Rosa Rosenberg was one of the fascinating characters I came across researching The Prime Minister’s Affair. My interest in this clever, redoubtable champion of the Labour Party, Votes for Women, and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, was shared by newspapers at the time too. She accompanied the Prime Minister on his trip to the United States in 1929 – the first by a serving British prime minister. A number of papers carried profiles of Rosa. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle wanted to draw the attention of its Jewish readers to her background and religion. Its special correspondent noted ‘the people who know Rosa admire her most of all because, although as the private secretary to a prime minister she is doing pretty well, she does not overlook the claims of some of her relatives to whom fortune has not been so kind. She would be richer today if she had been a little less unselfish.’
A hard worker, she nevertheless found time for music and dancing, our correspondent informed his readers; ‘and she welcomes attention on the part of her numerous men friends, and if anyone offers to take her out to luncheon or dinner she displays an admirable taste for everything pertaining to the gastronomic art, nor is her choice of wines to be despised!’ One of her ‘curious hobbies’, according to Mr Charles Ody, was collecting gloves and shoes.
Ody did find some space at the end of his article to mention her campaigning for votes for women, for Labour, and her opposition to World War One.
Rosa Rosenberg stayed with MacDonald when the Labour Party split in 1931 and served as his private secretary until 1935. The absolute soul of discretion, she refused all requests for interviews about her time in Downing Street and the MacDonald premiership right to the end. The Daily Eagle’s special correspondent was well informed enough to comment on her loyalty and discretion, observing her ‘gift for keeping secrets.’
The papers were impressed in 1929 that a working class Jewish woman occupied such an influential job at the heart of government. But Rosa wasn’t the first woman to work as private secretary to a prime minister. Britain’s leader in World War One, David Lloyd George, employed his mistress, the very capable, Frances Stevenson as his private secretary. She was less secretive. Historians are grateful for her diaries and correspondence for a unique perspective on life in Downing Street and the premiership of Lloyd George.