The
Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) wrote that Borthwick considered her main principles to be "loyalty to the crown, to the church, and to every cause which was honourable and right".
and was considered refined and aristocratic under her ownership. In 2014 Harry Defries wrote that "The Morning Post
represented the extreme right of Conservatism and its hostility towards Jews was extreme". The paper was described in The Journal of British Studies'' as "the most important right-wing newspaper of the day". Bathurst also felt women were not qualified to become voters, and was broadly anti-feminist. She supported and was a member of the
National Service League.
Editorship of Fabian Ware (19051911) Her father, Lord Glenesk, was the owner of
The Morning Post. Glenesk replaced his father,
Peter Borthwick, as editor of the paper in 1852, and he purchased it in 1876. Under his ownership, the paper gradually shifted to advocate
protectionist policies and supported
Lord Palmerston. and by some papers that she was the only woman in the world to own a major newspaper. She stayed informed about important matters of the paper and generally supported Gwynne. In May 1914
Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, the owner of
The Times, reduced the price of his newspapers to one penny, beginning a 'newspaper war' with
The Morning Post, The Telegraph, and
The Standard, which all published at that price. It was thought that
The Morning Post had the weakest hold on circulation, and would be targeted by Lord Northcliffe. He wrote that the
Post was "a paper which has the unique distinction of voicing the views of a very gifted lady". The war began with advertisements published in the papers. In 1920, she founded the British League of Help for the Devastated Areas of France and Belgium. In July 1920,
The Morning Post published
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a
fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a
Jewish plan for global domination, with no comments. H. A. Gwynne had sent the document to Lady Bathurst before publication, and she had suggested collaborating with
The Times in publishing them. However, Wilson suggests that Gwynne had deceived Lady Bathurst over the document's authenticity. In a 1922 article,
The Outlook called her "the world's greatest woman newspaper owner". Lord Northcliffe called her "the most powerful woman in England, without exception other than royalty". In 1922,
Lord Midleton was offended by a story he read in the newspaper. He accosted Lady Bathurst, and she refused to apologise. Midleton told her that if her husband had been the owner of the paper, he would have "called him out and shot him." The disagreement soon came up in the
House of Lords, where the
Lord Chancellor,
Lord Birkenhead, sided against Bathurst. When
David Lloyd George fell from power in late 1922, Hayden Church for the
McClure Newspaper Syndicate wrote that "with the exception of
Andrew Bonar Law himself, and perhaps not even excepting the present Prime Minister, no single individual played a greater part in precipitating the crisis that drove David Lloyd George from office than did Lady Bathurst through her famous journal, the 'Morning Post'". She was also credited with helping decrease the power of
Arthur Balfour through creating a 'Balfour Must Go' movement.
Sale of paper Since the end of the war, the paper had not been financially performing as well as Lady Bathurst had hoped. Attempts at increasing its profitsand therefore her own incomewere unsuccessful. After August 1922, the paper's finances were continually
overdrawn, and Lady Bathurst herself was in increasingly poor financial condition. Coupled with a dramatic fall in circulation, in December 1922 she decided to sell the paper, assigning her son
Allen Bathurst, Lord Apsley, to handle the negotiations. Negotiations with
Rupert E. Beckett of
The Yorkshire Post began in 1923, but were unsuccessful. On 7 April 1924 the paper was sold to
Alan Percy, 8th Duke of Northumberland, and a consortium of prominent Conservatives for £500,000 (£ in ). == Later life and death ==