Marjorie ‘Malachi’ Whitaker

Marjorie ‘Malachi’ Whitaker (née Taylor) was born in 1895 in Bradford, the eighth of eleven children. On leaving school, aged 13, she was employed in her father’s bookbinding works, wrote verse for greetings cards and an unpublished memoir. In 1917 she married Leonard Whitaker, who was then in the army, and for the next few years moved about with him. In the mid-1920s she started to publish short stories in magazines: her first collection was published in 1929 and three more followed in 1930, 1932 and 1934. In 1939 she published a memoir, And So Did I, and after that wrote very little. She died in 1976.