“Mrs McCheyne and Mrs Mantle have carried on in the most splendid way, the work of our Bromley Office and Baby Clinic at 53 St. Leonard Street, ever since these were started. Now we regret to announce that Mrs McCheyne is compelled to relinquish her work there as she is obliged to leave the district.

All the ELFS’ members know Mrs McCheyne, for she was one of our first recruits in East London, and has always been one of our hardest workers, having served on the ELFS Social Committees and in many other ways as well as Joint Honorary Secretary in Bromley.

We all thank her and hope that we shall see her from time to time.”

- Woman’s Dreadnought, 24 July 1915

This tribute, penned by the founder of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), Sylvia Pankhurst, lifts the lid on the story of one member of the ELFS who had all but disappeared. Join Jane McChrystal as she uncovers the life & work of the incredible Rosaline McCheyne in this guest post:

In 2018 I was doing research for the Women’s Hall Exhibition at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive, when I kept coming across the name Rosaline McCheyne in the minutes of ELFS’ committee meetings. The minutes report the splendid work she did from the Bromley district office between 1914 and 1916, but Rosaline herself says little, which I found intriguing. I decided to dig a little deeper.

It’s true that there are no records of her going on hunger-strike or being arrested. Unlike Pankhurst, she did not have the ear of the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, or the Leader of the Independent Labour Party, Kier Hardie, but as a member of ELFS she made a real difference to the lives of women and children of the East End. She is one of many who worked tirelessly for women’s suffrage with little to no recognition. 

Her efforts did not put her in the spotlight, but they required dedication and a degree of courage. Canvassing and selling Woman’s Dreadnought on the streets of Bow wasn’t an easy job. The minutes repeatedly document how hard it was to find pitches and maintain a steady number of sales. 

The Bromley district was an exception to this trend and during one week in July 1915 sales of the Dreadnought hit 1000 there. As office secretary, Rosaline, would have played an important part in this achievement by finding pitches and organising sellers. She also sold copies herself. Her other activities included recruitment and collecting subscriptions, a difficult task when many struggled to finding money to feed their children. 

Whatever she did for ELFS on the East End’s streets, it must have been a challenge. Women had only recently gained the right to walk and travel outside the home without a chaperone free from social stigma. Then, there was active local opposition to the cause, evidenced by the problem with securing pitches. Rosaline would have needed a confident, assertive front in her dealings with East End people, who wouldn’t have hesitated to voice a dissenting point of view.  

The work Rosaline did with Mrs. Mantle running the Mother and Baby Clinic on 53 St. Leonard Street was life-saving. ELFS set up the clinic as part of their response to the multiple hardships which hit the East End on the outbreak of World War One. The war had terrible consequences for children, and babies in particular, as a result of milk shortages, exacerbated by racketeers who diverted the available supplies to those who could afford to pay inflated prices. ELFS established free milk distribution centres to feed the hungry, where it soon emerged that starving infants couldn’t take in and digest nourishment. So, Mother and Baby Clinics were set up around the East End to teach women special feeding techniques and keep records of their children’s intake. They also distributed free barley, eggs and, in addition, provided free medical care.

Hard-working Rosaline was also responsible for bailing out members of ELFS who were arrested on 24th May 1914 during the May Day celebrations in Victoria Park, where the police treated Pankhurst’s bodyguard with shocking brutality when they came to arrest her and take her to Holloway Prison. Rosaline was not on the frontline on this occasion but the role she played was typical of her contribution to ELFS – vital but invisible. All the administrative skills required to act as Bromley’s Joint Honorary Secretary and serve on the ELFS Social Committee - timetabling, record-keeping, coordinating and directing others were indispensable to the smooth day to day running of the federation. It is no wonder, then, that she received such a warm tribute in the Woman’s Dreadnought on the announcement of her departure from ELFS. The minutes show that Rosaline did return from time to time, and she is last mentioned on 21st February 1916. The traces of her life and work in the East End of London are still there for us to see in the Dreadnought, the Census of 1911 and the ELFS’ archive. 

In September 2018, I had the great good fortune to meet one of Rosaline’s relatives, Anne Padfield, who was able to answer the multitude of questions that my research had raised but didn’t have answers to.

But first, we uncovered a mystery - Rosaline did not leave the East End in 1915. In fact, she didn’t go until 1925, when the McCheyne’s moved to Forest Drive, Leytonstone. We could only speculate - maybe she burned out or encountered opposition from her husband, Herbert who, it turned out, was a keen supporter of the Conservative Party. Perhaps she was fed up with the increasing strife within ELFS recorded in the minutes, or maybe she didn’t share Pankhurst’s increasingly socialist agenda. 

Rosaline lived to the age of 84 and spent her later years at the end of the District Line in suburban Upminster. Both her sons Donald and Bob managed to avoid serving in the armed forces during the First and Second World Wars and lived quiet lives as clerks. She had lost Herbert many years before and her children supported and cared for her as she grew frail and approached the end of her life. 

Rosaline saw her daughter, Georgina, whom Anne Padfield knew well, benefit from the increased opportunities for women ELFS campaigned for - the right to vote, gain an education and pursue a career. Anne remembers a kind aunt who enthralled her and her siblings with bed-time stories and her passion for literature, especially the novels of Charles Dickens. Thanks to Georgina’s dress-making skills the children also won any fancy dress competitions they entered. She was, in fact a talented pattern cutter and seamstress, whose expertise earned her a lectureship at one of Essex’s newly-established technical colleges. Rosaline must have been proud of her.

Author

Jane McChrystal is an independent researcher and writer based on the Isle of Dogs. She writes about a wide variety of cultural and historical subjects, with a particular interest in the history of the East End of London. Her book The Splendid Mrs. McCheyne and the East London Federation of Suffragettes was published by The Choir Press in 2020.

Sources

The complete run of Woman’s Dreadnoughts are available for consultation at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive

ELFS Committee Meeting Minutes between 28th February 1914 and 21st February 1916, transcribed by Rosemary Lucas

Harrison, S. 2012. Sylvia Pankhurst: the Rebellious Suffragette. Golden Guides Press.

Jackson, S and Taylor ,R. 2014. Voices from History: East London Suffragettes. The History Press.