Madeline Linford and the Manchester Guardian

Today I joined several members of my family to travel to Manchester and the John Rylands library. My dad had discovered that my great aunt Madeline Linford was featured in an exhibition about the women who shaped Manchester:

My mum had arranged for us to meet an archivist who would give us access to all the papers referring to Madeline in the library. This meant that 3 generations of us met up at the library:

My great aunt Madeline was chosen because of her groundbreaking career at the Manchester Guardian. She joined the paper in 1913 and in 1922 became the first Editor of the Women’s Page. She started life in the Manchester Guardian not as journalist, but as an assistant in the display advertisement department after which time she became editor W.P. Crozier’s personal assistant. She remained the only woman on the editorial staff until Crozier’s daughter Mary joined in 1930. This video tells why she was a trail blazer for women in journalism:

Talented Tuesday: Geneabloggers Prompt

I've been neglecting the family history part of my blog lately but saw the Geneabloggers prompt today and feel inspired! There was also a conversation on Facebook this morning about musical instruments so I that set me thinking too and I can combine the two in this post.


Unfortunately I haven't currently got the scanned photographs from my families' Victorian photograph album to illustrate this post... One day I'll get round to getting it professionally done. Several of the photographs in the album show my great grandfather Albert Wallace Linford (1861-1913) with his flute. There are other people in the album with instruments so I can only assume that he was in an orchestra.  As my big brother played the flute himself for several years he has inherited the original one. I wonder if my nephew will ever decide to follow in the family tradition?


Albert's daughter Madeline (1895-1975) was a very talented journalist as well as a novellist. Her career blossomed when she reported from a post war Europe in 1919 having originally been a secretary. In 1922 she was asked to begin a Woman's Page in the Guardian newspaper. She talked about this with Mary Stott in 1963:


“…My briefing was lucid and firm,” she recalled. “The page must be readable, varied and aimed always at the intelligent woman… I saw her as an aloof, rigid and highly critical figure, a kind of Big Sister, vigilant for lapses of taste, dignity and literary English.”


This was a a whole new area and she ran it for 31 years a great achievement. She also found time to write some novels and a biography of Mary Wollenstencraft. One of her novels had a fabulous dust jacket which the V&A has a copy of on its web site as a fine example of 1920s art:

Have you got anyone in your family that had a great talent or was famous in their field?