Evelyn Cheesman was a British entomologist and traveller. Between 1924 and 1952, Cheesman went on 8 solo expeditions in the South Pacific, and collected over 70,000 specimens, which she accompanied with sketches and notes. These are now part of the collections of the Natural History Museum.
Cheesman was one of five children of Florence Maud Tassell and Robert Cheesman, born 8 October 1882. Interested in the natural world, Cheesman was unable to train for a career as a veterinary surgeon because the Royal Veterinary College did not accept women students in 1906.
After World War I, she met Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, professor of entomology at Imperial College of Science and honorary curator of the insect house at Zoological Society of London, and studied entomology. In May 1917, Evelyn took up the position of Assistant Curator of Insects at London Zoo. In 1919 she became a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London. In 1920 she was the first woman employed as a curator at London Zoo.
In 1924 she was invited to join the St George zoological expedition to the Marquesas and Galapagos Islands as entomologist, alongside Anglo-Irish explorer and entomologist Cynthia Longfield. Cheesman considered the expedition to be disorganised, and left it at Tahiti. She was able to continue exploring and gathering specimens on her own with the help of £100 from her brother Bob. From then on, Cheesman preferred to travel alone.
In 1926, she resigned as Insect Curator and affiliated herself, unpaid, with the natural history department of the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum). She spent most of the next twelve years on expeditions, travelling to New Guinea, the New Hebrides and other islands in the Pacific Ocean. In New Guinea she made a collecting expedition to the coastal area between Aitape and Jayapura and visited the nearby Cyclop Mountains. She was known in the islands as 'the woman who walks' and 'the lady of the mountains'.
During the Second World War she returned to England and did war work, but injured her back. After the war, in 1949-50, she travelled to the Pacific islands again, but due to ongoing pain, decided to give up active exploration. She assisted at the Natural History Museum for many years as an unpaid volunteer. In 1954, after hip replacement surgery, at the age of seventy-three, she felt well enough to again go on an expedition to Aneityum in the South Pacific. She had a house, named 'Red Crest', built for herself about five kilometres inland from Alelgauhat village. During her nine-month stay she collected 10,000 insects and 500 plants.
She was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1955 New Year Honours, and was granted a civil list pension in the same year for her contributions to entomology. She continued to work at the museum, writing and classifying specimens, until her death in London on 15 April 1969.
