldest son, Nicholas, became directors of Fairfax Media following a merger with Rural Press Limited, the company controlled by their family company Marinya Media, which became the largest shareholder of Fairfax (14 per cent).