Photo courtesy of AGNAP (the Association of Guyanese Nurses and Associated Professionals
We were so pleased to see that Daphne Steele has now been commemorated with a Blue Plaque in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Daphne is credited as having been the first Black matron in the NHS (from 1964). The new plaque commemorating her contribution is at what was formerly St Winifred’s maternity home where she was based for a number of years.
Daphne was one of several members of the Steele family who came to England from British Guiana (now Guyana) in the early 1950s. She arrived in 1951 and was soon followed by the best known of her siblings, her sister, Carmen, now known as Carmen Monroe, the actress. My own father-in-law was another Steele who made the journey, he was met by Carmen when he arrived in London in 1952 and spent many years working in the Post Office, a less glamourous contribution to Britain’s post-war regeneration but important nonetheless. The Steeles are just one example of the countless families who helped rebuild Britain after the devastation of World War Two.
Daphne trained at St James’ hospital in Balham and it was our privilege to be present when a Nubian Jak plaque was unveiled there in 2018:
After two years in south London she then trained as a midwife before going on to work for the NHS in Oxfordshire and Manchester (as well as a stint in America) before settling in Yorkshire.
The unveiling ceremony was featured on the BBC news website and you can read more about Daphne here:
In recent years our knowledge of who was on the Empire Windrush when she docked at Tilbury in June 1948 has developed considerably. Bill Hern has played a big part in this and some of the fruits of his latest research can be found in a new book produced by the Windrush Foundation. It is beautifully illustrated – I was going to describe it as a great ‘coffee table’ book, but such books are usually used as rarely opened adornments, this book is so much more than that. The words tell the stories of over eighty of the Windrush passengers, most of which have never previously been told. If you still believe the passengers on the Windrush were all Jamaican men coming to the UK in search of work, this book will set you straight!
My understanding is that the book is only available through the Windrush Foundation, it can be downloaded as a free e-book / pdf via this link:
There is no doubt that many of the West Indian passengers who disembarked from the Empire Windrush on 22nd June 1948 suffered challenges and hardships in the ‘Mother Country’ but there were also a great many acts of kindness that should not be forgotten. None more so than that shown by a church in Balham on the first Sunday after the ship’s arrival in Tilbury.
The Church of Ascension in Malwood Road, Balham in London is situated only a few hundred yards from the Clapham South Deep Shelter where on 27th June 1948 over one hundred West Indian men (they were all men) were about to spend their first Sunday in England after arriving in the country five days earlier.
Reverend Bryn Thomas, the Vicar of the Church of Ascension, awoke that morning thinking about the West Indians temporarily housed in the Deep Shelter far beneath the trains running on the Northern Line. Most of the occupants of the Deep Shelter would have been regular churchgoers in the Caribbean but, over 4,000 miles from home and their local churches, they were faced with what appeared likely to be a pretty miserable day. The weather forecast was for coolish temperatures with the occasional shower. In the England of the 1940s everything closed on a Sunday and of course there was no television and certainly no Sunday football. All that lay in store for the men was a day walking and chatting on Clapham Common and perhaps taking shelter from the showers in the huge marquee that had been specially erected on the Common.
Reverend Thomas had the idea of inviting the men to a party at the Church that evening. He made the short walk to the Shelter and announced that all were welcome.
It seems that Reverend Thomas made this offer before he had secured the support of the congregation as he only announced his plan at the morning service. This created a flurry of activity.
When it was realised that there was insufficient crockery a churchwarden came to the rescue by procuring a bathchair to wheel to nearby St Luke’s Church where he was able to borrow seventy cups and saucers. With the rattling of crockery no doubt disturbing the peaceful Sunday afternoon he trundled back to the Church of Ascension without any reported breakages.
Women members of the church rallied to the cause and baked two hundred cakes in a single afternoon as well as making and cutting a similar number of sandwiches. This amazing achievement is made all the more remarkable and commendable as this was during a period of rationing and, as a Church representative Mr. W H Garland told The Clapham Observer, they had to “scrounge tea and sugar.” No doubt many Church members sacrificed their own allowance in order to entertain their West Indian guests.
It is a sign of the times that newspaper reports assumed the baking and sandwich making was the preserve of the female members of the Church.
Between eighty and one hundred of the men from the Deep Shelter accepted the invitation to the Church.
The event was a tremendous success and was even reported in the national press, the Daily Herald of 28th June gave it the headline “Threw A Party For Men From Jamaica.” Mr. W H Garland said that the West Indians were “charming people; they were churchmen and keen.”
Final word must go to one of the West Indians who, after the evening service and the ‘party’ said he and his compatriots had been given “the time of our lives.”
By mid-July all the West Indians had found work and left the Deep Shelter, the marquee was taken down and Clapham South returned to normality.
However, the links with the Empire Windrush don’t end there. On 23rd February 1952 Lloyd Barrington Jackson – passenger number 704 – married Grethel Christine Webster at the Church of Ascension and the officiating Vicar was Reverend Bryn Thomas.
The scene of Lloyd and Grethel’s nuptials
The Church of Ascension (now known simply as Ascension Balham) has remained a place that welcomes everyone. It is a vibrant community Church (see the link below). If anyone is doing a Windrush-related tour they could do a lot worse than stopping off at the Church for coffee and cake and a very warm welcome while they imagine the evening of 27th June 1948 and that great act of kindness.
You might expect ‘The Oxford Companion to Black British History’ to be an authoritative source. You might… However, it’s entry for the Empire Windrush has this to say:
‘when the Empire Windrush sailed on 24 May, there were 492 passengers (and six stowaways) on board.’
The only correct part of that is the date she sailed – but only if you ignore the departure from Trinidad on 20th (24th was the date she left Jamaica).
A common myth is that the ‘492’ were all men and all Jamaican. The ‘Companion’ doesn’t fall into that trap, it says that ‘most of the passengers were young adult men’ which is true, ‘most’ were. But it does gloss over the presence of many women (over 250, almost 25% of the passengers), a fair number of children (80) and some family groups.
Let’s be charitable and point out that the ‘Companion’ was first published in 2007, things move on (even history!) and we learn more. We know a lot more now than we did fifteen years ago.
Our latest contribution on the subject talks about some of the families on the Windrush, you can read about them here:
Apologies, we got so carried away with the lovely new photo of Mona Baptiste that this morning’s post contained the wrong link for the separate website about her. This is the correct link: https://mona-baptiste.com/.
Still, it gives an excuse to send you a cropped version of the photo with the full original (incorrect) caption – she was 22!
A passenger on the HMT Empire Windrush is 21-year-old Miss Mona Baptiste from Trinidad. She arrives to sing blue’s numbers on the radio and in night clubs.
Tilbury, 22 June 1948
Mona on board the Empire Windrush at Tilbury, 22nd June 1948 ((c) topfoto.co.[1]https://www.topfoto.co.uk/groupitem/68/)
We recently came across this photo of Mona Baptiste on board the Empire Windrush. Mona had celebrated her 22nd birthday the day before this was taken and was getting ready to disembark and start her new life in England. We have no particular excuse for posting it today, but we make no apologies for doing so, it’s a lovely picture that captures the hope and optimism that many Windrush passengers would have felt.
You can read about Mona’s life in our book ‘What about the Princess? The life and times of Mona Baptiste’. Since publishing the book we continue to find fresh snippets of information and we publish these on our sister site https://mona-baptiste.com/, if you are interested in Mona why not take a look there?
We have long been intrigued by the story of Evelyn Wauchope, the female stowaway on the Empire Windrush. We were able to find out quite a lot about her and in July 2019 published what we knew (we have now updated the article):
firstly, although we reached out (admittedly in a slightly random way) to various organisations in White Plains, New York, in an effort to find out more about her time living in the community there we, essentially, drew a blank;
secondly, we had no idea what she looked like.
Until now!
Evelyn Wauchope, photographed on arrival at Tilbury Docks, June 22 1948 ((c) topfoto.co.uk)
We are grateful to Audrey Dewjee for drawing out attention to a fantastic trove of photos on this site: https://www.topfoto.co.uk/groupitem/68/ and also to Ioan and Flora for licensing the photo to us at a reduced rate.
I think we can safely say that Evelyn looks ‘pensive’ but who can blame her?! Having used her initiative to get to England she now faced the daunting prospect of making a new life for herself in a strange and, very probably, hostile environment.
Pensive, maybe, but Evelyn was a determined woman who repeatedly overcame the challenges life threw at her. She absolutely deserves to be regarded as a ‘Windrush Pioneer’ and we are so glad that we can finally see what she looked like on 22nd June 1948 as she arrived to start the next chapter in her life.
We bring a very productive year to a close (34 new pages by my reckoning) with two new pages on very different subjects. Before introducing them, I must thank our contributors for their efforts. John Ellis is responsible for a lot of this year’s new content. John’s remarkable work is casting new light on the black presence in the British Army and Royal Navy in the 19th century and also in the trenches during World War One. But others, Audrey Dewjee and Bill Hern, have played their part too. Audrey can take particular pride in her work on the story of Bertie Robinson, the black servant at Harewood House who featured in a major exhibition there. Bill and I helped with an exhibition too, it celebrated some of the London Borough of Newham’s pioneering black footballers – it’s surprising how much black history you can work into a talk about football!
John Ellis’s latest discovery is the story of a black Royal Navy sailor called John Johnson. His marriage certificate, dating from 1846, cites his father’s occupation or profession as ‘negro slave’ – a very unusual entry on an English certificate. The marriage ended in tragic circumstances. John doesn’t speculate as to the underlying cause of the argument that led to the death of Mary Johnson but I can’t help but wonder whether racism played a part. Read the article and make up your own mind:
The second new page features Horace Halliburton, a man of the Windrush generation (although, in fact, he arrived on these shores before the Windrush). Horace played a leading role in the Causeway Green riots of 1949, as a peacemaker. You may not know about the Causeway Green riots and it’s very unlikely you will have heard of Horace. I started researching him hoping to discover an unsung hero and, to an extent, I did, but his life story turned out to be much more complicated than I expected. You can read about Horace here:
I’m sure you know the story of the Empire Windrush – 492 Jamaican men, invited to Britain to rebuild the country after World War Two – right?
Wrong on all counts and hopefully if you have read some of the articles on this site you will be able to spot the errors in that opening sentence.
Today we introduce two very different stories that add to our knowledge of those who were on the Windrush – one article by Audrey Dewjee is actually called ‘A different Windrush experience’. It deals with the lives of just some of the early post-war migrants who settled in Leeds and you can read it here: https://www.historycalroots.com/a-different-windrush-experience/
Working as a young reporter on the Daily Worker in 1948, Peter Fryer (who would later become one the of the first to attempt a chronicle of black British history) was one of those sent to Tilbury to meet the ship. He asked some of those on board their reasons for coming: ‘Some 30 have volunteered for the mines and will, I understand, be given full facilities for training. While on board, I met masons, mechanics, journalists, students, musicians, boxers and cyclists attending the Olympic Games.’ We have been unable to identify any Windrush passengers among the cyclists who competed at the Olympic Games in London and so it seems someone may have spun Fryer a yarn. However, there was a link to the Olympics and Bill Hern writes about it here: https://www.historycalroots.com/mcdonald-bailey-windrush-passenger-and-father-of-an-olympic-hero/
These two stories demonstrate that, in history, there is always more to learn no matter how well-known a story might be!
Although the core of it remains unchanged, Audrey Dewjee has updated her article about Nadia Cattouse, adding some additional material and several new photos.
Nadia was thrilled when Audrey told her how much interest the original article generated (well over 2,500 views, including many from Belize, the land of her birth). She was also pleasantly surprised by the larger than usual number of birthday cards she received last November when she celebrated her 96th birthday!
