Elizabeth L. Banks (1872–1938)

Elizabeth L. Banks was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the daughter of Sarah Ann (Brister) and John Banks. She was raised as a young child by her maternal aunt Elizabeth Brister and uncle Joseph Peck on a farm north of Madison, Wisconsin. She attended Milwaukee Downer Female Seminary College, then became a typewriter girl in a grocery store. She went on to work on the "society pages" at newspapers in Baltimore, Maryland, and St. Paul, Minnesota. After a stint as a secretary at the American consulate in Peru, she went to London to seek her fortune. There she created an international sensation in what was then known as stunt journalism: going undercover for investigative stories, following the lead of the pioneering Nellie Bly. She chose traditional working-class occupations such as housemaid, street sweeper, and Covent Garden flower girl, and later posed as an heiress, writing about her experiences for publications such as The Daily News, Punch, St James' Gazette, London Illustrated, and Referee. She wrote under several pseudonyms, including Mary Mortimer Maxwell and Enid, in her long and complex writing career. She championed women's right to vote and denounced prison conditions for jailed suffragists in her groundbreaking body work in the field of feminist journalism. Her circle of friends and neighbors included George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, and Henrietta Marston. After many years in London, she made a trip back to the USA and published an autobiographical work, The Remaking of an American. Her other books included Campaigns of Curiosity: The Journalistic Adventures of an American Girl in Late Victorian London, and Newspaper Girl.