This article analyzes the work of an overlooked female journalist, T. Sparrow, arguing that her career reveals the difficulties female journalists faced when negotiating between the expectations of middle-class gentility and the demands of investigative journalism.

Sparrow asserted her gentility rhetorically, in part because female reporters who took up investigative reporting were vulnerable to criticism for assaying beyond domestic subjects. Moreover, incognito investigative reporting often brought celebrity to its practitioners, which challenged the convention of middle-class female modesty.

Sparrow, therefore, strove for a delicate balance in her career—assuming the stance of a middle-class woman who lived among the poor, someone who was self-supporting and well-published but still decorous and respectable.