Pauline Henriques broke more than one glass ceiling in her career – as the first black actress on British TV and the BBC World Service radio, and latterly (under her married name Pauline Crabbe) as a groundbreaking social campaigner and the first black magistrate. For her role and responsibility towards women, she said ‘Any woman who is a first in a field previously dominated by men has the responsibility of opening doors for other women.’
Having emigrated from Jamaica with her family in 1919, she attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) in 1932. She said later ‘I appeared in many school productions, but I had to play my parts in white face, including Lady Bracknell and Lady Macbeth! I went along with it because I was very anxious to learn my craft, and to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress.’ Despite having ‘an English accent which was perfect for ‘classic’ roles’, parts for black actresses at the time were virtually non-existent. She became a regular presenter on Caribbean Voices for the BBC’s West Indian Service from the show’s inception in 1943.
In 1946 she was the first black actress to appear on British TV screens, playing a major role in Eugene O’Neill’s controversial play ‘All God’s Chillun Got Wings’. In 1947 an American play with a black cast, Anna Lucasta, successfully transferred from Broadway to His Majesty’s Theatre. It ran for about two years and offered understudy work to several British black actors like Henriques. In pursuit of her craft she organized the understudies into the Negro Theatre Company, which staged several productions. She performed on stage and screen, in a variety of roles during the 1950s: a highlight being cast by Kenneth Tynan as Emilia in Othello, for an Arts Council 3,000 mile national tour. She also appeared in BBC’s ‘A man from the Sun’ a 1956 BBC television drama documentary that for the first time portrayed the lives of Caribbean settlers in post-war Britain. ‘There hadn’t been anything else like that written about black people for TV.’
Pauline then transitioned to a remarkable second career in counselling for forty years, working particularly with unmarried mothers and adolescents. She was instrumental in introducing counselling into situations where women sought abortions, which had only recently become legal. She championed and helped gain acceptance of counselling for pregnant teenagers, especially those under the age of 16 to determine whether abuse had been involved. From 1957 to 1969, she was first Welfare Secretary then Deputy General Secretary of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child, later Brook Advisory Services, for which she was awarded an OBE in 1960. She was appointed National Vice Chairman until her retirement in 1986. During the 1960’s she also helped form the Havistock Housing Trust, was appointed to the Housing Corporation in 1967, and worked with the Race Relations Board. In her 80’s she was still making a positive contribution to her community, running a local play-writing group and volunteering for Brighton Women’s Centre.
Pauline was popularly known as ’Paul’ by family and friends. Her great-granddaughter, Maoki Critchlaw-Bunce, is petitioning for a statue to her, and says: ‘The lessons I carry from my Jamaican heritage are to act with intelligence, don’t be afraid to challenge authority and the status quo, and to be a positive member of your community. I am incredibly proud to have a mixed heritage, it reminds me that I am a citizen of the world and that this is represented by the diversity here in Britain.’
Sue Delafons, with thanks to Louise Peskett for research.