Mabel Chadband Wilson

It sounds like a scene straight out of Hollywood, but it happened at the courthouse in Marion in the early 1900s.

A young female reporter named Mabel Chadband found herself surrounded by angry Linn County supervisors.

It seems Chadband “had written a story criticizing the conditions in the county jail. The county supervisors objected, although that word isn’t quite strong enough. Next day when she went back to cover the courthouse, they mobbed her, pouring out their vehemence over her story,” Harriet Swain reported in a Nov. 19, 1939, Gazette story about Chadband’s career.

“She listened as long as she could, then it was time to go upstairs for the opening of court. She took a few running steps to the top, turned to the howling band of supervisors and announced, rather stately, ‘You may all go to hell.’ ”

Trailblazer

Chadband, born in Chicago in 1883, came to The Gazette in 1913, at age 30, after being the city editor at newspapers in Bloomington and Champaign, Ill.

As Swain wrote, “From 1913 to 1917, she wasn’t known as a news reporter. She was referred to as ‘the woman reporter,’ the first on The Gazette.”

Wilson, who first wrote for The Gazette under the byline Mabel Chadband before marrying Gazette city editor Josh Wilson in 1916, told Swain she was never insulted while doing her job, “but I was a curiosity, and I don’t wonder, running around in sweeping skirts.”

Being a woman definitely had an effect on how she could do her job.

Swain reported that after Chadband charmed a particularly gruff judge, he “hid her behind his desk when a trial came up that was all right for her to hear but a little too stiff for others to know a woman was sitting in on.”

School nurses

Chadband didn’t only cover the courts, however. Swain noted her early efforts included “stories of overnight visits in the old city jail, interviews with stage celebrities, cowgirls and racecar drivers, stunt stories seldom attempted by newspaper women.”

She also penned a column called Wayside Notes in which she shared all manner of tidbits.

Take, for instance, the Wayside Notes of Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1914.

Between a paragraph about a Des Moines teacher who apparently poisoned sparrows and mice to demonstrate the dangers of cigarettes and another about a town in Illinois that put “tramps” to work before giving them food, was a section titled “The School Nurse.”

“Keokuk has taken a step forward in that it has employed a school nurse,” she wrote. “Reports from cities who have hired such an officer show that the investment has always been a profitable one. If a school nurse can make a bright boy where before he was a dullard, that alone is worth the salary she receives.

“The nurse who has quietly called a child before her for examination and found that child suffering from adenoids and diseased tonsils, and has had these defects corrected, is certainly a valuable asset to any community. By the correction of such defects the child is no longer dull and listless, but is suddenly transformed into a good student.

“Many an epidemic of diphtheria, scarlet fever and other contagious diseases has been nipped in the bud because of the watchfulness of the school nurse.”

She went on to explain the societal stakes of having a school nurse examine students:

“After the examination of a child, she reports her findings to the parents and advises as to what form of medical treatment should be undertaken. Many a child has been found suffering from troubles about which the parents were totally ignorant.

“Had not the school nurse made this discovery, the boy or girl might have gone through life seriously handicapped when a slight operation in many instances would have wrought a miracle and saved the child to a life of usefulness. The school nurse is a godsend in any community.”

The Gazette once did a story about newsroom romances, including Mabel and Josh Wilson’s meeting and marriage.

The couple, who had a daughter in 1918, moved around the country as Josh Wilson pursued his newspaper career and Mabel raised their daughter. He wrote a piece about The Gazette’s history in 1933, recalling his wife’s impact, saying she was still known “as ‘Bright Eyes’ by newspaper men and women from coast to coast.”

Josh Wilson died in 1937, and Mabel Wilson moved back to Cedar Rapids in 1939 to live with her sister. She died at age 90 in 1973 in Kansas City, Mo., where her daughter lived. She and her husband are buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Cedar Rapids.

We would like to thank Bonnie Dodge, a volunteer at The History Center and the Genealogical Society of Linn County, who discovered materials about Mabel Chadband Wilson and shared them with us, and Tara Templeman of The History Center, who also helped with our research.

Jessica Cline is a Leadership & Character Scholar at Wake Forest University. Her dad, Rob Cline, is not a scholar of any kind. They write this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: HistoricalClines@gmail.com