{{Infobox person | image = Olive Leared (née Hockin) 1914.jpg | caption = Photograph created by the United Kingdom's Criminal Record Office | birth_date = 1881 | death_date = 1936 | alma_mater = Slade School of Fine Art | occupation = suffragette, arsonist, author and artist | children = 2 }} {{short description|British suffragette and painter (1881–1936)}} {{use dmy dates|date=March 2016}}{{use list-defined references|date=March 2016}}{{Use British English|date=March 2016}}
'''Olive Hockin''' (married name '''Olive Leared'''; 1881–1936) was a British suffragette, arsonist, author and artist.{{r|crawford|page2=287}}{{r|white}}
==Career== left|thumb|''Pan! Pan! O Pan! Bring Back thy Reign Again Upon the Earth'', 1914 by Olive Hockin Between 1904 and 1911 Hockie studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Her work was shown at the Royal Academy, by the Society of Women Artists and at the Walker Gallery.{{r|crawford|page2=287}}
== Activism == Hockin joined the suffragette movement and Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1912. In 1913, after arson attacks on the Roehampton Golf Club and on a house at Walton Heath belonging to Lloyd George, suspected to be suffragette-related, Hockin was arrested, convicted and handed a four-month sentence. Her flat was said to contain stones, kerosene and false car number plates.{{r|crawford|page2=287}} Hockin claimed she was not guilty of the charges and objected to the male dominated justice system, saying that: "a court composed entirely of men have no moral right to convict and sentence a woman, and until women have the power of voting I shall continue to defy the law, whether I am in prison or out of it."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |title=Young Hot Bloods |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/Young_Hot_Bloods.htm |access-date=2025-03-21 |website=Spartacus Educational |language=en}}</ref> Once imprisoned, unusually she agreed not to go on hunger strike if she was allowed to paint.<ref name="npg" /> She was treated as a "Category One prisoner", and it was said by a fellow prisoner, Margaret Scott, that she carved the chair in her cell.<ref name="whn">{{Cite news|url=https://womenshistorynetwork.org/strong-willed-courageous-margaret-schencke-a-woman-of-fortitude/|title=Strong Willed & Courageous … Margaret Schencke – A Woman of Fortitude|date=2015-02-08|work=Women's History Network|access-date=2018-05-05|language=en-GB}}</ref>
The National Portrait Gallery has a picture of her by the Criminal Record Office, and two pages of "Surveillance Photograph of Militant Suffragettes", also by the Criminal Record Office, which includes her.<ref name=npg>{{cite web|url=http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp65453/olive-leared-nee-hockin |title=Olive Leared (née Hockin) - Person - National Portrait Gallery |publisher=Npg.org.uk |date= |accessdate=2016-07-30}}</ref> Her picture was taken from a concealed car in the prisoners' exercise yard using an 11 inch powerful lens which had been purchased by the Home Office. The secret pictures were required because the suffragettes would distort their faces when conventional mug shots were being taken. The Home Office was worried by the impact of their arson and vandal attacks and they were closing art galleries.<ref name="Schama2015">{{cite book |author=Schama |first=Simon |author-link=Simon Schama |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tuZeBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT578 |title=The Face of Britain: The Nation through Its Portraits |date=16 September 2015 |publisher=Penguin Books Limited |isbn=978-0-241-96371-5 |pages=578–}}</ref>
Hockin was a Land Girl during the Great War, and later wrote ''Two Girls on the Land: Wartime on a Dartmoor Farm'', which was published in 1918.{{r|white}}
In 1922 she married John Leared who trained polo ponies in Cheltenham. They had two sons.{{r|crawford|page2=288}} She died in 1936.
==References== {{Reflist|refs=
<ref name=crawford>{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Crawford|title=The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a2EK9P7-ZMsC&pg=PA288|date= 1999 |publisher= London: UCL Press |isbn=9781841420318|pages=287–288}}</ref>
<ref name=white>{{cite book|author=Bonnie White|title=The Women's Land Army in First World War Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2DBvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT122|date=2014|publisher=Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=9781137363916|page =122}}</ref>
}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hockin, Olive}} Category:1881 births Category:1936 deaths Category:British suffragists Category:20th-century British women painters Category:Artists from Cheltenham Category:20th-century British painters Category:Women's Social and Political Union