1. Olive Wharry was an English artist, arsonist and suffragette, who in 1913 was imprisoned with Lilian Lenton for burning down the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens.
21 Facts About Olive Wharry
1. 2.
Olive Wharry was born into a middle-class family in London, the daughter of Clara and Robert Wharry, a doctor; she was the only child of her father's first marriage.
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Olive Wharry grew up in London, then the family moved to Devon when her father retired from medicine.
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On leaving school Olive Wharry became an art student at the School of Art in Exeter, and in 1906 she travelled around the world with her father and mother.
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Olive Wharry became active in the Women's Social and Political Union and was a member of the Church League for Women's Suffrage.
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In November 1911 Olive Wharry was arrested for taking part in a WSPU window-smashing campaign, and, after being released on bail guaranteed by Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and Mrs Saul Solomon, was sentenced to two months' imprisonment.
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In March 1912 Olive Wharry was arrested again after more window-smashing and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in Winson Green Prison in Birmingham.
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Olive Wharry took part in a hunger strike and was released in July 1912, before completing her sentence.
9.
Olive Wharry was sentenced to five days in prison, but during that time she managed to smash her cell windows.
10.
Olive Wharry stated that she and Lenton had checked that the tea pavilion was empty before setting fire to it.
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Olive Wharry added that she had believed that the pavilion belonged to the Crown, and that she wished for the two women who actually owned it to understand that she was fighting a war, and that in a war even non-combatants had to suffer.
12.
In prison Olive Wharry went on hunger strike for 32 days, passing her food to other prisoners, apparently unnoticed by the warders.
13.
Olive Wharry said that during her time in prison her weight had plummeted from.
14.
In May 1913, her father, Dr Richard Wharry, was prosecuted for assaulting the process server who came to Holsworthy to serve a writ for Olive Wharry to pay compensation for the fire damage at Kew.
15.
Olive Wharry was arrested and imprisoned eight times between 1910 and 1914 for her part in various WSPU window-smashing campaigns, sometimes under the name "Phyllis North", sometimes as "Joyce Locke".
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Olive Wharry was sent to Holloway Prison to complete this sentence, and where she was held, on hunger strike, in solitary confinement.
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Olive Wharry was given a Hunger Strike Medal "for Valour" by the WSPU.
18.
Olive Wharry was released into the care of Dr Flora Murray on 10 August 1914 under the Government's amnesty of suffrage prisoners.
19.
Later in life Olive Wharry made her home at Dart Bank in Burridge Road in Torquay in Devon.
20.
Olive Wharry made fellow Suffragette Constance Bryer an executor of her 1946 will, in which she requested that her body be cremated and her ashes scattered on "the high open spaces of the Moor between Exeter and Whitstone".
21.
Olive Wharry died at Heath Court Nursing Home in Torquay in 1947 at the age of 61.