Miss Olive Wharry

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m0b__28l
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Family information: Father was a doctor.

Additional Information: Olive was active in the WSPU by 1910 and was arrested in 1911 for taking part in its organised window-smashing campaign. She did the same in 1912 and was sentenced to six months in Winson Green Prison in Birmingham. She took part in a collective hunger strike there and was released early. Olive's militancy escalated and she began to use the alias 'Joyce Locke'. Under this name, she was arrested during a scuffle at a political meeting and, with Lilian Lenton, for burning down the tea pavilion in Kew Gardens. She went on hunger strike in prison and was released after 32 days. Her weight had dropped from nearly 8st (50kg) to 5st 9lbs (36kg). Olive continued with militant activity and hunger striking, having been arrested and temporarily released numerous times under the 'Cat and Mouse Act'. Prison authorities tried to suggest that she was unstable, perhaps even 'insane', as a result of getting mixed up with the suffragette cause. However, there is no evidence of this, and the prison diaries that she kept are upbeat and cheerful, full of sketches of prison life. These are now kept at the British Library.