Rosa Bates
According to Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett:
Bates, Miss Rosa, English schoolteacher who joined the TS while in America in 1878. Returned to England in November of that year and, in 1879, went with the Founders to India. For a time she was part of the household at the Bombay headquarters but she and Mrs. Coulomb were at odds much of the time. Mr. Edward Wimbridge (see Alphabetical Note) took her part. Both left in 1880, and Miss Bates resigned from the TS.[1]
Additional details about Rosa Bates were published in a circular letter of September 7, 1880, addressed to "Theosophists and Arya Samajists" by Henry S. Olcott and H. P. Blavatsky, which was printed in the Indian periodical The Vivekavarthani at the urging of Damodar K. Mavalankar. In it the Founders stated that Bates and Wimbridge had become members a few weeks before sailing for India. The two did not assist in establishing the Society in India, and did not sympathize with the Founders' activities. Rosa Bates got into a rather public quarrel with another woman and was eventually expelled from the Society.[2]
Notes
- ↑ George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 218 .
- ↑ Henry S. Olcott and H. P. Blavatsky circular letter to Theosophists and Arya Samajists. September 7,1880. Published in The Vivekavarthani pages 159-160. Photostat of article is in Sidney Cook correspondence. Boris de Zirkoff Papers. Records Series 22. Theosophical Society in America Archives.