Evelina Haverfield

Evelina Haverfield was the daughter of a Scottish baron and grew up between London and the Highlands. She married twice, had two sons with her first husband, an artillery officer, and lived an unconventional life for a woman of her class: she rode a bicycle, went to the Boer War with her second husband and practised shooting.

From 1908 she joined the militant suffragettes of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union. She was arrested several times, once for striking a policeman in the mouth at a demonstration. In the suffrage movement she met the actress Vera “Jack” Holme, who worked as Pankhurst’s chauffeur. From 1911 the two women lived together in Devon; Holme made Haverfield her sole heir.

When the First World War broke out, Haverfield founded the Women’s Emergency Corps and in 1915 went to Serbia with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, together with Holme, who drove ambulances. During the German advance both were taken prisoner and released only in 1916. Missions to Romania and Russia followed.

After the war the two women returned to Serbia. In the small town of Bajina Bašta, Haverfield opened an orphanage for around a hundred children and travelled from village to village to treat sick children. She died there of pneumonia in 1920, aged 52, and was buried with military honours. She left an annuity to Vera Holme, despite a challenge from her husband. A health centre in Bajina Bašta bears her name.