MIDDLEBURY — At age 97, Joyce Egginton is finally able to relax after decades of writing on deadline for myriad newspapers and book publishers.

On this sunny day in Middlebury, she generously welcomed a fellow scribe to her well-appointed apartment at the Residence at Otter Creek. Over tea and biscuits, she shared some personal history — and the history she witnessed — as a reporter who fought her way up the ranks of a male-dominated industry, to land a plum assignment as a New York correspondent for the British press.

“(Writing) seemed like an enormously worthwhile thing to do,” said Egginton, her delightful British accent and matter-of-fact demeanor infusing a tinge of stoicism into her accounts of life in Great Britain during and after World War II.

“I didn’t envisage (the job) taking me overseas and all that stuff,” she said. “These were things that came my way.”

Facilitating the interview was one of Egginton’s two sons, Stephen Longmire, a very talented photographer and writer in his own right.

Egginton said she was an avid reader and enjoyed writing. She was keen on making a living at it, but sadly, WWII-era British newspapers weren’t delegating reporting assignments to women in what was a paternalistic, chauvinistic society.

“There weren’t many jobs for women that were interesting,” she recalled. “When you finished your high school at 18, there were endless jobs that boys could go into, and there were three jobs a woman could go into: Nurse, teacher or secretary.”

With no shortage of moxie, Egginton resolved to find her way onto a middling newspaper, earn her stripes, and then graduate to a larger publication. The first stop in her journalistic journey was London’s Express & Independent.

“I went over and asked,” she said of her straightforward application to the paper. “If you were a girl, you were very lucky to get taken on. You asked for the job and made damn sure they didn’t fire you.”

Egginton noted her editor — whom she described as a “miserable” person — was fond of reminding her that “if there hadn’t been a war going on, he would never have employed a woman. It was a different world.”

She was just 17, Britain was in its sixth year of fighting the Nazis and the Japanese and Egginton was at the bottom rung of the reportorial ladder. The Express & Independent covered East London and suburbs, according to Egginton, who was given the most tedious assignments — including “coroner’s court,” where she sat through reports on death cases.

“There were all these inquests during the week… and you picked out the ones where people had died in your circulation area,” she said. “I was miserable. I was a shy kid who had to knock on someone’s door and say, ‘We hear your (relative) has died and we’d like to write a story about it.”

Egginton worked there three years, fulfilling a commitment she’d made. She’d accumulated some good clips and believed she’d earned a job at the epicenter of Britain’s newspaper industry _— Fleet Street in London.

After parting ways with Express & Independent, Egginton landed a gig as a summer holiday fill-in at the News Chronicle, a larger and better-respected publication in London.

“They took on a lot of would-be journalists like me who had some experience. You were told you were being employed just for the holiday period, July-September,” she explained.

But the most tenacious reporters — like Egginton — saw the summer stint as an audition. She wanted to make it as difficult as possible for the Chronicle to show her the door in September.

A colleague jokingly advised Egginton not to ask if her time was up, but to “just keep coming in.”

JOYCE EGGINTON

No subterfuge was required, however; Egginton impressed Chronicle editors with her ability. They were particularly taken with an article she wrote about London’s costermongers, aka street vendors. The story — which ran in the much-read Sunday edition — captured the vendors’ daily trials and tribulations, as well as their united front.

“I got several compliments for it,” she said. “I was eventually, formally taken on (as a Chronicle staffer).”

From there, she scaled additional rungs on the professional ladder, building more news clips and more trust among her editors and peers.

Her efforts again paid off around eight years later, in 1958, when she walked into the newsroom on a steamy Sunday morning and saw a note on her desk: “The editor wants to see you.”

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I done now?” she recalled.

But it was great news; Chronicle brass offered Egginton a foreign correspondent’s job in New York.

“It nearly knocked me over,” she said of the offer, which she accepted.

Egginton became a general assignment reporter; she could be dispatched to cover any compelling story going on in the U.S.

“You did what they gave you,” she recalled.

COVERING U.S. JUSTICE

Her correspondent’s perch gave her U.K. readers a window onto the nascent U.S. Civil Rights movement. Egginton explained that her European audience was appalled and perplexed at the extent to which American Black people were segregated, persecuted and denied justice. And Egginton helped shine a light on a particularly egregious case of racial injustice that might otherwise have been buried by a complicit and indifferent Southern U.S. press, and the sands of time.

It’s called the “Kissing Case,” involving two young Black children who’d been accused of molesting a young white girl in Monroe, N.C., in October 1958. In actuality, the white girl had kissed each of the two Black boys — James Hanover Thompson, 10, and David Simpson, 9. The 7-year-old girl told her mother what she’d done. The girl’s father allegedly took a shotgun to where the two boys were living and threatened to kill them and their parents, according to Egginton’s reporting on the case.

“Six carloads of policeman rushed to the scene to take Hanover Thompson and his eight-year-old playmate, Fuzzy Simpson to safety — the safety of the local jail,” Egginton wrote. “There they were held for six days without charges.”

The boys’ mothers were summoned to juvenile court with 10 minutes notice of their court appearance, according to Egginton.

They were found guilty of “molesting a white female” and were “committed for an indefinite period to a training school for Negro delinquent boys,” Egginton wrote at the time.

“Today, Mr. J. Hampson Price, the juvenile court judge, who sentenced the boys, said: ‘They are better off where they are. I wish you wouldn’t print anything about it. We printed nothing here,’” Egginton wrote.

It was just the start of some traumatic times for the incarcerated young boys and their families.

In a Chronicle article, Dec. 11, 1958, Egginton reported that Evelyn Thompson — James’s mom — had received an eviction notice from her white landlord.

“An NAACP official said today that it was quite obvious that white segregationists hope that if the Thompson and Simpson families can be run out (of town), no one will challenge the trial of the boys — at which neither boy was represented by counsel,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, North Carolina Gov. Luther H. Hodges praised the judge who sentenced the boys, describing his attitude as “fair and justified,” according to Egginton.

Through her reporting, Egginton noted the boys could be held in a reform school — 70 miles from their home — until they turned 21.

Egginton decided to visit the two boys, accompanied by their moms and a Black physician named Albert Perry.

When asked by Egginton if they knew why they were being held, one of the boys attributed it to having stolen a ham the previous summer because he was hungry, and the other speculated it was because he’d “played hooky” from school.

Both denied having touched the girl.

Egginton again interviewed the judge for a Dec. 18, 1958, article. 

“Asked whether he thought it wrong to convict on the uncorroborated evidence of a 7-year-old girl, (Judge) Price replied: ‘I had to believe someone, and I preferred to believe her because the boys had previous records of petty larceny. Anyway, we had to put them away for their own protection. Feeling among the white residents was running very high.’”

Part of the reason, according to Egginton, is that the girl’s mom, Cornelia Sutton, held firm to her belief that her daughter had been “forced” to kiss Simpson and Thompson.

“I was furious. I would have killed Hanover myself if I had the chance,” Egginton quoted Sutton as saying.

Sadly, Egginton found virtually no community support for the two accused boys.

“On the evidence of one child, who was not even called to court to give it, one magistrate alone convicted the boys, who had no opportunity to be represented by counsel,” she wrote for the Chronicle.

Fortunately, Egginton’s writing roused the court of public opinion to lobby on the boys’ behalf. Her articles prompted readers from throughout Britain to send letters lobbying North Carolina authorities to release the boys.

The pressure and scrutiny eventually paid dividends.

Conrad Lynn, a Black lawyer, took the Thompsons’ eviction case to court and proved that it didn’t comply with state law.

On Feb. 14, 1959, Egginton reported Simpson and Thompson had finally been freed from the reform school where they’d been lodged for four months.

Blaine Madison, North Carolina Commissioner of Correction and Training, claimed the children were released because “the home condition of the mothers had been improved, a ‘conditional release is justified at this time,’” Egginton reported.

The aforementioned physician, Albert Perry, subsequently learned the meaning of the saying, “no good deed goes unpunished.” In addition to securing the meeting between the boys and their moms at the reformatory, he’d also used his own resources to improve the boys’ homes so they could be reunited with their parents, Egginton noted in her reporting. 

In a Jan. 13, 1960, follow-up article, Egginton reported the N.C. Medical Board had pulled Perry’s license to practice medicine.

“Not because of his part in the ‘Kissing Case,’ or his lead in other local campaigns for Negro rights — nothing so obvious — but because he is alleged to have performed an illegal operation on a white woman in the neighborhood,” Egginton wrote. “Dr. Perry is at present serving a two- to three-year prison sentence on this charge, to which he pleaded not guilty — convicted on the uncorroborated and medically unconvincing evidence of the woman concerned.

“In contrast, a white doctor admitting his guilt on a similar charge was merely put on probation,” she noted.

Egginton was interviewed for a documentary film being made on the Kissing Case; its release date remains unclear.

Her time with the Chronicle ended when the paper folded in late 1960. She then briefly wrote for the Daily Herald, another London newspaper, before beginning a 20-year run as New York correspondent with Britain’s Observer. She continued to cover major events in U.S. history — including the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963.

Due to space limitations, this article can’t go into detail on Egginton’s extensive book writing resume. Her books largely delve into real-life crime, including Cradle to Grave (1989), a NY Times bestseller; “Day of Fury” (1991); and “Circle of Fire” (1994). The “Poisoning of Michigan” (1980), which remains in print, was written while she worked for The Observer. Egginton’s three British titles — “Excursion to Russia” (1955), “They Seek a Living” (1957), and “Duet for Three Hands” (1958) — were written while she wrote for the Chronicle.

Even at age 97, Egginton hasn’t put down her pen. She’s almost completed a memoir that begins with the Kennedy assassination and covers her years as a New York correspondent for British press.

She shared her formula for success with a younger colleague: 

“Hard work, applying to the right places, and good luck.”

Reporter John Flowers is at [email protected].