Miss Agnes Olive Beamish

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2018/02/06/agness-olive-beamish/
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/surveillance-image-of-a-suffragette-prisoner/MwEEgG7EC0xpgw
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3214/how-effective-was-the-votes-for-women-campaign-in-bristol

Family information: Irish landowners. Family moved to Bristol so Olive's brothers could attend Clifton College.

Additional Information: Olive joined the WSPU aged 16, wearing her 'votes for women' badge to Clifton High School, Bristol. In 1913, she was arrested under the alias 'Phylis Brady' in Mitcham, in possession of incendiary materials including paraffin, and was suspected of attempted arson. She went on hunger strike in prison, was forcibly fed and then temporarily released under the government 'Cat and Mouse Act'. Olive then went 'underground' so that she could continue her militant activity. She was finally rearrested in 1914, following a surveillance 'tip off' to police, and was charged in addition with setting fire to the house of Lady White at Egham, Surrey, the year before. Olive was found guilty and, after a plea for clemency from the jury, was sentenced to 18 months in prison with hard labour. She went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed, but was temporarily released to recover in order to stand trial. She fled but was recaptured and began another hunger strike in prison. She was forcibly fed for 30 days, twice a day, fiercely resisting each time, and there is evidence to suggest that she was secretly drugged to try to stop her from resisting. She was eventually released in March into a doctor's care, having signed an agreement that, provided she took no further part in, or incited others to, law-breaking activities, she would not have to return to prison. She returned to the family home just outside Bristol a month later. From 1914 until 1919, Olive worked as an organiser in Sylvia Pankhurst's East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), formed after she split from her mother and sister in the WSPU.

Other Suffrage Activities: Before the outbreak of war, Olive began work as an organiser for the Workers Socialist Federation, also working as a 'typewriter' from home to supplement her income. By 1919, she founded her own typewriting business in London and, in 1920, joined the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, for which she became vice president. In 1940?1, she was a member of the national executive of the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union and later sat on the executive committee of the Sudbury and Woodbridge (Suffolk) Labour Party.