Stella Wolfe Murray

Stella Wolfe Murray (7 October 1886 – August 1935) was a British journalist and writer. In 1924 she became the first woman Lobby correspondent.^[1]

Stella Wolfe Murray
in 1920
Born	7 October 1886 India
Died	August 1935 Switzerland
Known for	Journalist, writer

Biography

Stella Wolfe Murray was born on 7 October 1886 at Madras (now Chennai), India.^[2] She was the daughter of Francis D'Arcy Osborne Wolfe-Murray (a judge in the Indian Civil Service) and Frances Henrietta Morgan of an old military family.^[3] Her uncle was Lt General James Wolfe-Murray.^[4] She was educated at the Eastbourne Ladies College. During the First World War she was a nurse at a French hospital, then worked for the Ministry of Munitions, the War Office and the Imperial War Museum before becoming a journalist.^[3]

Stella Wolfe Murray reported for the Daily Sketch,^[5] ran her own women's 'News and Views' column ^[6] that featured in the Leeds Mercury and also wrote 'Women's Topics' for the Sheffield Independent. Murray became Lobby correspondent for the Leeds Mercury in 1924. They announced her employment on Tuesday 2 December 1924, stating that “The Leeds Mercury has always taken a pride in stating fairly all points of view in public life”.^[7]

Murray was an enthusiastic air passenger, and the only press representative on Imperial Airways first flight to Egypt. She conceived of, cowrote and coedited Woman and Flying.^[8] Woman and Flying was written with aviator Lady Mary Heath who was the first person to fly from Cape Town to London.^[9] In April 1924 the International Commission for Air Navigation passed a regulation banning women from operating commercial aircraft. Lady Heath worked with Stella Wolfe Murray to challenge the resolution, which was detailed in their book.^[10] In the summer of 1926 the regulation was rescinded.^[11] Murray also wrote The Poetry of Flight: An Anthology ^[12] as well as other articles relating to flying. She was the only Press Correspondent on the first Imperial Airways flight to Egypt.^[3]

In her newspaper columns Murray covered topics from stove-top cooking, to the new Factories Act and equal pay.^[13] She specialised in serious news of women's professional and industrial activities,^[3] including articles on 'Sheffield's one policewoman'^[14] to 'Yorkshire's women engineers'.^[15] Murray reported on the reaction to MP Ellen Wilkinson's choice of a bright green dress for an early parliamentary appearance and reminded her readers that ‘it is the woman herself that matters rather than her covering’.^[16]

Stella Wolfe Murray was a member of the Women's Freedom League.^[1]

Family

She married newspaper editor Philip Francis Sulley on 3 January 1929 in London.^[2] She died in Vevey Switzerland after "a long illness"^[3]

Selected works

• Emily Forster, Stella Wolfe Murray, A.C. Marshall, N.W. Fraser, Lloyd's ABC of Careers for Girls (London: 1922)^[17]
• Stella Wolfe Murray, The Poetry of Flight: An Anthology (London: Heath Cranton Limited, 1925)
• Stella Wolfe Murray, 'London to Cairo by Air' in Airways "The Only Air Travel Magazine" (Harrison and Sons, September 1926 to August 1927)
• Lady Mary Heath and Stella Wolfe Murray, Woman and Flying (London: John Long 1929)^[18]

References

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Stella Wolfe Murray.

1. Lonsdale, Sarah (2020-10-27). Rebel women between the wars: Fearless writers and adventurers. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-5261-3712-8.
2. Ancestry Library Edition^{[verification needed]}
3. "Miss Stella Wolfe-Murray [obituary]". The Times. No. 47157. 31 August 1935. p. 12. Retrieved 2022-01-04 – via The Times Digital Archive.
4. "Family tree of Bernard Girma (bfgirma) - Geneanet". gw.geneanet.org. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
5. Lonsdale, S (2017). 'The Sheep and the Goats': Interwar Women Journalists, the Society of Women Journalists and the Woman Journalist in Edinburgh Companion to Women's Print Media in Interwar Britain (1918-1939). Edinburgh University Press. pp. 463–476. ISBN 9781474412537.
6. "Murray, Stella Wolfe, of 'Women's News & Views'". searcharchives.bl.uk. British Library. Retrieved 2021-12-31.
7. "Leeds Mercury". 2 December 1924. Retrieved 2022-01-04 – via British Newspaper Archive.
8. Millward, Liz (2007-12-18). Women in British Imperial Airspace: 1922-1937. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 978-0-7735-6051-2.
9. "Lady Mary Heath - Irish Aviator". Lora O'Brien - Irish Author & Guide. 2019-01-05. Retrieved 2022-01-01.
10. "LADY MARY HEATH / AVIATOR & ATHLETE —". www.herstory.ie. 7 October 2015. Retrieved 2021-12-28.
11. Feminist Sport Studies: Sharing Experiences Of Joy And Pain. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-8288-9.
12. "The Poetry of Flight: An Anthology Edited by Stella Wolfe Murray. [ Heath Cranton, 7/b. ]". The Aeronautical Journal. 29 (180): 650–651. 1925. doi:10.1017/S0368393100134716. ISSN 0368-3931.
13. "The 'golden age' of female journalism was won by the nameless". The Guardian. 2019-12-01. Retrieved 2021-12-31.
14. "Sheffield Independent". 9 November 1923. Retrieved 2022-01-05 – via British Newspaper Archive.
15. "Sheffield Daily Telegraph". Retrieved 2022-01-05 – via British Newspaper Archive.
16. Cowman, K. (2020). "A Matter of Public Interest: Press Coverage of the Outfits of Women MPs 1918–1930". Open Library of Humanities. 6 (2): 17. doi:10.16995/olh.583. S2CID 225156047.
17. Forster, Emily I. B.; Murray, Stella Wolfe; Marshall, A. C. (1922), Lloyd's ABC of careers for girls, retrieved 2021-12-29
18. Lady.), Sophie Catherine Eliott LYNN (afterwards HEATH (Sophie Catherine) (1929). Woman and Flying. By Lady Heath and Stella Wolfe Murray. Illustrated. John Long.