The suffragette who stayed in Bajina Bašta
She fought for women's suffrage, rescued Serbian orphans and left everything to her companion Vera Holme.
On 21 March 1920, a British woman who has not been forgotten there to this day died in Bajina Bašta, a small town on the Drina in western Serbia. Evelina Haverfield was 52; the cause was pneumonia. She had been living with Vera Holme for almost ten years.
Haverfield came from the Scottish aristocracy and joined the suffragettes early on. At a demonstration she struck a policeman and was arrested. It was in this movement that she met Holme. "Jack", as Holme was known, drove Emmeline Pankhurst around London, in livery and as the only woman in that job. From 1911 the two lived together in Devon.
The war took them to Serbia in 1915. With the Scottish Women's Hospitals they cared for the wounded, and Holme drove ambulances. When the Central Powers advanced, both were taken prisoner and only released in 1916. Assignments in Romania and Russia followed.
After the war they returned. In Bajina Bašta, Haverfield set up an orphanage in a former café, with room for around a hundred children. She travelled from village to village to treat sick children. After about a year, she herself was seriously ill.
Her will spoke clearly. Haverfield made Vera Holme her sole heir. The two women had no word for their relationship, but today it is seen as a life partnership rather than a friendship. Holme stayed at the orphanage for another two years after her companion's death. Later she moved to Scotland, together with two other women veterans from Serbia.
Haverfield was buried with military honours in the churchyard of the Church of St Elijah. She still lies there today. A health centre in the town bears her name. Her gravestone says she worked with untiring zeal for the Serbian people.