Ruth Neely Paved the Way for Cincinnati’s Women Journalists

The daredevil adventures of the Queen City’s no-nonsense female journalist Ruth Neely.
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Ruth Neely France as she was portrayed in her monumental 1939 work, “Women of Ohio: A Record of Their Achievements in The History of The State.”

From Wikimedia Commons

When Ruth Neely France died in 1956, Cincinnati’s ink-stained wretches tumbled all over themselves to effusively memorialize Neely’s no-nonsense style and outrageous adventures in the quest for a front-page headline. Some of the anecdotes were actually true. A few would have brought a smile to Neely’s face. In her day, she was not above a dash of hyperbole to keep her readers entranced.

Did she really climb to the top of the Suspension Bridge? Pilot a dirigible? Slide down a pocket fire escape from the tallest building in town? Yes, Ruth Neely did all this and more.

The daughter of an attorney, Neely was born in Kentucky around 1875, received an unusually thorough education for a woman at that time, and taught in the Covington schools for several years. One day, she walked into the offices of the old Cincinnati Commercial Tribune and talked herself into an unpaid quasi-internship ferreting out bits of neighborhood news. Within a few months, the editor offered her a full-time position.

Neely was not the first woman hired by Cincinnati newspapers. A bevy of mostly unsigned scribes had compiled the society columns for decades prior and the Commercial Tribune’s competitor, the Cincinnati Post, already had a powerhouse “girl reporter” in Jessie M. Partlon. Neely’s influence, however, was unmatched and she was a force to be reckoned with for more than half a century.

As Miss Partlon discovered at the Post, newspapers considered women suitable for only two assignments—social tidbits or stunts. Miss Neely (she employed her birth name throughout her career even after marrying traveling salesman William France in 1912) dove into the latter role, quickly gaining a reputation as a dauntless daredevil.

Cincinnati was enthralled by a 1909 air show out at the Latonia racetrack. Glenn Curtiss was there, buzzing the grandstands while demonstrating maneuvers. So was Cromwell Dixon, a 17-year-old aeronaut with his motor-powered dirigible. All of the other aircraft were one-seater biplanes of various makes, requiring a great deal of skill and mechanical aptitude to fly. Cromwell Dixon’s dirigible was little more than a floating rowboat with a bamboo seat. Neely hopped aboard and drifted upward and out over a lake. She wrote:

“Not more than a decade ago I skated on the same lake. If, at that time, I had glanced upward and said to my companion, ‘Look, there goes a woman in an airship,’ I am sure he would have thought me mad. Yet it is but 10 years.”

Ruth Neely talked 17-year-old dirigible designer Cromwell Dixon into allowing her to pilot his aircraft over the Latonia Racetrack in 1909

From Cincinnati Post 13 November 1909 Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand

Neely’s stunts gained her fame but exasperated her family and friends. She was undercover, investigating conditions in the women’s wing of the Cincinnati Workhouse, when a delegation from the Woman’s City Club arrived for a tour. According to the Cincinnati Post [9 September 1999]:

“The visitors were pleased to find the inmates in good condition and spirits—particularly one in a freshly laundered uniform ‘smiling smugly’ at them. When the club women realized who she was, they stared at each other in horrified consternation until one blurted out: ‘Mrs. Ross, it’s your sister! It’s Ruth!’ Mrs. Ross is said to have replied: ‘Good heavens! What on earth has she done now?’ ” Among Neely’s other feats, she was the first woman in America to fly in an Army airplane to promote an enlistment drive. She climbed to the highest point on the Roebling Suspension Bridge for an interview with a worker repairing the span. He was startled but answered her questions.

Every report of Neely’s career dutifully mentioned the time she slid 34 stories from the top of the Union Central Tower, the tallest building in Cincinnati at that time, on a “wire fire escape contraption.” Well, not exactly.

Pietro “Peter” Vescovi traveled the country in 1914, demonstrating a “pocket fire escape” of his own invention, consisting of a spool of steel tape. His routine varied little from town to town. Vescovi found the tallest building in that particular burg, announced to the local newspapers that he would safely descend from the roof to the sidewalk, and collected headlines and sales. In Cincinnati, the brand-new Union Central Tower fit the bill. It was, at the time, the tallest building outside New York City.

On Friday, 30 January 1914, Vescovi stepped off a ledge on the fourth story of the Union Central Tower and glided to the pavement. Watching from the ground, Ruth Neely asked if she could give the apparatus a try. With an eye toward her own headlines, she suggested a higher launching point, so Vescovi led her to the 21st story. Fastening his steel spool to the window sill, Vescovi and Neely both stepped into space. She reported:

“We swung, swayed by the wind, slightly to eastward, affording just one hideous glimpse of the Vine street canyon. Then the breeze veered, whisking us, its plaything, westward ho. A huge mass of nothingness was disclosed, attached neatly to a bank of clouds. I closed my eyes.”

The pair alighted on the roof at the 17th floor. Neely insisting that she had clung to the unusual device so fervidly that her thumbprint dented a steel buckle on Vescovi’s harness.

Neely later flew around Cincinnati in an autogiro piloted by Amelia Earhart, and dropped her report of that flight onto the roof of the Cincinnati Post as the famed aviatrix buzzed the building.

After three decades at the newspapers, covering everything from gardening to political conventions, Neely spent a year writing and editing the three-volume “Women of Ohio,” including biographies of 1,200 women overlooked in the history books. She was an early member of the Women’s City Club, was instrumental in organizing the Cincinnati Peace League and participated in the local chapter of the Foreign Policy Association. A plaque at the Hamilton County Courthouse lists her as one of the women responsible for gaining women the vote. On her death, her good friend, Post columnist Al “Cincinnatus” Segal, opined:

“She was not the first woman, of course, to be a ‘regular reporter’ on a daily newspaper. But she had to prove, to many a skeptical male in the business, that she could use her wits and courage and come back with her story. She won her place, her journeyman’s rating, the hard way and she helped pave the way for the many women who followed her into city rooms since the early years of the century.”

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