When society news became dangerous

Frances Ruffin Durham

Frances Ruffin Durham’s job of Society Editor on The Mobile Press Register ordinarily didn’t require any of the toughness she had to draw on as police reporter at The New Orleans States.

On at least one occasion, however, she found herself threatened for a feature carried on the society news pages.

A society reporter had been sent to interview the eccentric and possibly insane Mary Eoline Eilands, whose last name was pronounced “island.” She was known as “Floating Island” because she walked with a short, quick, floating step.

She had once been quite pretty, but in the 1930s she was an elderly woman who always dressed in a full black skirt and a dingy white blouse. On her head she wore a small, flat, black hat with ribbons tied under her chin, and on her feet she wore low-heeled, black shoes. Her father, Alexander William Eilands, had been a compositor for the Register in 1872.

To see the only known photo
of Mary Eoline Eilands,
see page 34 in the fall 2009 issue
of Longleaf magazine.

All Southern port cities had a legend about a woman such as Floating Island. The Mobile legend held that she was once a young bride-to-be. Her betrothed supposedly was a sailor who never returned from a voyage.

Legend held that each day during her life she went down to the docks hoping that would be the day her lover would return from the sea.

The old woman didn’t mind a reporter from the Press Register interviewing her. But when the story came out in the newspaper, Floating Island came to the Press Register office, threatening to thrash Durham with her parasol for printing it.

The staff had Durham climb through the second story window and hide on the roof of the adjoining building until Eilands could be persuaded to leave.