Vira Boarman Whitehouse

Vira Boarman Whitehouse (September 16, 1875 – April 11, 1957) was an American suffragette, government official, and businessperson. She was the owner of the Whitehouse Leather Company and an early proponent of birth control. She directed the Swiss office of the Committee on Public Information in 1918.

Early life Vira Boarman was born in Abingdon, Virginia, September 16, 1875, to Robert Boarman and Cornelia Terrell.

She attended Newcomb College in New Orleans and was a member of Pi Beta Phi.

She married New York stockbroker James Norman de Rapelye Whitehouse (1858–1949) on April 13, 1898. They had one child, Alice Whitehouse Harjes.

She was chairman in 1913 of the publicity council of the Empire State Campaign Committee and in 1916 of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party (NYSWSP).

Whitehouse led a successful fundraising campaign, making large donations herself and soliciting donations from New York's most prominent families.

When New York State granted women the right to vote on November 6, 1917, Whitehouse was widely credited with the win. by July 1917 he was treasurer of the League.

Foreign service In 1918, she became director of the Swiss office of the Committee on Public Information, where she worked closely with Rosika Schwimmer, the Hungarian ambassador to Switzerland, and one of the first female ambassadors in the world. This appointment was a direct result of her success in the suffrage movement. George Creel, head of the United States Committee on Public Information, had formerly been the publicity chair for the New York chapter of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage. She held the position for eleven months, but only spent six months actively working in Switzerland.

Later life

In 1921, she bought the Buchan-Murphy Manufacturing Company, a leather business, renamed it the Whitehouse Leather Products Company, Inc., and reorganized it with herself as president and Ida Reid Blair as vice-president. She managed the company for eight years, reducing the work week from 48 hours to 44 hours, among other changes. She sold her leather company before the stock market crash of 1929.

Legacy Her papers are archived at the Harvard University Library.

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