In 1817, John Fairfax was apprenticed to William Perry, a bookseller and printer in Warwick, and in 1825 went to London where he worked as a compositor in a general printing office and on the Morning Chronicle.

There was sympathy for him and his friends offered assistance but he decided to make a fresh start in a new land, and in May 1838, sailed for the colony of New South Wales in the Lady Fitzherbert with his wife and three children, his mother and a brother-in-law.

[1][2] 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.

Fairfax and Kemp worked in harmony for 12 years and firmly established the paper as the leading Australian newspaper of the day.

It was given the fuller title of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1842, and in spite of a period of depression Fairfax suffered, both partners, by 1853, were in prosperous positions.

In the previous year, his father had visited England and seeking out his old creditors repaid every man in full with interest added.

The Herald was moved to its present site in 1856, and at that date claimed to have the largest circulation in the "colonial empire".

Fairfax was appointed a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1874,[4] but never took an active part in politics.

[2] Of his children, his second son, Sir James Reading Fairfax (1834–1919), entered his father's office in 1852 and was admitted as a partner in 1856.

Like his father, Fairfax was a religious man, and for a long period was president of the YMCA as well as dedicated to helping other social services of the community.

[5] His son Captain J. Griffyth Fairfax, born in 1886, was a member of the House of Commons for some years, and has published several volumes of verse of which a list will be found in E. Morris Miller's Australian Literature.