Mrs E Crawford

Emily Crawford was a pioneering female journalist and her Times 1916 obituary described her as, “one of the best known foreign correspondents of the 2^nd half of the last century and a woman of exceptionally brilliant intelligence”.

Early Life

Emily was born at Corboy, co. Longford, Ireland and was one of four daughters and seven sons of Andrew Johnstone (1798–1863) and his wife, Grace-Anne Martin (d. 1883). She was educated at home, mainly by her mother who taught her to read and  by the age of eight she was reading a Dictionary of the Lives of Illustrious Women. She continued her love of reading as a child devouring Sir Walter Scott's poetry and novels, as well as Shakespeare and biographies of European kings. 

When her father died  in 1863 her mother Grace-Anne moved with and her two daughters to Paris.

In Paris Emily remedied her lack of formal education by attending lectures at the Sorbonne and studying painting. Her initiation into journalism was prompted by another Emily, the sister of Dr Elizabeth Blackwell .  Her friend encouraged  her to write a Paris letter for a San Francisco newspaper, and the London Morning Star.

Emily Johnstone actually had four American newspapermen among her relatives and one, Melville E. Stone, who founded the Chicago Daily News, later employed her.  If she had not been a woman her choice of profession might not have seemed unusual

Career

During her 50 year career Emily chronicled public events. Her Letters and telegrams were published in the Daily News, New York Tribune and Truth. She was Paris correspondent of the Daily News for 22 yrs from 1885-1907, after assisting her husband as joint correspondent 1851-1885. She was also a correspondent for the Weekly Dispatch, the Calcutta Englishman, and the Chicago Daily News, as well as a contributor to the Contemporary Review, Macmillan's, and the New York Century. Her contributions reflected her wide reading, on a daily basis, on politics and literature, of more than a score of newspapers. ‘Observe, reflect, and be genuine’ (Young Woman, 184) was her journalistic motto.

Emily Crawford's Carte de Visite

French politician Clemenceau, said she was ‘a ripper. Most men [journalists] in tackling questions look merely at their frontage, [but she] gets behind, beneath, inside and through and through. I have never seen anyone like her’ (R. Crawford, 61).

She achieved many important things in her career but probably the most notable was bravely making her way at night alone through the barricades into the Paris Commune into a Communist meeting end interviewing leaders.

Personal Life

In 1864 Emily married George Morland Crawford (1812–1885), whose friendship with William Makepeace Thackeray had earned him the post as assistant to the Paris correspondent of the Daily News in 1850. During her childhood Emily had become deeply conscious of her mother's legal inferiority to her father, so in her marriage contract Emily Crawford stipulated that if any serious disagreement should arise, both parties were free to leave and lead separate lives. Yet this never occurred in their twenty-one years of happy marriage, which produced three sons and a daughter.

She only ended up being buried in Arnos Vale Cemetery by chance as she had not lived in Bristol very long and was most associated with Paris. Sadly by1915 she was confined to a wheelchair so because of the impending war, her son decided to bring her to Bristol. 

Emily Crawford died at the age of 84 in Clifton, Bristol on 30^th December 1915 . Her grave is unmarked. It is not known why.