Madeline Alberta Linford was by any measure a remarkable woman.
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| Madeline Alberta Linford, 1921 |
In the same year she was chosen to create to create a page "aimed at the intelligent woman", defined by C. P. Scott as discussing issues such as "domestic economy, labour-saving, dress, household prices, and the care of children".*
And she remained the only woman journalist on the Manchester Guardian till 1944.
During the war she was also night picture editor, combining it with voluntary war work.
She “wrote a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1924, and five novels: Broken Bridges (1923), The Roadside Fire (1924), A Home and Children (1926) Bread and Honey (1928) and Out of the Window (1930)”.*
To all of this she also championed other women writers.
I first came across Ms Linford when Tony Goulding wrote about her life for the blog back in 2023.**
It is a comprehensive account of her life and particularly her time in Chorlton on Claude Road and Wilbraham Road and is an excellent starting point.
My interest was reignited after a chance conversation with Cllr Mathew Bentham whose friend now lives in her old house in Chorltonville.
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| August 1917 |
Alas her stories on Poland, Germany and Austria have yet to turn up, but there were plenty of articles spanning her years as a critic reviewing plays, and films as well as those reporting on contemporary issues.
Reading them for the first time over a century since they were produced, they offer up a fascinating insight into Britain during the early and middle decades of the last century.
And there were some surprises, not least that in 1917 both here and in Hollywood films were being made in colour.
Her review of Annabel’s Romance in the August of 1917 at the Deansgate Picture House begins with that simple observation that “A coloured film is still rare” **, while five years later she playfully remarked that the colour effects in A Study in Scarlet made “Faces as expressionless as though a sponge had wiped the life out of them”.****
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| Deansgate Picture House, 1928 |
But for me it is her articles on hospitals, shopping and the impact of the war which bring the 1920s and 30 bouncing into life.
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| December 1922 |
She visited in late December when “the hospital is in party dress [with] its Christmas decorations which are simple and consist of silvered twigs latticed across windows with robins perching on them, trails of pink almond blossom, and bright ballons tugging at their strings.”*****
But this is 1922, in that time before the NHS when poverty is the main reason why the fifty-bed hospital is full and why “the fifty cots could be filled over and over again”.
“All of them are suffering in some way or another from malnutrition. They come from the most destitute homes in Manchester where their poor little bodies have been the victims of ignorance, poverty and in a few tragic cases, of actual neglect … where all the good things of life are short”.
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| Manchester Babies’ Hospital, 1962 |
The wards are full of them, lying with terrible apathy in their cots, their faces wizened and furrowed like those of the very aged, and their waxen fingers as helpless as broken ones. Anyone who since the war has visited the infant welfare centres of Berlin or Vienna will find the tragedies all over again in this Manchester hospital.”
And because rickets marches with poverty “the conservatory has been turned into a semi-open-air ward for rickets”.
Equally telling is the admission of just how much money is needed to maintain and advance the care. So, while “The Babies’ Hospital is full of plans for the future and a laundry is now being built and X-ray department is one of the great needs [with] it is hoped an extension to enable another twenty babies to have their shire of skill and kindness but for these schemes as well as the ordinary everyday running of the hospital money is badly needed”.
It is a powerful piece of reporting which comes with the style of an accomplished writer and so she begins by locating the hospital in a “big old house of the type of successful businessmen built for their families half a century ago. One can imagine it furnished in mahogany and rep with steel engravings of ‘Pilate’s Wife’s Dream hanging in the hall and camellias cherished in the conservatory”.
That same playful way of writing is evident in a series of articles she wrote in the run up to the first war time Christmas of 1939.
Set against the novelty and danger of going out in the blackout, and the surprise that the shops almost had a prewar feel about them the ever-present conflict is not far away and includes a delightful and humorous take on what the fashionable woman looks for in a bag to contain her gas mask.
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| July 1947 |
Written in in the summer of 1947 it reviews the group’s “choice of plays, performed in the Public Hall ranging from Shakespeare to Noel Coward and to farces which had caught the fancy of West End audiences” and focused on “The Letter” by W. Somerset Maugham.
It is a well balanced and I think affectionate report and offers up the names of some of the actors. These include Harry Littlewood, Gloria Foster, Arthur Spreckley, the producer, and James Lovell who “designed and painted the excellent sets” which might be another story.
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| One to read, 2024 |
Pictures; Portrait of Madeline from the Guardian’s photograph of its 1921 editorial staff researched by Tony Goulding, Manchester Babies’ Hospital in Burnage Lane, m15731, 1962 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Deansgate Picture House, from Kinematograph Year Book, 1928
Further reading; Outram, Quentin, The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, Society for the Study of Labour History January 3rd 2023, https://sslh.org.uk/2025/01/03/the-journalism-and-writing-of-madeline-alberta-linford/
Herbert Michael,[ed] “M.A.L” The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, self-published through Lulu.com and available Society for the Study of Labour History, https://sslh.org.uk/
* Madeline Alberta Linford, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Linford
**Madeline Alberta Linford .... another story from Tony Goulding, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/12/madeline-alberta-linford-another-story.html
***A Coloured film at Deansgate Picture House, Manchester Guardian, August 21st, 1917
****A Study in Scarlet, Manchester Guardian, February 24th 1922
*****A Hospital of Cots, The Sick Babies of Manchester, Manchester Guardian, December 29th, 1922
******Chorlton Theatre Group, Manchester Guardian, July 30th, 1947
