Ryde Social Heritage Group research the social history of the citizens of Ryde, Isle of Wight. Documenting their lives, businesses and burial transcriptions.
RYDE SOCIAL HERITAGE GROUP
Based at Ryde Cemetery Heritage & Learning Centre. Preserving, documenting and promoting the social history of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
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A Great Traveller

Rosita Forbes

A very interested and appreciative audience assembled at the Theatre in Ryde on Tuesday afternoon, when Mrs. Rosita Forbes told the story of her adventurous journey entitled “Kufra, The Secret of the Sahara,” illustrated with many beautiful lantern slides she secured during her journey.  Mrs. Forbes who is a comparatively young lady related her adventures with much fluency and enlisted the full sympathy of her hearers as she related the danger and hardships of the Sahara expedition by no means the least being that of starvation.

She was the first woman to cross the Sahara Desert, but in addition to the thrilling narrative so far as she was personally concerned, she gave a host of valuable facts about the trade routes of the desert and the political inclinations of the Senussi people which were previously unknown.  Above all the lecture so graphically described, was a realistic picture of what Englishwomen can and have endured in undertaking great tasks upon which they have once set their mind, and Mrs. Rosita Forbes showed herself to be a noble embodiment of pluck and perseverance.  Needless to say she was heartily applauded at the close of a very enjoyable and instructive afternoon.

Note:
Mrs. Rosita Forbes nee Joan Rosita Torr, (16 January 1890 – 30 June 1967) was an English travel writer, novelist and explorer. In 1920–1921 she was the first European woman to visit the Kufra Oasis in Libya (together with the Egyptian explorer Ahmed Hassanein), in a period when this was closed to Westerners.

Sources: IW Observer 1st April 1922, RSHG Archive
Image: Wikipedia
Article: Ann Barrett