history


Kath Grant looks at the life and times of Madeline Linford


A remarkable newspaperwoman


H


istorian Michael Herbert first came across Madeline Linford’s name when he was researching for


a history walk about radical women in Manchester. She was the first woman on the


editorial staff of the Manchester Guardian, joining in 1913 aged 18, and worked at the Cross Street office for 40 years, throughout some of the most turbulent times of the 20th century. Linford’s early journalism included


theatre, book and film reviews. She wrote numerous articles on a variety of topics. Most intriguingly, in 1919 and 1921, she reported from France, Austria and Poland on the Society of Friends’ relief work after the First World War. During the interwar years, she edited the Manchester Guardian’s first column for women and, early in the Second World War, wrote about how it was affecting women in Manchester. Later, she became a picture editor and, finally, editor of the back-page opinion column. Herbert says that, somehow, Linford found time to write short stories and five novels, as well as a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft.


When she died aged 80, The


Guardian obituary described her as ‘one of the most remarkable newspaperwomen of her time’. Herbert says: “The more I read of her


work, the more I was puzzled that this highly talented woman journalist, who could seemingly write on any subject, was so neglected.” He has done his best to make amends for this neglect by laboriously transcribing her lifetime’s work and publishing an anthology of her


journalism and writing. Linford’s work appeared under the byline M.A.L. When she arrived at the paper, it was as an assistant in the advertising department. In October 1913, Linford moved to the editorial office, working for news editor WP Crozier, who later became editor. Other women worked in the building but Linford was the sole female journalist. In one article, she


describes the Peter Street ‘picture- house’: “It is an uncomfortable place. If you choose the cheaper seats, you are led down interminable stairs… and you see badly when you get there. In the dearer seats, you dig your knees into the back of the person in front and the person behind digs his knees into you… Only the real connoisseur of the movies, the austere minded seeker after merit, goes there.” She also wrote a series of articles in 1919 on the development of cinema as both an industry and an art form. CP Scott was editor. The paper was


known for its progressive opinions on issues such as votes for women and Irish Home Rule and had an international reputation for its journalism. Linford was sent to Europe by CP Scott in 1919 to write about the relief work by the Society of Friends, for which the newspaper and its readers had raised money. She spent two months in France, Austria and Poland and sent back vivid reports of how people were struggling with poverty, disease and starvation. “This was a world away from the comforts of Manchester,” Herbert says.


While she was there, the


Bolsheviks and White Russians were still fighting in Poland. Typhus was rife; three members of the Friends’ mission died of it.


Madeline Linford with Manchester Guardian colleagues in 1921, the newspaper’s centenary


“Going to Warsaw, I was locked in a first-class compartment with a man for 11 hours. There was no heat or light on the train and it went dark very early. It never occurred to me to be nervous either for my virtue, which didn’t matter all that much, or the fact that I was carrying a good deal of money on me which would have been a fortune in Polish currency at the time.” When a second trip to Cologne, Berlin


“


and Warsaw was made, Scott insisted on Linford having a woman escort and insuring her for £2,000 against typhus. Her Mary Wollstonecraft biography


Going to Warsaw, I was locked in a train compartment with a man for 11 hours. There was no heat or light. It never occurred to me to be nervous


was published in 1924 and her novel Out of the Window was recently reissued by Persephone Books with an introduction by Herbert. Linford’s short stories were published in the Manchester Guardian and several magazines. Linford was the first president of the Manchester Women’s Press Group, set up in 1944. After she retired, she lived in the Lake District but continued to write for The Guardian.


‘M.A.L.’ The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford. An anthology compiled by Michael Herbert, 2024, Lulu.com


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