The Suffragette Prisoners Olive Hockin and Margaret MacFarlane

Surveillance image of the Suffragette prisoners Margaret McFarlane (on the left) and Olive Hockin (on the right) exercising in the yard of Holloway prison. This was one in a series of surveillance images taken by an undercover photographer hiding in a van parked in the yard. The photographs were commissioned by the Home Office and distributed widely to public buildings including museums and galleries to prevent the miltants entering premises and causing damage. It is likely the image was taken in June 1913 when both Suffragettes were in Holloway prison.
On January 28th Margaret McFarlane was one of thirty women arrested for obstruction and wilful damage during disturbances with the police around Parliament Square. At trial she was sentenced to one month's imprisonment for window breaking. In March Margaret was rearrested, sent to trial and found guilty of breaking two windows at the Tecla Gem Company in Bond Street for which she received a five month sentence in the 2nd Division.
A talented artist Olive Hockin (1881-1936) was arrested in March 1913 when Police raided her flat in Camden Hill Gardens, Notting Hill. Suspecting her involvement in the burning of a tea pavilion at Roehampton Golf Club they found incriminating evidence in the flat including wire cutters, corrosive fluid, hammers, flints and false car licence plates referred to in the press as a 'Suffragette Arsenal'. Sent to trial on charges of having conspired to set fire to the pavilion at Roehampton, to damage orchid houses at Kew Gardens, to cut telegraph wires and with having placed corrosive fluid in a post box in Ladbroke Grove, she was, however, only found guilty only of the Roehampton offence and sentenced to four months imprisonment in the second division. Interestingly Olive wears a black armband, possibly in respect for the death of Emily Wilding Davison.