It was an agony aunt sort of column. The “Cry on Geraldine’s Shoulder”, or “What They Say to Geraldine”, or “Problems, by Geraldine” (the last title came in 1943), or other variants on that title ran from September 1920 until 1955 at the least (1955 is the end of my available archives). Her tone changed a lot, even between late 1920 when she began and early 1923, but that might be the author ironing out kinks. Her opinions on some things changed during that time as well (but that might not mean she was someone else, or multiple people, maybe her opinion just changed). I’d like to believe it was one person, anyway.

Geraldine answered questions and gave advice, from a more modern and no-nonsense point of view, but for the most part it was an open forum for people to send their letters, where other readers could respond. A lot of the time there’d be a theme. It was a daily feature, it started as a small column and grew until it was at least half a page every day on weekdays and usually two full pages on Sundays.

I’ve tried to figure out who the real Geraldine, or ‘Jerry’, was but I can’t find anything online! Not just about Geraldine herself, but about the column in general. She doesn’t talk about herself much, one time she said sometime to the effect that she wasn’t much older than a college kid she was answering, but she’d evade a lot of the time (for example, someone asked about her hair colour and she said something like “by this time next year it might be red or blonde, it’s fun to mix it up!”).

If I find out more about Geraldine I’ll update for sure, because whoever they were, they were certainly refreshing!

Here’s the first introduction to the Cry On Geraldine’s Shoulder column, from September 6, 1920: