HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

William Henry Irwin (September 14, 1873 – February 24, 1948) was an American author, writer and journalist who was associated with the
muckrakers The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists, writers, and photographers in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who claimed to expose corruption and wrongdoing in established institutions, often through sensationalist publ ...
.


Early life

Irwin was born in 1873 in
Oneida Oneida may refer to: Native American/First Nations * Oneida people, a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy * Oneida language * Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York * Oneida ...
, New York. In his early childhood, the Irwin family moved to Clayville, New York, a farming and mining center south of Utica. In about 1878, his father moved to Leadville, Colorado, establishing himself in the lumber business, and brought his family out. When his business failed Irwin's father moved the family to Twin Lakes, Colorado. A hotel business there failed too, and the family moved back to Leadville, in a bungalow at 125 West Twelfth Street. In 1889, the family moved to Denver, where he graduated from high school. He said he cured himself of a diagnosed bout of
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...
by "roughing it" for a year as a cowboy.Robert V. Hudson. ''The Writing Game. A Biography of Will Irwin.'' Ames, IA: The Iowa State University Press, 1982.


University

With a loan from his high school teacher, Irwin entered
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
in September 1894. Irwin was forced to withdraw for disciplinary reasons but was readmitted and graduated on May 24, 1899. According to journalism historians Clifford Weigle and David Clark in their biographical sketch of Irwin, :"During four riotous years at Stanford, Irwin 'specialized' in campus politics, undergraduate theatricals and writing, and beer drinking and inventive pranks. Expelled three weeks before he was to have received the B.A. degree in 1898, he got the degree a year later after final, solemn consideration by a somewhat reluctant faculty committee on student affairs."


The Chronicle and The Sun

In 1901 Irwin got a job as a reporter on the '' San Francisco Chronicle'', eventually rising to Sunday editor. For the San Francisco-based Bohemian Club, he wrote the Grove Play ''The Hamadryads, A Masque of Apollo in One Act in 1904. The same year, he moved to New York City to take a reporter's position at '' The New York Sun'', then in its heyday under the editorship of Chester Lord and Selah M. Clark. Also in 1904, Irwin co-authored a book of short stories with Gelett Burgess, ''The Picaroons'' ( McClure, Phillips & Co.) Irwin arrived in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
the same day as a major disaster, the sinking of the ''
General Slocum The PS ''General Slocum''"PS" stands for "Paddle Steamer" was a sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collision ...
''. As a new reporter on ''The Sun'', he was assigned to work the Bellevue Hospital morgue, where the more than 1,000 bodies of the victims of fire and drowning were taken.


''The City That Was''

Irwin's biggest story and the feat that made him a professional writer was his absentee coverage for '' The Sun'', in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906. Weigle and Clark described his activities: : "Because he knew the city so well, he was assigned to write – mostly from memory, supplemented by scant telegraphic bulletins – the story of the quake. Before the last-edition deadline on the first day, April 18, 1906, he wrote fourteen columns of copy. and he kept writing, eight columns or more a day, for the next seven days, as fire swept the ruined city. The booklet, for which Irwin is most widely known, resulted from six or seven columns of the general description of pre-earthquake San Francisco that he wrote on the afternoon of the third day of the story."


McClure's and Collier's

Irwin was hired by
S.S. McClure Samuel Sidney McClure (February 17, 1857 – March 21, 1949) was an Irish-American publisher who became known as a key figure in investigative, or muckraking, journalism. He co-founded and ran ''McClure's Magazine'' from 1893 to 1911, which ran n ...
in 1906 as managing editor of '' McClure's''. He rose to the position of editor but disliked the work and then moved to ''Collier's'', edited by Norman Hapgood. He wrote investigative stories on the movement for Prohibition and a study of fake spiritual mediums. Back on the Pacific coast in 1906–1907 to research a story on anti-Japanese racism Irwin returned to San Francisco and found it flourishing. Several years later, he wrote an article on the city's rebirth entitled "The City That Is" in the '' San Francisco Call'', which concluded that San Francisco had become "a larger city, a more convenient city, and since it is also a more beautiful and more distinctive city I announce myself a complete convert. This city that was business is the old stuff." Irwin's series on anti-Japanese discrimination appeared in ''Collier's'' in September–October 1907 and ''Pearson's'' in 1909.


"The American Newspaper"

Then came the ''Collier's'' magazine series, "The American Newspaper", one of the most famous critical analyses of American journalism. The series was researched from September 23, 1909, until late June 1910 and published from January to June 1911.


World War I

Irwin continued to write articles, some in the muckraking style until the outbreak of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
. He sailed to Europe in August 1914 as one of the first American correspondents. According to media historians Edwin and Michael Emery :" rwin's beats on the battles of Ypres and the first German use of poison gas were also printed in the ''Tribune''. Irwin was one of several correspondents who represented American magazines in Europe; he first wrote for ''Collier's'' and then for the '' Saturday Evening Post''. Irwin's article appeared on the front page of ''
The New York Tribune The ''New-York Tribune'' was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s through the 1860s it was the dom ...
'' on April 27, 1915. Irwin served on the executive committee of Herbert Hoover's Commission for Relief in Belgium in 1914–1915 and was chief of the foreign department of George Creel's
Committee on Public Information The Committee on Public Information (1917–1919), also known as the CPI or the Creel Committee, was an independent agency of the government of the United States under the Wilson administration created to influence public opinion to support the ...
in 1918.


Spiritualism Skeptic

Irwin was skeptical of paranormal claims. In 1907-1908, for the ''Colliers Weekly'', he published four installments of "The Medium Game: Behind the Scenes with Spiritualism" to cover fraud and trickery associated with spiritualism. Psychical researcher Hereward Carrington described Irwin as a well-known "exposer of fraudulent mediums."


Books and plays

During and after the war Irwin wrote 17 more books, including ''Christ or Mars?'', an anti-war treatise (1923); a biography of Herbert Hoover (1928); a history of Paramount Pictures and its founder, Adolph Zukor, ''The House That Shadows Built'' (1928); and his own autobiography, ''The Making of a Reporter'' (1942). He also wrote two plays and continued magazine writing.


Personal life

Irwin was married to feminist author,
Inez Haynes Irwin Inez Haynes Irwin (March 2, 1873 – September 25, 1970) was an American feminist author, journalist, member of the National Women's Party, and president of the Authors Guild. Many of her works were published under her former name Inez Haynes Gi ...
, who published under the name Inez Haynes Gillmore, author of '' Angel Island'' (1914) and ''The Californiacs'' (1916). The Irwins summered in Scituate, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s. Will Irwin wrote a story in 1914 for ''The American Magazine'' about summer life in Scituate.Will Irwin, �
Togo, Mayor of Scituate: A True Dog Story
��, Illustrations by Henry J. Soulen, '' The American Magazine'', Vol. 78, No. 2, August 1914 (New York: Phillips Pub. Co., 1914), 11-16 & 83-86, accessed June 17, 2016.
Irwin died in 1948, at the age of 74.


See also

*'' The House That Shadows Built'' (1931). Paramount Pictures promotional film which took its name from Irwin's book.


Footnotes


External links

* * * * * Will Irwin and Inez Haynes Gillmore Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. * Will Irwin, Arnold Genthe. (1908
Pictures of Old Chinatown
* Will Irwin
''The City That Was: A Requiem of Old San Francisco''
1906. New York: B. W. Huebsch. 47 p. (free download) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Irwin, William Henry 1873 births 1948 deaths American male journalists American skeptics American writers Journalists from New York (state) People from Oneida, New York