“Girl Reporter”: Elizabeth L. Banks and the “Stunt” Genre

Abstract

This study sheds new light on the contribution of stunt girls to nineteenth- and twentieth-century journalism by examining the career of one such reporter, Elizabeth L. Banks. Contemporary critics and powerful women journalists considered “stunt girls,” like Banks, unethical nuisances who “faked” news and trolled the slums for working-class exploitation stories. These critics believed “stunt girls” would have short careers, produce a predictable arc of stories, and constitute a hurdle for legitimate news women, who were trying to consolidate their recent gains in news work. Banks, however, did not fit that pattern. Her career was long and complex and not limited to covering stunts.

Notes

A primitive content analysis performed by a former New York World editor found Sunday editions of New York's Tribune, World, Times, and Sun had grown between 1881 and 1893. The World's Sunday edition, in particular, had exploded, growing from eight pages to forty-four, and the new space, for the most part, was filled with gossip, scandals, and crimes and criminals. See John Gilmer Speed, “Do Newspapers Now Give the News,” Forum, August 1898, 705–711.

W. Joseph Campbell, The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (New York: Routledge, 2006).

Richard Watson Gilder, “The Newspaper, the Magazine, and the Public,” Century Magazine, February 4, 1899, 321.

“A Point in Journalism,” Nation, March 23, 1893, 209.

“A Newspaper Myth,” Dial: A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information, October 16, 1895, 2.

Mark Bernhardt, “The Selling of Sex, Sleaze, Scuttlebutt, and Other Shocking Sensations: The Evolution of New Journalism in San Francisco, 1887–1900,” American Journalism 28, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 111–142.

Patricia Bradley, Women and the Press: The Struggle for Equality (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), 117.

Jessie M. Wood, “The Newspaper Woman,” Life, May 7, 1896, 372.

Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider (1936; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1974), 14.

Bradley, Women and the Press, 117; Jean Marie Lutes, Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 13–14; Fred Fedler, Lessons from the Past: Journalists Lives and Works, 1850–1950 (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000), 238–239.

Alice Fahs, Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of Modern Public Space (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2011); Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

“The Great Sunday Paper,” Life, December 17, 1896, 504.

Matthew Goodman, Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race around the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 2013).

It is important to note that when late nineteenth-century journalists refer to ethics, they as often as not mean personal, not professional ethics.

Lutes, Front-Page Girls.

Barbara Onslow, “New World, New Woman, New Journalism: Elizabeth Banks, Transatlantic Stunt Woman in London,” Media History 7, no. 1 (2001): 7–15.

Koven, Slumming.

Bradley, Women and the Press; Jane S. Gabin, American Women in Gilded Age London: Expatriates Rediscovered (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006).

Linda Steiner, “Gender at Work: Early Accounts by Women Journalists,” Journalism History 23, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 2–12. Banks wrote three work autobiographies during her career: Campaigns of Curiosity: Journalistic Adventures of an American Girl in London, Autobiography of a “Newspaper Girl,” and Remaking of an American.

Most newspaper and magazine articles were located by using keyword searches of ProQuest's Historical Newspapers, British Periodicals, American Periodicals (1740–1900), Periodical Archive, and the C19: Nineteenth Century Index databases. Keywords, not including all variations, used were “stunt girl,” “stunts,” “girl reporter,” “newspaper girl,” “Elizabeth L. Banks,” “Elizabeth Banks,” and the titles of her books. The author also used the same keywords to search a commercial database of small and midsize newspapers.

Salaried or full-time women reporters and editors probably more than doubled to about six hundred positions between 1880 and 1890. Those totals, however, do not account for the hundreds of women paid on space or as freelancers. See Karen Roggenkamp, “Sympathy and Sensation: Elizabeth Jordan, Lizzie Borden, and the Female Reporter in the Late Nineteenth Century,” American Literary Realism 40, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 32–51; Goodman, Eighty Days. Relevant census data for 1880, 1890, and 1900 are somewhat unreliable. See Randall S. Sumpter, “Learning the ‘Outsider’ Profession: Serial Advice Columns in The Journalist,” American Journalism 27, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 7–26.

Elizabeth G. Jordan, “The Newspaper Woman's Story [Journalist Series],” Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, March 1893, 340.

Rheta Childe Dorr, A Woman of Fifty (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1924), 98.

Elizabeth G. Jordan, “What It Means to Be a Newspaper Woman,” Ladies Home Journal, January 1899, 8.

Martha L. Rayne, What Can a Woman Do? Her Position in the Business and Literary World (1893; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1974), 42.

Ida A. Tarbell, “Women in Journalism,” Chautauquan: A Weekly News Magazine, April 1887, 393.

“Women in Newspaper Work,” New York Times, September 6, 1894, 9.

Dorr, A Woman of Fifty, 75.

Elizabeth Jordan, Three Rousing Cheers (New York: D. Appleton–Century, 1938), 23.

Haryot Holt Cahoon, “Women in Gutter Journalism,” Arena, March 1897, 568.

One chapter of Banks's book is titled “When I Found Myself a ‘Heroine.’” See Elizabeth L. Banks, Autobiography of a “Newspaper Girl” (London: Methuen, 1902), 88–103. All references to Banks's autobiography in this study are to the Methuen & Co. edition.

“An American Girl Abroad,” Current Literature, March 1894, 214.

Maude Andrews, “Elizabeth Banks's Success. An American Girl's Methods for Making Her Way in English Journalism,” Kansas City Star, November 29, 1896, 10.

Banks resigned from Referee in 1916, worked as a writer on war relief projects, published a book on educational reform in 1924, and finished another autobiographical work, Remaking of an American, in 1928. She died in 1938. This chronology is based on the work of Jane S. Gabin. See Jane S. Gabin, introduction to Remaking of an American, by Elizabeth Banks (1928; repr., Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000). Gabin notes that Banks used different birth years at different times.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “American Free Park Libraries,” Quiver: An Illustrated Magazine for Sunday and General Reading, January 1900, 630–635.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “A Republic of Boys and Girls: An American Sunday-School Worker's Successful Experiment,” Quiver: An Illustrated Magazine for Sunday and General Reading, January 1900, 106.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “A Novel Christmas Banquet,” Quiver: An Illustrated Magazine for Sunday and General Reading, January 1903, 156–159.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “For God's Defenceless Ones. A Talk about the Societies for the Protection of Animals,” Quiver: An Illustrated Magazine for Sunday and General Reading, January 1901, 594–601.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “An American Boy-Editor and His ‘Barefoot Mission,’” Quiver: An Illustrated Magazine for Sunday and General Reading, January 1899, 267–273.

The editors of the English Illustrated Magazine apparently hoped to forge a stronger connection between the stories Banks wrote for that periodical and “slum” reporting. Her stories for that publication began with the standing headline “How the Other Half Lives,” surely an attempt to invoke the same response from English readers that Jacob A. Riis's How the Other Half Lives had on Americans when published in 1890.

Banks invested a relatively modest amount of time in researching some of her stories. In the case of the English Illustrated Magazine, what she called her “amateur detective” work took only a single afternoon for a story about street-crossing sweepers and a day for her work with London's flower girls.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “Queer London Advertisements,” Washington Post, March 7, 1897, 20.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “How the Other Half Lives: The Crossing-Sweeper,” English Illustrated Magazine, May 1894, 850.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “How the Other Half Lives: Dressmakers Apprentice,” English Illustrated Magazine, September 1895, 542.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “How the Other Half Lives: The Flower Girls,” English Illustrated Magazine, June 1894, 925–931.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “‘Boxing Day’ in England,” Washington Post, December 25, 1896, 6.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “How the Coal Strike Affected the English,” Washington Post, November 7, 1902, 10.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “Women and the Tariff. Effect of the Dingley Bill on Easter Bonnets,” Washington Post, April 19, 1897, 4.

Banks, Autobiography, 190.

Banks, Autobiography, 289.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “Mincemeat Side Line,” Washington Post, April 19, 1903, E12.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “The Evolution of a Conscience,” Temple Bar—A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, July 1, 1903, 685–692.

In general correspondence, most people used five dollars to one English pound.

Elizabeth L. Banks to W. Morris Colles, December 10, 1901, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa. Banks instructed her executors to destroy her professional and private papers, but these letters apparently were kept by Colles or another correspondent. The University of Tulsa purchased the papers in 1991 from the William Reese Co.

Carolyn Kitch, Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

Gabin, American Women in Gilded Age London, 147.

Banks to Colles, December 11, 1901, McFarlin Library.

James G. Hepburn, The Author's Empty Purse and the Rise of the Literary Agent (London: Oxford University Press, 1968); Robert A. Colby, “Tale Bearing in the 1890s: The Author and Fiction Syndication,” Victorian Periodicals Review 18, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 2–16.

Banks, Autobiography, 207.

Ibid., 206.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “‘Yellow’ Journalism in Best British Papers,” Washington Post, March 8, 1903, 16.

Special Correspondence, “Pet of London's Smart Set,” Detroit Free Press, March 29, 1903, D5.

Elizabeth L. Banks, “American ‘Yellow Journalism,’” The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, August 1898, 330.

Ibid., 332.

Ibid., 339.

Reviews discussed here appeared in US and British newspapers and magazines between September 1902 and March 1903. Sixteen of the eighteen reviews were favorable.

“A Bright American Newspaper Woman Now Living in London,” Salt Lake City (UT) Deseret Evening News, November 8, 1902, 18; “A Bright American Newspaper Woman Now Living in London,” Lowell (MA) Sun, November 10, 1902, 8.

“Elizabeth L. Banks,” St. Paul (MN) Globe and Evening News, October 9, 1902, 6.

“Among the New Books,” Oshkosh (WI) Daily Northwestern, October 4, 1902, 8.

Special Correspondence, “Pet of London's Smart Set,” D5.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

“Many Ups and Downs. ‘Autobiography of a News Paper Girl,’” Washington Post, November 9, 1902, 27.

“The Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl,” New York Herald, November 15, 1902, 12.

“The Woman Journalist (Miss Elizabeth L. Banks),” Academy and Literature, September 27, 1902, 309.

Ibid., 310.

William L. Alden, “London Letter,” New York Times Saturday Review of Books, October 18, 1902, 6.

Ibid.

“The Autobiography of a ‘Newspaper Girl,’” Bookman, November 1902, 70.

Jordan, “What It Means,” 8.

Goodman, Eighty Days; Brooke Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (New York: Times Books, 1994); Lutes, Front-Page Girls.

Lutes lists several examples. See Front Page Girls, 172.

Banks, Autobiography, 93.

Ibid., 311.