2013/04/01 by Genevieve G. McBride, Stephen R. Byers · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis
paper · doi:10.5406/jillistathistsoc.106.1.0091
openalex publication_date 2013/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
discovery has been made as why I wear a confessed lone Quinby readers of the Chicago Evening Post, where her male colleagues the newsroom had quite figured the foibles of the first newswoman their midst the 1920s. Famed as the Posfs reporter, although she was her thirties, Quinby wrote that the men never sure about my They also were baffled by her habit of never removing her hat, whether at her desk the newsroom or out assignment the city's streets. As her unmarcelled bob customarily was crowned with a 5 turban, she wrote, the men didn't know whether my bangs were sewed my hat or annexed my scalp. Quinb/s behaviors so bemused her editor that he sent her out a stunt for free psychoanalysis offered by faculty alienists at nearby Northwestern University. Typically, Quinby took the assignment good humor, turning a light-hearted, self-deprecating story that won her one of more than a thousand bylines earned by a phenomenon of the era: a woman journalist the front page the Jazz Age Chicago.1Typically, too, Quinby had persevered when the psychology professor initially had rejected her request. He looked at me kindly but said they were only taking subjects who had something wrong with them, she wrote, such as children who misbehave school or persons sent by the police department for disorderly conduct. The Post photographer helpfully protested the professor behalf of men the newsroom, stating that you'd better take her, as 'there's something radically wrong with her.' The readily agreed, offering that two trappings of her job-her trademark hats and her desk's placement the newsroom-had become totems. got a lot more nerve when I've got a hat on encounters with people I interview...from those who treat me sodas those who try throw me out the door. I always have a she wrote. And upsets me terribly have my desk moved, she admitted, as its place the newsroom was where she had made her most important decisions amid constant deadlines competition among the city's press for headlines and for front-page bylines.2The professor, apparently intrigued by a reporter well-known for covering the girl-crime beat of murders and other mayhem Chicago the 1920s, agreed give a glimpse into her psyche. She he regaled her readers with his assessment of her attachment her ever-present headwear, writing that subconsciously, I have made myself believe that a hat also helped her reach big decisions, especially in desperate situations. Indeed, compared physical risks of stunts and stories that sent women reporters into the worst of city streets, an assignment that took her a campus and risked only a look into her mind may have been a relief. She shared her wariness, however, that her sources and others now would be mean enough take advantage of this discovery. The newsroom also now would know of the significance that she placed upon the placement of her desk. 'You don't like have your desk moved, the alienist advised, as it satisfies your ego as the only little girl reporter among men the news side, not with distaff staff off the side with women's pages. Owing her unusual place the press, the professor recommended participation his study to promote social adjustment. The reporter retreated, however, upon realizing that participation required filling out a form that would reveal her age. Only after her retirement, six decades later-in her mid-nineties-and her death at the age of a hundred years, would her co-workers discover that she had been a decade older than she had claimed.3By then, despite her fame the 1920s, Quinby's remarkable career was long forgotten. She rarely receives mention scholarship the history of the Chicago press, and only mischaracterize her as solely a sob sister, a reporter the girl-crime beat covering sordid lives of other women also better forgotten the city's crime-ridden streets and Cook County jail cells. …