Elsie K. Morton Dies

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31765, 23 August 1968, Page 6

Elsie K. Morton Dies

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, August 21. Miss Katherine Elizabeth (Elsie K.) Morton, one of New Zealand’s most widely known women journalists, has died after a long illness.

Miss Morton, who was born in Devonport and spent her early childhood in Papakura. began her journalistic career on the “New Zealand Herald,’ in 1913.

She served that newspaper for 23 years, the last 10 years as editor of the children’s page. “Elsie K.,” as almost everyone called her. made the most of her opportunity when World War I depleted staffs after 1914. She undertook al most every kind of reporting, and was possibly the first woman in New Zealand to do this successfully. At the end of the war she was firmly established, and vzas daily entrusted with major assignments not then regarded as woman’s work. One of her most important jobs was reporting of a Royal

Commission into the incidence of venereal diseases. Essentially a journalist of the old school, Miss Morton wrote informatively on an uncommonly wide range of subjects. In 1927 she accompanied the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Mary) on their tour of New Zealand.

In 1935 she received the Jubilee Medal, and in 1937 was in Britain for the coro nation of George VI. An inveterate tramper. Miss Morton wrote extensively about New Zealand’s alpine glories, and the bush tracks in South Westland and Fiordland.