WSPU chauffeur

30

Single

Peace Cottage, Brendon, North Devon

WSPU & AFL

Evades

Vera Holme (1881-1969) was born in Lancashire. She received a small allowance from her father, a timber merchant, but was required to make her own living. Little is known about her education, but she was an accomplished singer and violinist and set her mind to a career on stage. She decided to pursue life as an actor and singer and quickly made her name as ‘Jack’ Holme performing a popular cross-dressing music hall act (see images). At some point in 1908, Vera joined the suffrage movement, as part of the Actresses Franchise League (open to anyone involved with the theatrical profession) and the WSPU and was renowned for her feisty, irrepressible spirit. She was once described by Sylvia Pankhurst as ‘a noisy explosive young person, frequently rebuked by her elders for lack of dignity’. Little wonder then that later in the campaign, her fiery personality led her to join the Young Hot Bloods; a secretive society within the WSPU made up of younger members (aged under 30) who were fully prepared to undertake 'danger duty' for the WSPU and the cause. Vera took part in a variety of suffrage activities. In June 1909 on horseback, she presented the Prime Minister with a letter announcing the imminent arrival of a WSPU deputation. By August, she was chauffeur to WSPU’s leading figures Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and wore a WSPU-coloured uniform and peaked cap. Vera was especially proud of an ‘act’ she carried out with (see) Elsie Howey in Bristol. There, the two hid inside a musical organ in Calston Hall ready for a meeting chaired by Liberal minister Augustine Birrell on Land Tax. During the meeting Vera and Elsie repeatedly shouted out 'Votes for women!' and it took bemused officials several minutes to discover the women’s hiding place. In 1911, Vera likely evaded the 1911 census as she does not appear in the record. She was sent to prison for five days for throwing stones in November that year following the government’s torpedoing of the Conciliation bill, at which time she was temporarily staying in London’s Buckingham-Gate, probably at number 24 with Mrs Adeline Cecil Chapman, suffrage supporter and mother to suffragette Mildred Mansel with whom Vera was friends. However, Vera had by then met and fell in love with fellow suffragette (see) the Honourable Evelina Haverfield who had purchased ‘Peace Cottage’ in Devon in 1910 where the couple are located on our map. Although they led peripatetic lives - like many suffragettes dwelling briefly in various places across the country - Peace Cottage remained a constant in their lives together until Evelina’s death in 1920. No letters survive, but glimpses of the couple’s romantic relationship can be found in a surviving acrostic poem written to Evelina by Vera (see image) and in Vera’s gift of a bed they slept in at Peace Cottage with their initials EH and VH carved on alternate sides. When War broke out in 1914, Vera joined the Women's Volunteer Reserve and served in the Transport Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospital (SWH). She oversaw horses and trucks and was said to be an excellent mechanic and Evelina worked with her as an SWH administrator and overseer of the transport unit. As a couple they became deeply concerned with the plight of the Serbian people during their war work. Vera became administrator of a fund and home Evelina had founded for Serbian soldiers and orphans upon her death in 1920 as well as receiving £50 a year for life in Evelina's will. Later, Vera lived in Scotland sharing a home with artists (see images) Dorothy Johnstone and Anne Finlay where she also rekindled her love of the theatre. She put on local plays in Scotland and at the Barn Theatre in Smallhythe, Kent, overseen by former suffrage campaigner, friend, playwright and performer, Edith Craig. Vera died in 1969. Sources: Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928 (London: 1999); Women's Library at LSE Papers & resources, esp., https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2017/03/15/vera-jack-holme-one-of-the-stars-of-the-womens-library-collection/ & https://artsandculture.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/vera-jack-holme-lse-library/jQLSqKybfPY_Kw?hl=en