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):
What became of the Windrush stowaway, Evelyn Wauchope?
But we were left with two big frustrations.
- 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!
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.