One passenger who attracted more press attention than any other when the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on 21st May 1948 was Evelyn Wauchope, a stowaway.
The London Evening Standard of 22nd carried an item headlined ‘Stowaway Avril got £50’. This refers to Avril Wauchope (there was some confusion as to the spelling of her name) , the ‘pretty and dusky Kingston dressmaker.’ She was quoted as saying:
‘There were no prospects for me in Jamaica. I could not get a normal passage so I slipped aboard – I’m not telling you how – and hid. Troops fed me with food brought from their canteen.’
The report says that:
‘Mortimer Martin, manager of five Jamaican boxers, organised a whip round on the troop deck which realised £50. So Avril’s fare (£48) was found and now, with £4 in her pocket, she is heading for France.’
Writing in The Daily Worker, Peter Fryer (who would later write the seminal book on black British history, ‘Staying Power’) also mentioned Evelyn:
‘Miss Evelyn Wauchbe, a coloured girl, who was one of eight stowaways. When it became too cold to sleep out at night, Miss Wauchbe had to give herself up. The news spread like wildfire. Someone took the hat round and £48 was collected to pay for a first class fare.’
The subject of Windrush stowaways is almost worth a separate article, suffice to say that, although nobody knows the precise number, there were certainly more than eight!
Mystery has surrounded what became of Evelyn, a mystery that, thanks to original research by Bill Hern and the rest of the Historycal Roots team we can now clear up.
First let’s dispose of three red herrings.
At least one contemporary press story (e.g. The Evening Standard on 22nd June) suggested that Evelyn might go to France. Fellow Windrush passenger, Nancy Cunard, an heiress to the Cunard shipping line but something of a renegade, spent many years living in France and reportedly had taken an interest in Evelyn’s plight. In one version of events, Nancy had paid her fare so that Evelyn could make the Windrush crossing in the comfort of a cabin (mind you, almost everyone on board claims to have had a hand in raising Evelyn’s fare). There is no evidence to suggest Evelyn went to France, with or without Nancy Cunard.
You may have read that Evelyn emigrated to the United States and died at Mendocino in California on 5th September 1990. As with so much fake history on the internet, this contains a grain of truth but only a small grain. Unfortunately the Evelyn Wauchope who died in California was definitely not the Windrush stowaway as she had been born in South Dakota on 20th June 1917!
The final red herring is an account in Sam King’s auto biography ‘Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain’. Having described the story of the stowaway in some detail, he states that she emigrated to America where she ran a successful lodging house in Mount Vernon, New York. So far so good. The problem with this version of events is that he gives her the name Eva Buckley. We assumed this meant Evelyn had married a man called Buckley but we could find no trace of any such wedding. The simple reason for that is that, although some aspects of Sam King’s story are accurate, the wedding to Mr Buckley never happened! We seemed to have reached a dead end.
But now, the true story of what became of Evelyn Wauchope can be told.
We get a glimpse of her among those waiting for one of the buses that had been arranged by the authorities to transport the Windrush passengers to London:
We had already established that, following disembarkation at Tilbury, she quickly found a place to stay at a hostel in Earls Court, 18 Collingham Gardens to be precise. We know this because she is shown on the electoral register, information for which would have been collected in June 1948. Two other Windrush passengers, Mona Baptiste and Edith Demetrius, were also at the same address. That much was already known but, thanks to a new discovery by Bill Hern, we can move the story on.
On 25th October 1952 Evelyn Wauchope married Grafton Othniel Holdip at St Pancras Register Office. Grafton was a Bajan, born on 3rd June 1923 in St George parish, Barbados. He was the son of James Holdip and Maude (nee Hinds). Grafton had a son, Hamilton, before moving to England. We don’t know when Grafton came to England (we do know that his son followed him, eventually dying in Oldham, Lancashire in November 2017) but it was long enough before October 1952 for him to meet and woo Evelyn. He was actually fourteen years younger than his bride although he gave his age as 35 to the registrar (reducing the age difference to eight years). At the time of the ceremony, Grafton was living at 74 Gloucester Avenue, NW1, Evelyn gave the same address. Witnesses at the wedding were Beryl Spence and the delightfully named Charles A Licorish.
Grafton had a sister who had been living in New York since at least 1931 as that’s when she got married in White Plains, a northern suburb of New York. In 1954 Grafton and Evelyn clearly decided to make a new life for themselves in America as on 22nd March they boarded the SS American Producer at London docks (presumably Tilbury where Evelyn had arrived almost six years earlier) and set sail for New York. In contrast to her previous Atlantic crossing she had a 1st class ticket. They disembarked on 5th April with four pieces of hand luggage, a carton and a sewing machine (Evelyn had declared her occupation as ‘seamstress’ when she first arrived in England and as a dressmaker on her wedding certificate so she was clearly taking the tools of her trade with her).
The couple were heading for 117 Warren Avenue, White Plains (this might perhaps have been the address of Grafton’s sister).
By 1960 Evelyn and Grafton had both become US citizens and made more than one trip back to England, this time by plane. There is a landing card for Evelyn showing her arriving in New York on 15th July 1960 and one for Grafton when he landed in New York on 5th January 1961 on a flight from Barbados. On 12th October 1961 they were both on a flight from London that touched down in New York.
We don’t know the reasons for these flights (although we speculate that Grafton’s trip to Barbados could have been to attend a funeral) but clearly the couple were not impoverished.
Sam King’s story about a lodging house appears to be supported by the address given at the time of these flights: 19 Primrose Street, White Plains:
This is clearly a substantial property, although it appears that Grafton and Evelyn only occupied the upper floor (this is according to the widow of Hamilton Holdip who had visited Grafton there). Grafton continued to work as a mechanic, presumably Evelyn made money as a dressmaker and they may have rented out a room (or rooms). The evidence suggests that the couple made a success of their lives in America.
Evelyn died at White Plains, on 20th May 1984. Grafton lived until 11th April 2017, dying at the age of 93. He is buried in plot 278 of the Rock Garden section of Kensico cemetery in White Plains, New York and Evelyn is buried in the same plot. A simple tablet marks her final resting place:
Finally we learn that Evelyn was born on 10th November 1908. The inscription reads:
‘”The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.”
If anyone is able to visit the cemetery, say a respectful ‘hello’ from the Historycal Roots team, we wish them peace.
