Times would be sending a wreath to the naval hero’s plinth – and, as her subsequent leader complained bitterly, the sneaky Observer nicked the idea and sent one first. Women were not allowed into the parliamentary press gallery or the gossipy London clubs; luckily for her and for the readers, both she and her husband boasted a wide range of cosmopolitan contacts. For Frederick, going to The Observer’s office
was becoming impossible, thanks to the tuberculosis that was soon to kill him. No longer were they a his-and-hers newspaper couple; she took over an increasing amount of his Observer workload until she was editing both papers at the same time. Occasionally, she would float an idea in the Sunday Times and, if it didn’t sink, winch it aboard The Observer’s pages later. Meanwhile, she was nursing her very sick husband. As his life drew to an end, so did her careful editorship of both papers. She stopped her interview slot and began filling her leader space with poems, sometimes putting the same verses in both papers. Frederick died in late December 1901 aged 43 and Rachel’s career in journalism ground to a
unattractive figure’ in its obituary. The newspaper where she had started her groundbreaking career referred to her briefly as its ‘one-time proprietrix’, which is a word you do not see much in the Observer these days or, indeed, anywhere. In the year after the trailblazing Rachel
halt in September 1902; both papers were sold, separately.
She succumbed to the kind of pathological
grief that had driven Queen Victoria out of public life. The legal official known as the master in lunacy put her on his list of people of unsound mind and she was handed over to the care of her brother, who had not seen her for 15 years. He set her up in a house in Tunbridge Wells, where she died 25 years later at the age of 69. The Sunday Times referred to her as ‘a not
Beer hung up her editorial fountain pen, Mary Howarth, woman’s editor of the Mail, became the first woman to edit a national daily when she was appointed launch editor of the Mirror, the paper “for gentlewomen by gentlewomen”. She returned to the Mail after a week, by which time the circulation of the newborn Mirror, which kicked off at over a quarter of a million copies, had fallen by nearly two-thirds. “Women can’t write and don’t want to read,” declared the proprietor of both papers, Alfred Harmsworth (later rebranded Viscount Northcliffe). To which we can today retort to his ghost: Oh no? You’ll be saying they can’t edit next, my lord.
*For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry comes from the longer poem Rejoice in the Lamb
theJournalist | 13
Looking back to:
1894
ARCHIVE FARMS INC / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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