Jack Holme | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Vera "Jack" Holme as WSPU chauffeur | |
| Born | Vera Louise Holme 29 August 1881 Birkdale, England |
| Died | 1 January 1969 (aged 87) Glasgow, Scotland |
| Occupation(s) | Actress, activist, chauffeur, administrator |
| Known for | Cross dressing and being "the Pankhursts' chauffeur" |
| Partner | Evelina Haverfield (d. 1920) |
Vera Louise Holme, also known as Jack Holme (29 August 1881 – 1 January 1969), was a British actress and a suffragette. Born in Lancashire, she began working as a touring male impersonator when her parents could no longer support her. A talented violinist and singer, she also was a member of the chorus of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and later became a member of the Pioneer Players. After joining the Actresses' Franchise League, she became involved in the women's suffrage movement. She became the Pankhursts' chauffeur and the first professional woman driver in London.
With the outbreak of World War I Holme joined her partner Evelina Haverfield in the Women's Volunteer Reserve. In 1915 they went to Serbia with the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service (SWH) as an ambulance driver and head of their transport services. When the Central Powers invaded Serbia, she and Haverfield refused evacuation to stay with their patients. They were arrested and held as prisoners of war for several months, but after they were released, they returned to work in SWH units in Romania and Russia. At the end of the war, she was honoured with medals by both Russia and Serbia, and returned to Serbia where she helped establish and run an orphanage from 1919 to 1922.
In 1923, Holme returned to Britain and began to perform again, moving to Scotland with two fellow veterans of the SWH. She and her ménage à trois partners, Margaret Greenlees and Margaret Ker, lived together in a home in Lochearnhead, until Ker moved out in 1939. Holme became a speaker and lecturer for the Women's Rural Institutes and also managed and produced plays in the region. She remained in a relationship with Greenlees until the latter died in 1952.
Holme died in Glasgow in 1969. Her archive is held by the Women's Library at the London School of Economics. Having continued correspondence for many years with her colleagues from the SWH, her papers give evidence of and insight into lesbian lives in the interwar period in both Britain and Serbia.