In 1894 Dundee journalists Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell were given an opportunity of a lifetime. One that would not ordinarily have been afforded to women in the 19th Century. Marie and Bessie travelled round the world for a year reporting on the lives of women, close enough to some of the conflicts of the period.
Besides European countries, they travelled 26,000 miles and visited Egypt, India, China, Japan, Canada and the United States. Their articles were published twice weekly for over a year. They were no longer consigned to the tame backwaters of the women’s pages.
On February 1 the Dundee Courier announced the “unparalleled scheme”. Managing proprietor David Couper Thomson said the Ladies Tour was to redress the gender imbalance of a working men’s tour around America the previous year. Though hailed a far greater success than was ever anticipated, Mr Thomson was “well aware that its weakness lay in the absence of women delegates”.
The article read: “Now, however, the cause of women is to triumph. “Two brave young ladies have, in the interests of their sex, undertaken, at the request of Mr D. C.
Thomson and his brother, Mr Frederick Thomson, to circumnavigate the globe. “These ladies are not only intrepid, but they are shrewd and observant, are possessed of undoubted literary ability, and are in complete sympathy with the stupendous task in which they are about to engage. “Their instructions are, briefly, to go round the world, to mix with its peop.