7. Olive Lock – Burning Down Kew Gardens Tea Room
Olive Lock was an English artist, suffragette – and arsonist – who in 1913 was imprisoned for burning down the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens. On 7 March 1913, aged 27, she was sent to Holloway Prison for the fire, after causing £900 worth of damage. The pavilion’s owners had only insured it for £500. During her trial at the Old Bailey the artist was charged under the assumed name “Joyce Locke” and regarded the proceedings as a “good joke”. She added that she had believed that the pavilion belonged to the Crown, and that she wished for the two women who actually owned it to understand that she was fighting a war, and that in a war even men combatants had to suffer. Extraordinary behaviour from a painter of quaint and proper watercolours.