Responding to an invitation, the Historycal Roots team recently gave a presentation at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton as part of the Archives’ ‘Looking Back, Moving Forward’ season: https://blackculturalarchives.org/exhibitionsandevents
Our presentation focused on ‘three Windrush Women’.
First up was David Gleave who posed the question ‘What became of the Windrush stowaway, Evelyn Wauchope?’.
Evelyn’s story attracted the attention of reporters when the Empire Windrush passengers disembarked at Tilbury on 22nd June 1948, they were intrigued by her presence as the only female to stowaway on the ship. But no one knew what became of her after she boarded the train for London – until now that is! You will find her story in the ‘Windrush Generation’ section of this site where there is a page dedicated to her story.
Next, Bill Hern spoke about Mona Baptiste who travelled in ‘A’ Class on the Windrush from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to Tilbury.
Mona celebrated her 22nd birthday as the Windrush steamed up the English Channel on its final approach to Tilbury. She went on to have a successful career on the radio, TV and in films. The presentation was attended by Mona’s great niece, Sharisse Hossein and also by calypsonian Alexander D’Great (Sharisse and Alexander are distant cousins who had never previously met!). Here, courtesy of Lennox Salmon Photography, they are pictured with a rather startled looking Bill Hern whose research brought them together:
Mona also has her own page in the Windrush Generation section of this site.
Last but very much not least, Roxanne Gleave interviewed Edna Chavannes. Edna, rapidly approaching her 90th birthday, came to England in 1951 and worked as a nurse in the NHS for 44 years. She held the audience in rapt attention as she described her early life in Jamaica, the journey to England (seasickness – ‘I was not a sailor, I prefer to fly’), her experiences as a nurse (losing three patients in one night during ‘the great smog’ of 1952), finding happiness with a husband (who made a gift of a pineapple as part of their courtship at a time when such fruits were very exotic and hard to come by in London – we presented Edna with a pineapple as a reminder of that moment from long ago) and bringing up a family of two children (who were both in the audience). Here, again thanks to Lennox Salmon, we see Edna with daughter, Veronica, and son, Leonce:
Edna’s story is also in our ‘Windrush Generation’ section.
We were delighted to see a number of special guests in an audience that included visitors from the USA and France, a barrister, a writer, an academic, a group from a local school and a respected historian from Liverpool. It was a very good day with very positive feedback from those who attended.