Hellraisers Journal: Wilshire’s Magazine Announces Sad News of Death of Correspondent Margherita Arlina Hamm

Quote MA Hamm, Wilshires July 1907

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday February 6, 1908
New York, New York – Margherita Arlina Hamm Dies of Pneumonia

From Wilshire’s Magazine of February 1908:

IN MEMORIAM
Mrs. Margherita A. McMahon

An ardent Socialist and a brilliant woman, Margherita Arlina Hamm McMahon, died Dec. 17 in a New York hospital after a week’s struggle with pneumonia. A multitude of friends and comrades lament her loss. Readers of “Wilshire’s Magazine” will recall her able correspondence from Boise during the Haywood trial. She went to Idaho with her husband, John R. McMahon, staff correspondent for “Wilshire’s, ” and her little daughter, now aged three and a half years.

Comrade Hamm McMahon was born in St. Stephens, N. B. in 1871, and was educated at Emerson College, Boston, the New York University Law School and the Royal College, Hong Kong. She began newspaper work in 1887, traveled for three years in the Orient, and was war correspondent in the Chinese-Japanese war in 1894, and the Spanish-American war; also acting as nurse and government inspector of supplies in the latter conflict. She wrote half a dozen books of travel, essay, short story, historical matter and many articles and poems for magazines. A series of short stories on the Egyptian quarter in New York was lately completed in the “Century Magazine.” She was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, vice-president of the Writers’ Club, London; ex-librarian of the Medico-Legal Society of New York, and an officer of the Women’s National Progressive League. She lectured on many subjects.

Comrade Hamm became interested in the Bellamy Nationalist Club movement at an early age, and as newspaper correspondent saw the conflict of classes at Homestead; she sympathized with the Brooklyn car strikers, studied poverty as a settlement worker in Eastside of New York and finally evolved into a scientific Socialist. Her work in Idaho last summer was deeply appreciated by all the friends of Haywood and the working class. She had a magnetic personality that attracted everyone whom she met. Her dauntless stand, her loving spirit, her unquenchable ardor for the cause of social justice are a sufficient monument to her memory.