Vera Holme

Vera Holme (1910)

Vera Louise Holme , also Vera Jack Holm (born August 29, 1881 in Birkdale , Southport , †  January 1, 1969 in Glasgow ), was an English actress and suffragette . She became known as the driver for Emmeline Pankhurst .

Life

Vera Holme was born in 1881 to Mary Louisa Crowe and Richard Holme, a timber merchant in Birkdale. She had a brother. Little is known about their training; at a young age she was given training in a convent school in Belgium. She is said to have been a good violinist and singer and belonged in the 1906–1907 and 1908–1909 seasons to the women's choir of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company , which held the sole right to perform the comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan . Also, photos of her in the London School of Economics women's library suggest that she is sometimes in trouser roles in amateur theaters and had appeared at least once in a comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Act as a suffragette

Holme later met Elizabeth Robins , Kitty Marion , Edith Craig , Inez Bensusan , Ellen Terry , Lillah McCarthy , Sybil Thorndike , Lena Ashwell , Christabel Marshall , Lillie Langtry and Nina Boucicault from the Actresses' Franchise League (AFL), an association of Actresses who advocated women 's suffrage in addition to education for women . The meeting took place in the Criterion Restaurant in Piccadilly Circus .

Holme became a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1908. She initially worked with Annie Kenney , Clara Codd and Elsie Howey and met Mary Blathwayt , whose father, Captain Linley Blathwayt, supported the organization and trained for her Built a retreat, the "Eagle House" or "Suffragette Rest". Holme was a lesbian, and the Eagle House became a meeting place for the women, including Christabel Pankhurst .

Vera Holme as Emmeline Pankhurst's driver

A donation from a supporter of the WSPU was able to buy a car for Emmeline Pankhurst so she could tour the country. Vera Holme has been appointed her chauffeur. She had probably learned to drive while touring the country with the theater troupe.

Holme appeared in November 1909 as Hannah Snell in the play A Pageant of Great Women by Cicely Hamilton , which was performed by the Actresses' Franchise League. She was still a member of the WSPU, and in 1910 Linley Blathwayt planted a tree in her honor in his " Suffragette Arboretum ". After being thrown from a stone, she was sentenced to five days in prison in 1911. From 1911 she lived with Evelina Haverfield .

Vera Holme (left, 1918)

England declared on August 4, 1914 Germany war . Just two days later, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies announced that they would suspend all political action until the war ended. The leadership of the Women's Social and Political Union also began to work with the government, and on August 10 the government announced that all suffragettes imprisoned would be released. Emmeline Pankhurst stated that she would cease her militant resistance and declare herself ready for military service. In 1914 Evelina Haverfield founded the Women's Emergency Corps, an organization that trained women to be doctors, nurses and motorcycle messengers for use on the front lines. Holme became a major in the corps and in 1915 took over responsibility for the horses and trucks of the Scottish Women's Hospital for Foreign Service in Serbia . The director of the Elsie Inglis hospital sent Holme to London to report to Lord Derby, Minister of War, on the situation of the Serbian army on the Romanian front.

Haverfield died of pneumonia in 1920. She left Holme a lifelong annual pension of £ 50. Holme now lived with Margaret Greenless and Margaret Ker, and she also spent time with Edith Craig, Clare Atwood and Christabel Marshall, who had formed a menage-à-trois . Other visitors were Radclyffe Hall , Una Troubridge , Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf .

Vera Holme died on January 1, 1969 at the age of 87 in Glasgow of kidney failure and arteriosclerosis.

literature

• Elizabeth Crawford: The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928 . Routledge, 2003, ISBN 978-1-135-43402-1 , pp. 289 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Commons : Vera Holme  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ The National Archives: The Discovery Service. In: gov.uk. discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk, accessed February 24, 2019 (British English).  
2. ^ A Savoyard Suffragette (PDF) , accessed February 24, 2019
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Vera Holme. In: spartacus-educational.com. Spartacus Educational, accessed February 24, 2019 .