Audrey Slaughter, who has died aged 91, started work as a shorthand typist and went on to create three of the most successful titles – Honey, Petticoat and Over 21 – of the new age of magazines in the 1960s and 70s, establishing a close relationship with readers from previously ignored markets while enticing advertisers with buzz.
Petticoat was for teens, Honey for young women in their 20s; Over 21 included over 31s too. All three came out of Slaughter’s recognition of how much her own tough life at those ages might have been changed by the information and transformation such a magazine could offer – how it could be a portal out of isolation. She was a working-class girl who hated her auburn hair and thin body but had no advice on how to style them, and at 19 she had married a man 15 years her senior to get out of an overcrowded home. Her greatest escape, though, was a job typing answers to readers’ letters at Woman’s Own.
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