Roseanne O'Reilly, who died on February 6 aged 84, was a librarian at the House of Commons for 40 years and the first executive woman servant of the Palace of Westminster.
Newly elected members would be astonished to find her at the centre desk of the Reference Room, with all references to their pre-parliamentary speeches in the press already copied and filed ready for use. Experienced members knew that the most obscure references in Hansard could be identified in seconds, even before the computer era, thanks to her encyclopedic knowledge of the labyrinthine filing systems.
[I've added a hyperlink to Hansard: the traditional name for the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government.]
Ever ready to take up inquiries which went far beyond her official remit, she coped with demands over the years from hundreds of MPs who often were impatient and nearly always in a hurry. On one occasion an irascible Liverpool MP put his head around the door and shouted for the text of The Magnificat. Then a Liberal MP demanded the words of The Raggle Taggle Gypsies before a Scottish socialist interrupted them to demand the ages of Joseph and Mary at the time of the Nativity in order to learn whether the Holy Family would have been entitled to supplementary benefit. All were attended to with unflappable calm.
[Magnificat: — also known as the Song of Mary — is a canticle frequently sung (or spoken) liturgically in Christian church services. Raggle Taggle Gypsies is a Scottish traditional folk ballad.]
Mary Roseanne O'Reilly was born into an old Roman Catholic family in Surrey on New Year's Day 1926. Her father was a colonel in the Indian Army and her uncle flag officer of the battlecruiser Invincible, which sank at the Battle of Jutland; other relations had entered the service of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the 18th century and been elevated to the nobility.
After schooling by Sacred Heart nuns at Hove, Roseanne O'Reilly joined the Wrens and was posted to Bletchley Park. But she referred to her job only 50 years later when a book on wartime code breaking was published with a photograph showing her standing, back to the camera, in front of a vast Heath Robinson apparatus described simply as "the computer".
On her demobilisation, her godfather, Hilary St George Saunders, the Commons Librarian, offered her a post in the Library at £2 10s a week. The appointment caused a mild sensation. Roseanne O'Reilly was much amused after a few weeks when a member put his head around the door and then backed out in horror, exclaiming: "Good God, they're not putting a girl in here, are they?"
Gradually her confidence grew – though nobody spoke to her for the first year. She was appointed MBE in 1971, and by the time she retired in 1986, there were no fewer than 87 women working in the Library (as well as 41 men).
There were glowing tributes to her in Hansard from both sides of the House. After devoting some time to family affairs, a chance meeting with Betty Boothroyd led to Roseanne O'Reilly being recalled to assist her in her duties as the first female Speaker.
For eight years Roseanne O'Reilly put at Madam Speaker's disposal all her considerable organisational and diplomatic skills. With the election of a new Speaker, she retired a second time. When her colleagues in the Library gave her a farewell lunch, she noted that she had seen 12 prime ministers and nine Speakers since joining the House in Clement Attlee's time. "Such fun", she said, "Lovely place. I haven't been bored once."
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