Katharine Frye

Katharine "Kate" Parry Frye (married Collins; 9 January 1878 – 16 February 1959) was a British actress, a lifelong diarist and suffragist.

Life Frye was born in North Kensington, England. Her father, Frederick Frye, was a businessperson and, in time, a member of parliament and her mother was Jane Kezia Frye (born Crosbie). Katherine was born above one of her father's Leverett & Frye grocer shops. By the time she was eight, she had started a diary which she would continue for the next seventy years.

In 1892 her father was elected to parliament, and he also became the sole owner of Leverett & Frye. Her father's achievements were recorded in the fourteen year old Katherine's diary. In 1902 she attended the Shakespearean actor Ben Greet's Acting Academy where she learnt about the stage. She had been trained by governesses which she later realised was an inadequate education. She obtained work in the play Quality Street by J.M.Barrie which was touring England and Ireland. She learnt how to fend for herself, how to speak to a crowd and that acting was a poorly paid profession. She did however meet John Robert Collins and they started a long engagement. In 1912 their home and all its contents were auctioned. Katharine's diary records the changes that became essential given her lack of money and she blamed her father for their misfortune.

In 1914 Frye was secretary of the New Constitutional Society for Women's Suffrage and with the outbreak of war the charity redirected their efforts to helping women rather than campaigning. By 1915 her fiance was no longer an actor but a soldier. Moreover, he was now a captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery and he could afford to have a wife. They married on 9 January.

Works Cease Fire! (a play), 1921 Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary, 2012 - edited by Elizabeth Crawford