FAMOUS TYPISTE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 203, 28 July 1937, Page 13

FAMOUS TYPISTE

WOMAN WHO KEPT SECRETS. ELUSIVE CELEBRITY. Not ago. Miss Rose Rosenberg, C.8.E., said good-bye to Whitehall. She has taken with her, locked in her heart, the State secrets of 15 years. As private secretary to Mr Ramsay MacDonald, this neat, dark- ' eyed, dark-haired little woman has seen Governments rise and fall and history made. | At that holy of holies, the offices of His Majesty’s Privy Council, she has occupied a position that tradition had barred to womankind. Mr MacDonald was President of the Council and she was the custodian of his secrets. Behind the scenes in Downing Street, Whitehall and St. Stephen’s, London, she has seen all, heard all, and said nothing. When she went to America with Mr MacDonald a feu r years ago the reporters swarmed round her. Experts in the journalistic “third degree,” they were tired, baffled, and beaten. “Stonewall Rose” they called her in headlines.

She has been in politics from girlhood. At 17, when she started as a tvpiste in a city office, the vote-for-women movement was in full swing. Aliss Rosenberg became a suffragette, but refused to tie herself to railings or throw herself at policemen. Her chosen part was to show quietly that a woman could do work which until then only men had done. From then till now she has shown triumphantly that a woman can keep secrets.

She seems just another smart, efficient little woman and she makes no effort to stand out among the crowd. Yet, after all, self-effacement is the essence of her job and it is not her fault that she is the most famous typist in the world. Elusive as Garbo, she has become a celebrity in spite of herself.