Suffrage and the Arts: Visual Culture, Politics and Enterprise 9781350011861, 9781350011847, 9781350011823

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Suffrage and the Arts

Suffrage and the Arts Visual Culture, Politics and Enterprise

EDITED BY MIRANDA GARRETT AND ZOË THOMAS

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright Editorial content and introductions: © Miranda Garrett and Zoë Thomas, 2019 Individual chapters: © their authors, 2019 Miranda Garrett and Zoë Thomas have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3500-1186-1 978-1-3500-1182-3 978-1-3500-1183-0

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  vii Acknowledgements  xvi Foreword by Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry  xvii



Introduction by Miranda Garrett and Zoë Thomas  1

PART ONE  Institutional Politics 21 1

‘I loathe the thought of suffrage sex wars being brought into it’: Institutional conservatism in early twentiethcentury women’s art organizations  Zoë Thomas  23

2

The artistic, social and suffrage networks of Glasgow School of Art’s women artists and designers  Liz Arthur  43

3

‘An arts and crafts society, working for the enfranchisement of women’: Unpicking the political threads of the Suffrage Atelier, 1909–1914  Tara Morton  65

PART TWO  Enterprise and Marketing 91 4

Window smashing and window draping: Suffrage and interior design  Miranda Garrett  93

5

‘Our readers are careful buyers’: Creating goods for the suffrage market  Elizabeth Crawford  117

vi

6

CONTENTS

English suffrage badges and the marketing of the campaign  Kenneth Florey  137

PART THREE  Paintings on Display 157 7

Painting suffragettes: Portraits and the militant movement  Rosie Broadley  159

8

Suffragette attacks on art, 1913–1914  Krista Cowman  185

PART FOUR  Representing Suffrage 203 9

The spectacle of masculinity: Men and the visual culture of the suffrage campaign  Joseph McBrinn  205

10 An Irish harp and sleeping beauty: The politics of suffrage in the textile art of Una Taylor and Ann Macbeth  Janice Helland  231 11 Images of empathy: Representations of force feeding in Votes for Women  Chloe Ward  249 Index 273

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 0.1

Ceramic cup and saucer produced for the Women’s Social and Political Union Grand Suffrage Bazaar and Exhibition, Glasgow, St Andrews Hall, April 1910 © Glasgow Museums Collection  xviii

0.2

Photograph of an equal suffrage demonstration in Lowestoft, Suffolk, UWT/G/2/4 © UCL Institute of Education Archives, London  xxiii

0.3

Lowestoft Labour Women banner, previously Lowestoft Suffrage Society banner, Lowestoft Museum. Photograph: Jane Beckett © Lowestoft Museum, Lowestoft, Suffolk  xxiii

0.4

The Women’s Pilgrimage map of routes, National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Published in Votes for Women, 1913 © British Library Board  xxv

0.5

Women’s Social and Political Union banner-making workshop, 1910 © Museum of London  5

0.6

The Artist’s Contingent preparing to march in a suffrage procession in support of the Conciliation Bill, 1910 © Museum of London  15

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1

Photograph showing Fabian Women, Equal opportunities for men and women banner, c. 1908 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London  29

2.1

Photograph of female student’s life class, Glasgow School of Art, 1904. Chris Stark is furthest from the camera © Private family collection of W. J. C. Henderson  44

2.2

De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar, Jus Suffragii Alumnae, 1909. Design for Queen Margaret College, University of Glasgow  48

2.3

Photograph of Daisy McGlashan and daughters, after 1898. McGlashan wears a dress designed and made while a student of Jessie Newbery. The dress is of green linen with violet and white embroidery and applique © Glasgow School of Art Archives  49

2.4

De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar’s thistle design  52

2.5

Photograph of the Women’s Suffrage Demonstration, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 9 October 1909 © The Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright  54

2.6

Jessie M. King, menu cover, 1917. Designed for Kate Cranston’s Glasgow Establishments © Glasgow Museums  57

3.1

Louise Jacobs, Suffrage Atelier illustration from The Vote, 28 December 1912 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London  73

4.1

Sylvia Pankhurst, design for the decoration of a vase © Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam  101

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ix

4.2

Advertisement for Emerson & Co. in The Women’s Penny Paper, 15 March 1890 © 1890 General Reference Collection LOU.LON 417A [1890], The British Library Board  102

4.3

Sylvia Pankhurst, design for the decoration of Pankhurst Hall © Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam  105

4.4

Sylvia Pankhurst, design for the decoration of Pankhurst Hall © Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam  106

4.5

Illustration of ‘Miss Agnes Garrett’ from The Women’s Penny Paper, 18 January 1890 © 1890 General Reference Collection LOU.LON 417A [1890], The British Library Board  109

4.6

Illustration of ‘Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst’ from the Woman’s Herald, 7 February 1891 © 1891 General Reference Collection LOU.LON 374 [1891], The British Library Board  110

5.1

Advertisement for ‘Miss Folkard’ from Votes for Women. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson  120

5.2

Advertisement for Amy Kotzé from Votes for Women, 4 March 1910. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson  125

5.3

Advertisement for Roberta Mills from Votes for Women, 4 March 1910. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson  127

x

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

5.4

Advertisement for Mappin & Webb from Votes for Women, 24 December 1909. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson  130

5.5

Advertisement for Dimoline Piano Co. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson  131

6.1

One of many Women’s Social and Political Union shops throughout London where badges, movement literature and postcards were sold. From the collection of Kenneth Florey  140

6.2

Enamel badges issued by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. From the collection of Kenneth Florey  143

6.3

Postcard photograph of Emmeline Pankhurst wearing her portcullis or Holloway badge. From the collection of Kenneth Florey  149

7.1

Catherine Courtauld for the Suffrage Atelier, The AntiSuffrage Society as Portrait Painter, 1909–1914 © Museum of London  166

7.2

Mrs Albert Broom (Christina Broom), photograph of Christabel Pankhurst at the Women’s Exhibition, Knightsbridge, 1909, half-plate glass negative © Museum of London  168

7.3

Lallie Charles, postcard photograph of Christabel Pankhurst, published by Rotary Photographic Co. Ltd, 1908, NPG135535 © National Portrait Gallery, London  169

7.4

After Hayman Seleg Mendelssohn, Ethel Wright, c. 1896, halftone reproduction, NPG139620 © National Portrait Gallery, London  172

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xi

7.5

Arthur Hacker, Ethel Wright, The Sketch, February 1893  173

7.6

Una Dugdale Duval’s Love and Honour but Not Obey pamphlet with cover illustration by Ethel Wright, 1913. RP6921 NPG Archive © National Portrait Gallery, London  177

7.7

Photograph of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence and Laura Knight, c. 1936. Vintage bromide print, NPG137321, given by Emily Pethick, 2013 © National Portrait Gallery, London  179

8.1

‘The Actual Damage Done to the Rokeby “Venus” by the Suffragette with a Chopper’, Illustrated London News, 14 March 1914. NEWS75 © The British Library Board  196

9.1

Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage banner, c. 1908–14 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London  210

9.2

Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage banner, c. 1914 © National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh  211

9.3

Photograph of a male suffragist being ejected from a public meeting © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London  215

9.4

Duncan Grant, Handicapped, joint winner of Artist’s Suffrage League Competition, 1909 © Estate of Duncan Grant. All Rights Reserved DCAS, 2017  217

9.5

Press photo of Laurence and Clemence Housman © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London  220

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

10.1 Irish National Banner, 1890, as photographed for Irish Independent, 28 October 1949  232 10.2 Ann Macbeth, The Sleeping Beauty, 1901, Glasgow Museums © The Artist’s Estate  233 10.3 Suffragettes welcoming Mary Phillips, 53.140/144 © Museum of London  242 10.4 Suffragettes celebrate the release of Kathleen Tanner from prison, 2003.46/126 © Museum of London  243 11.1 Alfred Pearse, Torturing Women in Prison poster, 1909, 7EWD/H/8 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London  254 11.2 Alfred Pearse, Torturing Women in Prison, published in Votes for Women, 1909  255 11.3 Alfred Pearse (‘A. Patriot’), The Government’s Methods of Barbarism, published in Votes for Women, 1910  262 11.4 Will Dyson, For what you are about to receive ... , The Daily Herald, 1913, WDN0109 © British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent  266

Plates 1

Laurence Housman and others, An Anti-Suffrage Alphabet, 1911 © Museum of London

2

Mary Moser banner, c. 1908–1914 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London

3

Margaret Gilmour’s repoussé brass alms dish. Exhibited at the Glasgow International Exhibition, 1901 © The Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xiii

4

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, O Ye that Walk in the Willow Wood, 1903–1904. Gesso panel, centrepiece of the Salon de Luxe, Willow Tea Room © The Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright

5

The original Women’s Social and Political Union chain link design badge and two American copies from the Connecticut Women Suffrage Association and the Just Government League. From the collection of Kenneth Florey

6

Postcard photograph of Women’s Freedom League demonstration. Woman on the right appears to be distributing both literature as well as badges. From the collection of Kenneth Florey

7

Cause and event pins. From the collection of Kenneth Florey

8

The Hunger Strike Medal for Lavender Guthrie, who later committed suicide. From the collection of Kenneth Florey

9

Sylvia Pankhurst, three designs for both badges and seals for the Women’s Social and Political Union. From the collection of Kenneth Florey

10 Various badges produced for other English suffrage organizations. From the collection of Kenneth Florey 11 Two anti-suffrage badges. From the collection of Kenneth Florey 12 Ethel Wright, Christabel Pankhurst, oil on canvas, exhibited 1909. Bequeathed by Elizabeth Ruth Dugdale Weir, 2011, NPG6921 © National Portrait Gallery, London

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

13 Susan Isabel Dacre, Lydia Becker, oil on canvas © Manchester Art Gallery/Bridgeman Images 14 Winifred Bourne Medway, Miss Annie Kenney, c. 1910, oil on canvas, K4330 © Bristol Museum & Art Gallery 15 Ethel Wright, Bonjour, Pierrot!, oil on canvas, 1893 © Gallery Oldham 16 Ethel Wright, Success magazine cover, New York, June 1902. Plandiura Collection, purchased 1903 © Museum Nacional d’Art de Catalunya 17 Sylvia Pankhurst, self-portrait, c. 1907–1910. Given by S. E. Boucher, 1974, NPG4999 © National Portrait Gallery, London 18 Georgina Brackenbury, Emmeline Pankhurst, 1927, oil on canvas. Given by Memorial Committee, 1929, NPG2360 © National Portrait Gallery, London 19 Flora Lion, Flora Drummond, 1936 © National Galleries of Scotland 20 A Proposal, anti-suffrage postcard, undated. Private Collection 21 George A. Husbandman, anti-suffrage postcard, undated. Private Collection 22 Laurence and Clemence Housman, Hampstead banner, c. 1907 © Museum of London 23 Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage badge, c. 1908 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London 24 Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage badge, c. 1908 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

25 Shoe-bag embroidered by convalescing soldier in Endell Street W.H.C. (Women’s Hospital Corps), c. 1915–1918 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London 26 Ann Macbeth, The Huntress, The Studio, 1902 © The British Library Board

xv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Jane Beckett, Deborah Cherry and all the authors who have contributed chapters to this book for their hard work and enthusiasm, as well as Claire Constable, Rebecca Barden and Vinita Irudayaraj at Bloomsbury for their help and patience. Thank you to our contributors Ken Florey and Janice Helland for reading and commenting on the Introduction. We are grateful to the following people for providing invaluable support during the research, writing and editing of this book: Irene Cockroft, Peter Cormack, Caroline Dakers, Lis Darby, Amy Montz, Simon Thomas Parsons, Helen Pankhurst, Francesca Peschier, Lucy Ella Rose, Sarah Sexton and Judy Willcocks. Beverley Cook, from the Museum of London, and Gillian Murphy, from the Women’s Library, London School of Economics, were most kind in their speedy and supportive responses to endless image requests. Special thanks to Lyndsey Jenkins for reading the Introduction and for fruitful conversations about suffrage, feminism and modern British history. Finally, we are grateful to Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, the TECHNE Doctoral Training Partnership, the University of Birmingham, and a grant from the late Isobel Thornley Bequest at the University of London for providing financial support for the inclusion of colour images within this book.

FOREWORD Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry

In the People’s Palace in Glasgow is a ceramic cup and saucer, decorated with a thistle motif in the colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union of purple, white and green (Figure 0.1). The colours as well as the Union’s emblem of a trumpeting angel, designed by Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960), also painted on the cup and saucer, are a clear signal of the campaigns for women’s enfranchisement in the early twentieth-century British Isles, while the decorative thistle motif signals its association with Scotland.1 This ensemble highlights the extensive span of the campaigns for women’s suffrage across mainland Britain and Ireland. It demonstrates a transformation of the suffrage campaigns in the early twentieth century through a widespread address to visual, design and public cultures which exploited the new consumerism, marketing and branding in conjunction with the new visual media of the new century. The spectacular banners and massive processions are now well-known. Equally significant, and these are the stories told in this book, were the productive and myriad alliances between women’s suffrage and the arts. Suffrage tactics encompassed the design of objects, such as this cup and saucer, that announced allegiance, promoted the cause and raised funds. The tableware would have been part of a tea service produced for the Women’s Social and Political Union Grand Suffrage Bazaar and Exhibition held at Glasgow’s St Andrews Hall, 28 to 30 April 1910, after which it was offered for sale. Treasured and carefully cherished, it was donated, with other suffrage materials by suffragette Janet Barrowman to Glasgow Museums in 1955. Since 1928, when all women in the British Isles gained the vote – limited enfranchisement had been enacted in 1918 – substantial museum, library and archival collections have been amassed. Among these collections are numerous personal possessions, institutional records and documents, a wide range of printed ephemera such as posters, tickets, pamphlets, handbills, along with photographs, badges and banners, newspaper clippings, printed books, letters and diaries. Yet what has survived is uneven, fragmentary and partial and, despite a seeming plethora of materials, from hand-written letters and printed materials, to suffrage ware and film, it can be difficult to assess today how what has survived relates to what once existed. Materials from

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FOREWORD

FIGURE 0.1:  Ceramic cup and saucer produced for the Women’s Social and Political Union Grand Suffrage Bazaar and Exhibition, Glasgow, St Andrews Hall, April 1910 © Glasgow Museums Collection. private and family collections have now entered the public domain: Sylvia Pankhurst’s papers, for example, have been transferred to the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.2 Suffrage materials can now be found across the British Isles, from major metropolitan collections and libraries and national art collections to country record offices and university libraries – Annie Kenney’s (1879–1953) papers are housed at the University of East Anglia in Norwich – or smaller regional museums: Dorking Museum holds a ‘United Suffragists’ banner. Suffrage items have become scattered globally: a collection of suffrage materials ‘collected by Tara Books Ltd. of Winchester, England in 1977 and offered for sale as part of the “Blue Moon” Collection’ was acquired by Murdoch University Library, Western Australia.3 Major collections of women’s suffrage materials entered the public domain in the 1920s, in the years just before adult suffrage was granted to all women in Britain in 1928. The papers of Lydia Becker (1827–1890) and Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929), along with the records of the Manchester Women’s Suffrage Society, were given by Margaret Ashton to Manchester Central Library in 1922.4 The Library of the London Society for Women’s Service was founded in 1926. Renamed the Fawcett Library in 1957, and in 2002 The Women’s

FOREWORD

xix

Library, it has been housed in the Library of the London School of Economics since 2013. Considered ‘the oldest and most extensive collection on women’s history in Europe’, this collection, with its substantial array of banners, badges, posters, postcards, textiles, suffrage goods, art work and designs, far exceeds the more usual print holdings of a library.5 While The Women’s Library includes materials across the spectrum of suffrage activities, the ‘Suffragette Fellowship Collection’, now housed at the Museum of London, assembled in 1926 by Edith How Martyn (1875–1954), a member of the Women’s Freedom League, to secure the legacy of the militant campaigns, is focused on the Women’s Social and Political Union, the Women’s Freedom League and the Suffrage Atelier, the studio featured in these pages which was established to produce suffrage designs.6 The sheer richness and vividness of suffrage archives and collections has hugely enhanced knowledge and continues to generate new findings, resulting in a complex set of interlocking histories. But how are these histories formed? The build up to the centenary of 1918 has seen plays, films and publications, including a small paperback in the Penguin Little Black Classics series entitled The Suffragettes. With a selection of pamphlets, posters, newspaper articles, photographs and speeches, its forty-six pages offer a brief history of women’s struggles for the vote, encapsulating a microcosmic varied landscape of the geography, politics, key figures, visual campaigns, language and arguments for and against women’s suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.7 For the journalist Rachel Cooke, writing in the Guardian, the book provides ‘a nicely bracing antidote to some of the more awful cod-feminist texts currently loitering perkily in our bookshops’, and she singled out ‘a photograph of the damage caused by arsonist suffragettes to Northfield Library in 1914 (the women left a book by Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958) at the scene, with a note that read “To start your new library”)’.8 Historical and visual research has enlarged the whole field of suffrage studies far beyond this concise introduction. Suffrage campaigners wrote early accounts and assembled collections, and living memory has played a highly significant role. When Jill Craigie (1911–1999) encountered a group of elderly women who annually assembled at the grave of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), these pioneering suffragettes, who considered that their struggles had been forgotten, were astonished to find a young woman joining them; the encounter inspired the socialist, feminist and film-maker to amass a substantial archive, now housed at the London School of Economics.9 For their transformative history of the local and national significance of working-class women, One Hand Tied Behind Us, Jill Liddington and Jill Norris drew on oral histories. Their account of suffragist Selina Cooper (1864–1946) made copious use of the memories of her daughter Mary Cooper. Mary Cooper donated the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ Clitheroe banner to Towneley Hall Museum in Burnley, while Selina Cooper’s papers are lodged with Lancashire Archives.10 The continued

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transmission of memory enriches the understanding of objects in these collections. Responding in 1987 for information on the banner, the curator related: ‘Miss [Mary] Cooper remembers holding on to a string attached to one of the two small bags full of sand weighting down the banner at a rally in London in 1910.’11 A considerable body of historical work on the suffrage movement emerged from Gender Studies and Women’s History departments, and while they are still studied in British universities, there have also been significant closures. It could be argued that these courses emerged from the struggles of the suffrage movement for changes within different areas of women’s lives. The historic women’s studies programme at Ruskin College, like its international labour and trade union courses, has been axed despite strong protests. Although women’s suffrage became part of the national curriculum of secondary education in schools in 2013, this was only at Key Stage 3 and as a non-statutory element of the broader brief for ‘challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world: 1901 to the present day’.12 Most accounts of women’s suffrage in the British Isles initially set out from binary trajectories, tracing the initiation, growth and development of what are perceived as the two main societies: the Women’s Social and Political Union (formed 1903) and the older National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (formed 1897). In laying out this ground, the usual focus has been on the pivotal roles played by the Pankhurst family on one side and the Fawcett/Garrett dynasty on the other. These accounts were fashioned from outlines in the memoirs, autobiographies and early histories written by participants.13 Since the 1960s onto this infrastructure have been built sustained accounts of the organizational arrangements, financing, diversity of politics and aims as well as alliances, across suffrage societies. More recent writings have situated the politics of suffrage within broader cultural and historical frameworks and embedded the complexities of women’s histories within their historical matrices.14 Once understood in terms of the struggles for the vote and equal citizenship, women’s suffrage has been evaluated in terms of its engagement with images, text and performance, in histories of sexuality, media studies, drama and global studies, in relation to war and pacifism, political history and theory. Attention has been given to the movement’s class distinctions, imperial valences, regional activities and its international connections: Sumita Mukherjee is one of several historians to emphasize international perspectives, underlining that suffrage campaigning was a ‘global fight fought by women around the world’.15 As this book testifies, there is an increased recognition of the importance of suffrage visual culture, art and design. The debates and controversies in the field of suffrage history, both in terms of the formations of that history and its trajectories, have been outlined by June Purvis, building on arguments initiated by Sandra Stanley Holton. Purvis’s overview of the gendering of the historiography of the suffrage movement acknowledges the importance of feminist historians.16

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Nevertheless, the historiography of the suffrage movement remains a highly contested arena, with gaps and elisions alongside a density of research in certain areas, notably biographical accounts of leading figures, a significant trend that relies on the availability of memoirs and diaries, thrives in the wider interest in biography and fuels the tendency to single out exceptional women. Some key figures have received surprisingly little research, for example Charlotte Despard (1844–1939). Although the outline of her life is available, the complex arc of political and social activities with which she engaged throughout her life has yet to be fully understood. Despard’s involvement in the formation of trade unions, socialist and labour groups, her support of Indian radical politics and independence, and her sympathy for the Irish Republican movement undoubtedly filtered her concepts of women’s suffrage, and led to the break with the Women’s Social and Political Union and the formation of the Women’s Freedom League in 1908.17 One predominant suffrage narrative contrasts the militancy of the Women’s Social and Political Union and, in part, the Women’s Freedom League, against the constitutional strategies of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, excavating and valorizing these accounts through re-reading memoirs, diaries and letters.18 Suffrage activity and varied forms of militancy emerged in the diversity and multiplicity of the campaigns such as those for equal representation, taxation reform, or education. Perhaps inevitably, accounts of militancy tend to focus on metropolitan action. An urban focus, and an attention to London, remains a wider problem in studies of women’s suffrage: while there are detailed accounts of activities in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow or Sheffield, just how suffrage activities were carried out in rural settings or how they interlocked with the wider landscape of rural politics is less clear. The availability of local archives online and the appearance of suffrage materials at sales and auctions have enabled a broader mapping of local suffrage activity; this includes Elizabeth Crawford’s regional survey of 2006, greatly enhanced by the illuminating account by Jill Liddington and Elizabeth Crawford of suffragists’s nationwide census resistance in 1911.19 Suffrage activity in Suffolk and Norfolk was enabled by the considerable range of suffrage committees and organizations laid down across East Anglia in the nineteenth century.20 By 1910, many branches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Women’s Freedom League and Women’s Social and Political Union had been established in major towns such as King’s Lynn, Norwich and Ipswich, as well as in seaside towns and rural settlements, including Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Aldeburgh and Harleston. Undoubtedly the expansion of the railway network enabled the setting up of suffrage societies while the growth of holiday traffic facilitated suffrage seaside holidays.21 Suffrage societies took advantage of the growth of tourism, opening shops and offices and selling newspapers in holiday venues. The coastal town and port of Lowestoft in Suffolk, for example,

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had branches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Women’s Social and Political Union and was an established holiday destination for suffragettes. In 1911, a group of women ‘hid’ from the census returns in a local boarding house, recorded as unknown women. One, listed as a ‘lady from Harleston’, was possibly the local National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies secretary from that small Norfolk town, Marguerite Hazard, who had set up the Harleston branch in 1909. Many campaigners in East Anglia were teachers who were, as Alison Oram has shown, like other women teachers in state schools, major players in the suffrage cause.22 Campaigns by women teachers consistently built on the principle of equal rights. Stemming as Oram points out from liberal political philosophy, they emphasized women’s rights as citizens, property-owners and taxpayers. They stressed the social responsibility of their role as teachers of future citizens to insist that, like their male counterparts, they should have an equal say. At successive meetings and conferences of the National Union of Teachers, they put forward motions to express ‘[t]hat this Conference expresses its sympathy with those members of the National Women of Teachers who desire the Parliamentary franchise, but because they are women and for that reason alone, are by law debarred from it.’ This motion was hotly debated at the National Union of Teachers Conference of 1914 held in Lowestoft, advertised in The Suffragette in April that year as the ‘Great Campaign for Lowestoft’.23 Five organizations, including the suffrage societies, attended this conference. For the Women’s Social and Political Union, Annie Kenney addressed a meeting, replacing Emmeline Pankhurst who was ill, and a demonstration, which was carefully photographed, was held outside their offices. A poster parade halted in front of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies office, shop and tearoom (Figure 0.2). Strategically placed in the windows are recent promotional materials inluding Mary Lowndes’s (1856–1929) Justice at the Door and a poster of a tree depicting the organization of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (both 1913). Visible above is a banner with the words ‘Lowestoft Suffrage Society’. Recently discovered and now displayed in the Lowestoft Museum is a banner which is almost identical except for its appliquéd words ‘Lowestoft Labour Women’ (Figure 0.3). Made of bold red bunting, the banner depicts a small Lowestoft sailing drifter; its masthead pennant proclaims ‘Justice’, picked out in yellow thread, and this is repeated on the side of the ship just below the sails. On the back of the banner, ‘Justice’ is appliquéd on a green ground. The image and the lettering link the Lowestoft women’s campaigning to a range of contemporary political debates, notably those of the women teachers or women’s and men’s employment in rural and fishing industries, as well as to the broader arguments of the major political societies and to a widespread address to the concept of Justice.24 All the suffrage societies stressed the legal dimension to the campaign, drawing attention to the injustice of current legislation, and strongly believing that the vote was

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FIGURE 0.2:  Photograph of an equal suffrage demonstration in Lowestoft, Suffolk, UWT/G/2/4 © UCL Institute of Education Archives, London.

FIGURE 0.3:  Lowestoft Labour Women banner, previously Lowestoft Suffrage Society banner, Lowestoft Museum. Photograph: Jane Beckett © Lowestoft Museum, Lowestoft, Suffolk.

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intimately tied up with questions of universal justice. By the early twentieth century, as Kristin Collins has argued, the word ‘justice’ and its associated imagery reverberated across suffrage campaigns, possibly because ‘justice had ascended as a distinctively resonant symbol of the law and law’s legitimacy in a democratic polity’. Christabel Pankhurst’s insistence in 1908 that ‘We have waited too long for political justice; we refuse to wait any longer’ employed a concept of justice as a symbol of fairness within the law, which recurs across suffrage language and visual images.25 The visual personification of justice on suffrage posters and postcards as a blindfolded woman holding scales and a sword forcefully carried the notion of justice as an objective/impartial concept.26 The isolated word of justice, as on the Lowestoft banner, had a rallying force and transferability, carrying diverse resonances across the political landscape. In East Anglia, concepts of citizenship and justice built on the constitutional debates advanced early on by Millicent Garrett Fawcett and others, re-articulated through the connections between young women suffrage campaigners and the potent political discourses of agricultural workers for unionization. There was dialogue between women suffrage campaigners and agricultural leaders, including a proposal that votes for women taxpayers could be achieved as an antidote to the enfranchisement of agricultural workers. In July 1906, at the Angel Hotel in North Walsham, Norfolk, a group of agricultural workers and politicians met with the intention of forming ‘a union, the object of which shall be to enable the labourers to secure proper representation on all local bodies and the Imperial Parliament’. One woman was recorded as present at the meeting.27 But what mapped rural women in suffrage campaigns and knitted them into political debate and political activity must have been the suffrage caravan tours. Initiated in 1908 by the Women’s Freedom League, the first ‘Votes for Women’ caravan toured South East England, speaking on women’s enfranchisement and establishing new branches of the society. Caravanning, a political tactic used by agricultural workers’ unions and The Clarion newspaper from the 1890s, became a successful suffrage strategy which gained considerable national and local newspaper coverage, even if this did not offer, as Lisa Tickner points out, ‘the glamour of an orchestrated spectacle’.28 Caravanning provided intense focus in rural communities across mainland Britain and it offered visually striking images of countryside campaigning. From 1909 to 1913, each suffrage society took to the road, criss-crossing the country. Liddington makes the point that for many women, caravanning ‘certainly became a symbol of liberty’ and it took the controversial message out into the countryside, while offering a useful hideaway on the night of the 1911 census.29 In 1913, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, which had a very large membership, initiated the Woman’s Suffrage Pilgrimage, aiming to demonstrate, once again, how many women demanded the vote. Members of different branches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies set off from points across the

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United Kingdom on 18 June 1913, charting eight major routes into London, bringing women from north, south, west and east for a major demonstration in central London on 26 July. Maps were published, one showing routes across the country, the other the key points of assembly for each route to join what was billed on the map as ‘the monster demonstration’ in Hyde Park (Figure 0.4).30 The women from East Anglia who, as the East Anglian Daily Times (one of the region’s major newspapers) recounted, were ‘following the East Coast

FIGURE 0.4:  The Women’s Pilgrimage map of routes, National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Published in Votes for Women, 1913 © British Library Board.

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route under the direction of Miss Waring, B.A.’ started from the major port of Great Yarmouth.31 Some women walked to town boundaries while some continued further and were joined by others along the route. The intention, as Tickner comments, ‘was not that each individual should cover the whole route but that the federations would do so collectively’.32 Numbering about sixty, the Yarmouth group held two meetings before leaving for Lowestoft. Within this group was one lone woman who had already walked to Yarmouth from the West Norfolk coastal town of Hunstanton. Local papers recounted how the contingent ‘set out in the presence of a large crowd on a women’s suffrage pilgrimage to London … to see them off on their long tramp of 130 miles to London’, indicating that the pilgrimage aimed ‘to make known in every town and hamlet of the land that an organization exists which seeks to obtain votes for women by constitutional methods, and owes allegiance to no political party’.33 Press accounts noted the small settlements at which the pilgrimage halted and held meetings along the route and featured its progress to the major towns of Ipswich, Colchester, Chelmsford and on to London. In proposing a pilgrimage, rather than a walk or procession, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies could argue from a strongly established tradition of religious practice and political protest in making visible their constitutional demands. The Pilgrimage was extensively reported across the media, with reports, eye witness accounts and photographs of women walking, cycling, riding horses, driving motor cars, pony traps and carts lent by wealthy sympathizers. Participants were encouraged to wear white, grey, black, or navy-blue coats, skirts or dresses, with matching blouses and hats. Sashes in the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies colours of red, white and green as well as red haversacks with green and white lettering spelling out the route could be obtained from National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ shops. Although photographs suggest degrees of compliance with the dress codes, this careful colour coordination extended the ways in which suffrage societies identified themselves through colour, so creating nationwide identities that carried between countryside and town. Photographs of the Pilgrimage demonstrate, as do all suffrage photographs, the wide age ranges of women who took part. While attention to rural, coastal and regional campaigning has shifted a focus away from metropolitan activity, another significant development has been the recognition of the international dimensions of women’s suffrage campaigning. Pioneering research by Rozina Visram on the histories of South Asian women and men in Britain has drawn attention to their participation in British politics.34 Recent studies have charted the activism of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (1876–1948), and her sister Princess Catherine Duleep Singh (1871–1942).35 Sophia Duleep Singh was an indefatigable fundraiser who spoke at and chaired meetings and sold The Suffragette at her pitch outside Hampton Court Palace where she lived. For Rozina Visram, ‘It was as a tax resister, however, that Sophia Duleep Singh, the sole Indian member of the

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WTRL [Women’s Tax Resistance League], made her greatest impression. Taking her stand on the principle that taxation without representation was tyranny, she registered her defiance on several occasions by refusing to pay her taxes.’36 Suffrage campaigns and events like the Pilgrimage generated a wide range of print materials and suffrage goods. Posters, maps and flyers were produced for each of the eight routes of the Pilgrimage, as well as commemorative paper handkerchiefs, badges and postcards. Suffrage goods were distributed through a nationwide network of suffrage shops and offices; their premises were well stocked with print materials, suffrage papers such as The Common Cause (advertised in the top right corner of the Lowestoft shop window), rosettes and badges, items of apparel, games, cups and saucers. While souvenir paper handkerchiefs, banners, posters and badges were utilized by various political campaigns and societies, especially the recently formed Labour movement, suffrage shopping chimed with long-standing feminist interests in ethical consumption and modern urban pleasures, and spaces specifically directed to women.37 Distinctive to its campaigns, and therefore to its artistic designs, was the Women’s Social and Political Union’s emphasis on prison insignia and regalia, the most famous being the Holloway brooch designed by Sylvia Pankhurst. A central concern of this book is the manifold ways in which artists and designers engaged with suffrage alongside their professional careers as artists. For some there was a productive synergy, for others the conjunctions of art and politics provoked conflict and heated debate. Few, like Sylvia Pankhurst, relinquished their working lives as professional artists to dedicate their practice to the suffrage cause. Women were designers, sellers, distributors and producers of suffrage materials: Emily Arber insisted that her husband’s press in east London printed suffragette handbills; needlewomen and working women were employed by commercial manufacturers; women paintresses at Staffordshire potteries decorated suffrage tableware.38 Badges sold at a penny, discussed here, were potentially available to working-class women, but in general suffrage goods targeted middle- and upper-class women, integral to a reliance on their social privilege, purchasing power, donations, volunteering and the resources at their command from horses and carriages to motor cars. The spectacle of suffrage not only relied on the masses of women walking and processing; events in town and country featured women riding horses as well as driving carriages, carts and wagons. Cecily Leadley-Brown, active in National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in the northwest of England, noted on the reverse of a picture postcard featuring suffragists, two in a car, outside the Liverpool Women’s Suffrage Society premises in 1910: ‘The car was a 6 H.P. Rover owned by me which was frequently used as a Platform.’39 A committed member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh drove the first cart in the ‘press cart’ parade delivering Votes for Women around London in July 1911.

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Just looking at a few photographs of the 1913 Pilgrimage raises the critical question of how to read these and other photographs: as documentation, as historical record, as mementos or as carefully staged images designed to convey the dignity and peaceable activity of constitutional campaigning. Central to an understanding of suffrage histories is the vast and varied range of visual imagery, much of which remains under-researched.40 Much is still to be discovered about how suffrage visibilities were orchestrated by different societies and media groups, how newspaper photographers engaged with diverse suffrage politics, or the intersections between suffrage and the new professions of journalism and photojournalism.41 A huge variety of photographs survive, with a wide range of photographic strategies encompassing staged photographs of campaigners out and about, in and outside suffrage shops and offices, studio and less formal portraits of prominent figures, press photographs which could be aligned with pro- or anti-suffrage sentiment, documentary shots, promotional images and surveillance photographs taken on the street and in prison. There are intriguing exchanges between surviving photographs and grainy images in the illustrated press. Photographs offer tantalizing detail on locations and the use of space, on public performance, on the everyday creativity in the art of suffrage dress and accessories, and intergenerational relations between campaigners, as well as between campaigners, opponents, the police and the public. As with so much suffrage material, the photographic archive is diffuse and dispersed, research still limited or incomplete. While some suffrage photographers such as Christina Broom (1862–1939) have been identified, others await historical recognition. While some events undoubtedly escaped the photographic gaze or its surviving archives, most big demonstrations attracted intense visual attention. Thousands of women joined the vast procession to celebrate the coronation of King George V in June 1911. Of this much-photographed event, one portrays a modest contingent of South Asian women who processed carrying a banner decorated with an elephant and the word ‘INDIA’ as well as staves surmounted by cut-outs of elephants. Behind them, a simple text banner announcing ‘Crown Colonies and Protectorates’ is held aloft.42 In her research on Indian suffragettes in Britain, Sumita Mukherjee points out that these women were invited to join a procession that ‘celebrate[d] the imperial reach of Britain’; rather than campaigning for votes in India, the women had been summoned ‘to show support for the British, largely “white” campaign’.43 She has identified three of the five South Asian women as Mrs P. L. Roy, Mrs Bhagwati Bhola Nauth and Mrs Mukerjea.44 While this carefully staged photograph is as she suggests, ‘evidence that Indian women were present in Britain and interacted with British suffrage campaigners’, Mukherjee also advises that caution is needed not to overstate their role.45 The density and complexity of photographs such as this indicate the need for deeper investigative research

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to unpick the visual images of women’s campaigns for the vote to assess their significance for suffrage campaigners then, as well as their lasting legacy. The extensive digitization of museum and library collections has made materials and curatorial knowledge more widely available and recent research is transforming suffrage histories. Although much is accessible online or illustrated in print studies, only rarely do these treasured objects come out of storage into museum displays, where their size and scale, colour and texture, materials and making can be appreciated and assessed, as well as how they have worn over time. Since we curated The Edwardian Era (Barbican Art Gallery, London) in 1987, loan exhibitions which gather together items from private hands and public collections and allow comparisons across regions, chronological phases, campaigns and societies have been rare indeed. Let’s hope that the centenaries of 1918 and 1928, and this collection of inspiring and thoughtful essays, will prompt more exhibitions and museum displays that encourage a fuller understanding of the significant histories and landmark campaigns that enfranchised women in the British Isles.

Notes 1

2

The People’s Palace Museum in Glasgow houses a fine collection of materials relating to suffrage movements in Scotland, including a teapot and plate from the same tableware service. According to Fiona Hayes, Curator, Social History, Glasgow Life/Glasgow Museums, the cup and saucer are believed to be part of the gift of women’s suffrage material in 1955 by Janet Barrowman, ‘an active WSPU [Women’s Social and Political Union] member in Glasgow [who] was imprisoned in Holloway, March-April 1912 for her part in a window breaking demonstration in London. She was part of a group of Glasgow members who had travelled down to London to take part in the demonstration and one of seven Glasgow women who went to prison. She kept the 2 pennies and sixpence she earned for hard labour and had them made into medals she could wear. These are also part of this collection. She and her sister Margaret ran some of the stalls at the Grand Suffrage Bazaar and Exhibition held in Glasgow.’ She notes that the Bazaar catalogue ‘mentions the WSPU tea-sets on sale which had been specially designed for the event, thus the thistles.’ Janet Barrowman’s extensive donation included print materials, telegrams and letters, suffrage colours, banners, photographs as well as commemorative china. We are deeply indebted to Fiona Hayes and Edward Johnson of Glasgow Museums for information on these materials. The Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst papers and materials were given to the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis/ International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam by Richard K. P. Pankhurst, with most donated in 1961 and later additions in 1976. The collection was digitized in 2016. Details kindly provided by the institute.

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See http://library.murdoch.edu.au/Researchers/Special-Collections/PankhurstCollection/ (accessed 15 September 2017). 4 Our thanks to Sarah Hobbs, Archivist, Manchester Central Library. Margaret Ashton (1856–1937) was a suffragist, pacifist and the first woman on Manchester City Council. 5 Maev Kennedy, ‘Women’s Library to Reopen Doors at London School of Economics’, Guardian, 10 March 2014. As Kennedy points out, some saw the move as marking the loss of the Women’s Library’s activist identity. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/10/womens-libraryreopen-london-school-economics-lse (accessed 15 September 2017). 6 The ‘Suffragette Collection’ at the Museum of London includes two broadsheets which reproduce in miniature the Atelier’s suffrage designs, 1913. Items nos. 2003.46/175 & 176. 7 The Suffragettes (London: Penguin Random House, 2016). 8 Rachel Cooke, ‘In Praise of Little Black Numbers’, Guardian, 29 March 2016. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/29/ shelf-life-rachel-cooke-penguin-classics-46-new-titles-aphra-behn-jane-austensuffragettes-pankhurst (accessed 15 September 2017). 9 Writing in 1951, Jill Craigie considered that ‘Today I have what I think must be the largest suffragette library outside the suffragette museum not to mention the many hundreds of photographs, letters and mementoes that suffragettes so kindly gave me’. Radio Times, 9 March 1951, referenced in Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 587. 10 Jill Liddington and Jill Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us: The Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Virago, 1978). Jill Liddington deposited Selina Cooper’s papers at the Lancashire Archives following her research for her biography The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper, 1864–1946 (London: Virago, 1985), on which she also worked with Mary Cooper. With thanks to Kathryn Newman, Archivist, Lancashire Archives. 11 Letter from Hubert Rigg, Curator, to Jane Beckett, 7 July 1987, author’s collection. Information also kindly provided by Mike Townsend of Towneley Hall. 12 See http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ (accessed 15 September 2017). 13 For example, E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905–10 (New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1911); Millicent Fawcett, Women’s Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1911); Millicent Fawcett, The Women’s Victory– and After: Personal Reminiscences, 1911–1918 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1920); Ray Strachey, ‘The Cause’: A Short History of The Women’s Movement in Great Britain (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1928). For more detailed listings, see June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2002) and Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement. 14 See, for example, Maroula Joannou and June Purvis, eds., The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); June Purvis and Sandra Stanley Holton, eds., Votes for Women (London: Routledge, 1999).

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15 Sumita Mukherjee, ‘*That* Indian Suffragettes Photo’. Available online: https://sumitamukherjee.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/that-indian-suffragettesphoto/ (accessed 15 September 2017). See Miranda Garrett and Zoë Thomas’s introduction to this book. 16 Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Challenging Masculinism: Personal History and Microhistory in Feminist Studies of The Women’s Suffrage Movement’, Women’s History Review, 20:5 (2011): 829–841; June Purvis, ‘Gendering the Historiography of the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Britain: Some Reflections’, Women’s History Review, 22:4 (2013): 576–590. 17 Charlotte Despard’s papers are in the Working Class Movement Library, Salford. Andro Linklater, An Unhusbanded Life: Charlotte Despard, Suffragette, Socialist and Sein Feiner (London: Hutchinson, 1980) remains an invaluable biography but has no references. On The Women’s Freedom League, see Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Now You See It, Now You Don’t: The Women’s Franchise League and Its Place in Contending Narratives of the Women’s Suffrage Movement’, in The Women’s Suffrage Movement, eds., Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 15–36. 18 Krista Cowman has convincingly explored these dichotomies in ‘A Party Between Peaceful Revolution and Peaceful Persuasion: A Fresh Look at the United Suffragists’, in The Women’s Suffrage Movement, eds., Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 77–88. 19 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement; Jill Liddington and Elizabeth Crawford, ‘“Women Do Not Count, Neither Shall They Be Counted”: Suffrage, Citizenship and The Battle for the 1911 Census’, History Workshop Journal, 71:1 (2011): 98–127; Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). 20 Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 2006, 93ff. 21 Crawford notes, ‘In 1912 the NUWSS organizer remarked that the absence of railways made the South Norfolk constituency difficult to “work”’. The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 84. 22 Alison Oram, ‘Women Teachers and the Suffrage Campaign: Arguments for Professional Equality’, in Votes for Women, eds., Purvis and Holton (London: Routledge, 2000), 203–225. 23 National Union of Women Teachers Archive, Institute of Education: UWT/G/2. ‘Women Suffrage and the Teachers’, The Times, 13 April 2014; Eastern Daily Press, 17 April 1914, 10; Oram, ‘Women Teachers and the Suffrage Campaign’, 203–225; Susan Trouve-Finding, ‘Unionized Women Teachers and Women’s Suffrage’, in Suffrage Outside Suffragism: Britain, 1880–1914, ed., Myriam Boussahba-Bravard (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 205–230. 24 There is considerable discussion of fisherwomen and their visual imagery in suffrage literature. 25 Kristin A. Collins, ‘Representing Injustice: Justice as an Icon of Woman Suffrage’, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 24:1 (2012): 191–220. 26 In suffrage imagery, Justice has her eyes covered as usual, by contrast to the statue atop the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales known as the Old Bailey, extensively rebuilt by 1907.

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27 ‘Conference at North Walsham, Angel Hotel, address by Mr Winfrey MP’, Eastern Daily Press, 21 July 1906, 8. See also Alun Howkins, ‘The Centenary of the “Farm Workers Union”’, Rural History Today, 12 (January 2007): 1–8. 28 Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14 (London: Chatto and Windus 1988), 142. 29 Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote, 28. 30 Votes for Women, 4 July 1913, 25 July 1913, 1 August 1913. 31 ‘Lady Pilgrims’, East Anglian Daily Times, 11 July 1913, 7; ‘Pilgrims and the Vote’, East Anglian Daily Times, 14 July 1913. 32 Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 143. 33 ‘Lady Pilgrims’, 7; ‘Pilgrims and the Vote’. 34 Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History, rev. edn. (London: Pluto, 2002), 162–168. 35 Anita Anand, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). See also Sarah Okpokam, ‘Sophia Duleep Singh: A Princess and a Suffragette’. Available online: http://blog.hrp.org.uk/curators/ sophia-duleep-singh-a-princess-and-a-suffragette/ (accessed 2 August 2017); Sumita Mukherjee, ‘Herabai Tata and Sophia Duleep Singh: Suffragette Resistances for India and Britain 1910–1920’, in South Asian Resistances in Britain, 1858–1947, eds., Rehana Ahmed and Sumita Mukherjee (London: Continuum, 2012), 106–121; Bhupinder Singh Bance, ‘Duleep Singh, Princess Catherine Hilda (1871–1942)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2013. Available online: http://ezproxy. library.nyu.edu:2283/view/article/105619 (accessed 20 August 2017) confirms that Catherine like her sister was an active suffrage campaigner. 36 Rozina Visram, ‘Duleep Singh, Princess Sophia Alexandra (1876–1948)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Available online: http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/64/101064781/ (accessed 2 August 2017). When supporters of the Women’s Tax Resistance League refused to pay their taxes, their goods were seized and auctioned. Jewellery was often bought back by other Women’s Tax Resistance League members and returned to them. 37 Lynne Walker, ‘Vistas of Pleasure: Women Consumers of Urban Space in the West End of London, 1850–1900’, in Women in the Victorian Art World, ed., Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 70–85; Lynne Walker and Vron Ware, ‘Political Pincushions: Decorating the Abolitionist Interior, 1787–1867’, in Domestic Space: Reading the Nineteenth Century Interior, eds., Inga Bryden and Janet Floyd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 58–83. 38 http://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/12/28/at-w-f-arber-co-ltd-printing-works/ (accessed 2 August 2017). Cheryl Buckley, Potters and Paintresses: Women Designers in the Pottery Industry, 1870–1955 (London: Women’s Press, 1990). 39 The Women’s Library, LSE, TWL.2002.446. 40 While Tickner, Spectacle of Women remains a founding text, it has little analysis of the role of photography in suffrage campaigning. 41 Michelle Elizabeth Tusan, Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005). Midge

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43 44

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Mackenzie’s pioneering Shoulder to Shoulder: A Documentary (New York: Albert Knopf, 1977) offers an extensive compilation of news photography. The India section formed part of ‘Imperial Contingents’: ‘New Zealand, Australia, Canada, S. Africa, India, Eastern Colonies, West Indian Colonies, Mediterranean Colonies, West African colonies and protectorates, East African colonies and protectorates, Fiji & the Eastern Pacific’. Map, Votes for Women, 16 June 1911, 614. This section followed the Empire Pageant of ‘England, Empire Car, Scotland, Wales, Ireland’. See Susheila Nasta, Florian Stadtler, and Rozina Visram, ‘Asians in Britain: Activism and Politics’, https://www.bl.uk/ asians-in-britain/articles/activism-and-politics (accessed 15 September 2017). Mukherjee, ‘*That* Indian Suffragettes Photo’. She points out that this photograph was initially published in Votes for Women, 30 June 1911, 640. Sumita Mukherjee, ‘Diversity and the British Female Suffrage Movement’, https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/blog/diversity-british-female-suffragemovement, (accessed 18 October 2017). Mukherjee’s full-length study on ‘Indian Suffragettes’ is forthcoming with Oxford University Press, 2018. Elizabeth Crawford suggests that the photograph may portray members of the Roy family – Mrs Lolita Roy, the wife of Piera Lal Roy, director of public prosecutions in Calcutta, and her daughter, Mrs Leilavati Mukerjea with her younger sisters, Miravati (aged 21) and Hiravati (aged 15), an identification based on the discovery of the names of the first two women as members of the Women’s Freedom League. https://womanandhersphere.com/2017/07/24/ suffrage-stories-black-and-minority-ethnic-women-is-there-a-hidden-history/ (accessed 15 September 2017). Mukherjee, ‘*That* Indian Suffragettes Photo’.

Introduction Miranda Garrett and Zoë Thomas

The Polling Station is one of the most striking designs produced by the Suffrage Atelier, who aimed ‘to forward the Women’s movement, and particularly the Enfranchisement of Women, by means of pictorial publications’.1 Created between 1909 and 1914, this bold graphic image, reproduced as the cover image of this book, reveals the power of visual culture to convey the message of the suffrage campaign to a mass audience. The design survives in miniature on a Suffrage Atelier broadsheet, which customers used to select images for purchase, and as both a postcard and a poster. The postcard is in black on white card while the poster is black on brown paper with several rough hand-coloured sections.2 In the background, enfranchised men – from manual workers with pipes and agricultural labourers with tools, to a top-hatted gentleman – file into the inviting open door of a polling station. Nearest to the viewer, and barred from entering by an imperious policeman, is an orderly line of disenfranchised women, including a musician, a clerical worker or writer, a mother and daughter, a graduate, a nurse, a mayor, a woman in legal robes, and, intriguingly positioned at the front of the line, an artist. In the poster version, the addition of coloured paint gives a further layer of meaning: while most of the men are uncoloured, or in black or dull brown, vibrant hues of red, blue, green and white highlight the women. This striking piece of art is one of the many designs produced at the height of the campaign emphasizing the injustice of the disenfranchisement of women. Campaigners pasted these designs on walls at train stations, displayed them in private homes across the country, and used them as inspiring backdrops at events.3 Artists and suffrage groups were among

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the first to fully exploit newly available publicity methods, such as adverts and posters, alongside the growth of an inexpensive and vibrant print culture, to create a political propaganda campaign unprecedented in its vitality. Drawing skilfully on prevalent anxieties about the rapidly changing social structure of modern society, The Polling Station encouraged viewers to question why these capable women could not vote, in contrast to the working-class males depicted as furtively entering the polling station, faceless and hidden behind flat caps. These men represented the growing number of enfranchised male citizens (by 1911 approximately six out of every ten males over the age of 21 were eligible to vote) and hint at the class tensions that permeated the campaign.4 Positioning many of these women as respectable professionals, active in public life, and presumably taxpayers, eager for representation and citizenship, challenged contemporary understandings of bourgeois femininity, and counteracted dominant cultural stereotypes which presented feminists as masculine, hysterical figures of ridicule. Significantly, the print depicts an artist at the vanguard of those fighting for the vote. With her profession signified by her smock, paintbrush and palette, the artist looks back towards her disenfranchised companions as though poised to depict the injustice of the scene before her. The Polling Station provides a pertinent starting point for a book dedicated to foregrounding the remarkable, but often neglected, visual culture produced by women and men for the suffrage campaign – from interior decorators, portrait painters, through to retailers of ‘artistic’ products – alongside restoring the role these individuals played as political campaigners in their own right. The Atelier’s Constitution, which stated that members wished to forward the ‘Women’s movement’ alongside the ‘Enfranchisement of Women’, encapsulates the belief of many artists in this era that the quest for political and artistic equality had become entwined, something this book seeks to elucidate. The chapters that follow assess how the artistic community embraced, but at times also rejected, the campaign, and how artistic institutions and informal networks mediated women’s creativity and participation in politics in the British Isles.

Threads of enquiry Suffrage and the Arts builds on Lisa Tickner’s 1987 path-breaking publication The Spectacle of Women, which collated and analysed a wealth of diverse materials to demonstrate the importance of visual ‘spectacle’ to the suffrage campaign, with a focus on the years 1907 to 1914. Tickner addressed how female artists forged new cultural identities through their work and used the arts to attempt to reshape the world to their own needs, much influenced by the emergence of a women-centred political reform movement.5 The Spectacle of Women included a section on production, which introduced

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pro-suffrage art organizations such as the Artists’ Suffrage League and the Suffrage Atelier, alongside the creative work of Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) and Alfred Pearse (1855–1933) for the Women’s Social and Political Union, but the main contribution of her monograph lay in emphasizing the visual spectacle that was utilized for feminist needs in the years leading up to the First World War. Her use of the term ‘spectacle’ conjured up the mass parades, pageants, demonstrations and pilgrimages that suffrage groups staged. Spectacle also referred to the outpouring of visual representations of both pro- and anti-suffrage arguments, in caricatured illustrations in the press and on postcards and posters, which Tickner used to illustrate the contemporary attempts made to both reassert and challenge ideas about femininity and the role of women in society. Our book re-establishes the significant role that artistic women and men played in the suffrage campaign in the British Isles. As political individuals, they were foot soldiers who helped sustain the momentum of the movement and, as designers, makers and sellers, they spread the message of the campaign to new local, national and international audiences, mediating how suffrage activism was understood by society at large. The formation of artistic identities and subjectivities are topics at the heart of our research interests, as is the wider socio-cultural backdrop to the campaign across the era from the 1870s to the 1950s. Arranged in four parts, this book is structured around the areas in which research has coalesced in recent years: ‘Institutional Politics’, ‘Enterprise and Marketing’, ‘Paintings on Display’, and ‘Representing Suffrage’. Chapters benefit from the extensive historiographical developments and archival discoveries made over the last thirty years and generate valuable new avenues of research. Two central threads of enquiry run throughout. Firstly, we analyse how pioneering women balanced their working lives as artists alongside the increasing demand for support from the suffrage campaign and the wider women’s movement. How does this change our understanding of not only the lives and work of artistic individuals, but also the infrastructure, representation and dynamics of the campaign? These working women operated successful artistic businesses, rented premises, acted as employers and paid taxes, but could not vote. How did their professional statuses influence their commitment to the suffrage cause? This approach casts light on the experiences of those Sandra Stanley Holton has labelled ‘the ordinary woman’ and challenges the notion that the ‘suffragist’ and the ‘average woman’ were two neatly distinct categories.6 This book brings the political experiences, attitudes and motivations of those identifying as artists and professionals to the fore, helping to redress the balance of a historiography which has all too often – and for obvious reasons – focused on full-time activists. By tracing the artistry of little-studied individuals such as Louisa Folkard (1854–1921), the ‘artistic’ dress maker, and the portrait painter Ethel Wright (1866–1939), the chapters in this

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book deepen and enrich understanding of the diversity of the campaign by recovering important and neglected aspects of women’s professional and political work. Although the majority of artistic women did benefit from privileges due to their race and class, we wish to move away from the tendency to celebrate ‘exceptional’ London-based female painters, to instead reference a wider array of voices from across the country, particularly from those working in the applied arts, who often desperately needed to generate an income. This socio-cultural history is interested in the many women who worked on a small, ‘ordinary’ scale, often at home to fit around domestic duties, or who studied in classes after work as organized by the Suffrage Atelier. For some, the arts provided a way to engage in politics with a degree of anonymity, which could more easily fit with contemporary norms of acceptable feminine activity. The reasons artistic individuals were involved – or even opposed – the cause could be complex, and their specific political allegiances unknown, but reclaiming the activities of elite professionals through to more amateur participants generates greater understanding of the diversity of women and men active in the political landscape. Secondly, chapters stress the variety of visual culture designed and made during this period. Visual culture did not simply complement verbal and textual feminist analysis of society and women’s place within it, but fundamentally challenged prevalent stereotypes. Our approach provides a way to emphasize the extensive breadth of artistic commitment, even when names and experiences are lost, such as the identity of the designer(s) responsible for our cover image, The Polling Station.7 This is the case for much of the work produced by the suffrage campaign: for instance, although a photograph of the interior of a Women’s Social and Political Union banner-making workshop for the 23 July 1910 Hyde Park demonstration (Figure  0.5) shows a productive hive of artistic creativity, none of the women have, as yet, been identified.8 Reflecting the heterogeneous nature of the work produced by artists active within the movement, we deliberately use the terms ‘visual culture’ and ‘art’ interchangeably, feeling this encompassing approach helps us to avoid ascribing hierarchies to historic cultural production. The campaign’s output ranged from portraiture to posters, photography, postcards, banners, badges, jewellery, medals, clothing and illustrated magazines. Suffrage campaigners constituted a diverse range of groups, who often disagreed about appropriate constitutional methods, militancy, separatism, party allegiances and which class of women to prioritize. Visual culture provided a way for groups to brand themselves and delineate their priorities to other political groups and to the wider public. To some viewers, the imagery and use of spectacle was simply propaganda, while for others it provoked a range of overlapping emotional responses. These designs were also, often, wildly different, as artists drew from a wide range of styles and techniques, from Pre-Raphaelite to avant-garde.

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FIGURE 0.5  Women’s Social and Political Union banner-making workshop, 1910 © Museum of London.

This book by no means addresses all the topics which could potentially be researched, and instead seeks to encourage new areas of enquiry. For instance, the First World War is discussed only briefly in the chapters that follow, although it provides ample potential for future researchers. War transformed the campaign due to a controversial outpouring of fervent patriotism from many members of the Women’s Social and Political Union and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (although others rejected this approach and founded the pacifist group the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom). Artistic women also faced new troubles. Many struggled to sell their work during the war, while others faced new gendered barriers to their professional development: not having direct experiences of the front line, they were not seen to have the innate qualities that would enable them to be official government-commissioned war artists.9 Similarly, there is much more to say about visual culture, feminist politics and interwar activism.10 While we are aware of the limitations of this book, by gathering together the most exciting research currently being undertaken, we provide a new account of art and politics in the British Isles across this era, which places productive, industrious and groundbreaking artists firmly in the spotlight, alongside offering numerous new insights into the suffrage campaigns.

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The artistic and political landscape Women trained as fine and applied artists in larger numbers than ever before during the second half of the nineteenth century, becoming an increasingly visible presence in the art scene. Individual artists, including feminist painter Barbara Bodichon (1827–1891), founded new women’s art organizations and gained entry to art schools. Women in the applied arts, such as interior decorator Agnes Garrett (1845–1935), fought for apprenticeships at architectural firms, and side-stepped gendered expectations about their domestic duties, to play hugely important – although now little-known – roles in the formation of artistic culture. Even the many women who did not receive formal training increasingly managed to bypass gendered and elite signifiers of ‘professionalism’. Establishing small artistic businesses, finding networks of customers via familial and friendship networks and gaining national visibility by advertising across the pages of the nascent feminist press, these women are worthy of more study. Despite these achievements, women continued to face gendered prejudices and opposition. Frequently paid less than their male peers and referred to as ‘lady artists’, they were understood in contrast to the universally recognized male ‘artist’ across the late nineteenth century, and as the work of Katy Deepwell has shown, well into the twentieth century.11 Many of the individuals and institutions researched in this book felt themselves to be playing an integral role in the Arts and Crafts movement. Peter Cormack has recently questioned why scholars and museums continue to fail to address the momentous input of women in the movement, querying in particular why the 2005 Victoria and Albert Museum’s ‘International Arts and Crafts’ exhibition failed to provide ‘any specific comment on the whole phenomenon of Arts and Crafts feminism’.12 As it stands, there continues to be a generally accepted view of the movement as the work of ‘great’ men, such as William Morris (1834–1896) and John Ruskin (1819–1900), who are repeatedly held up as representative of the entire movement.13 Although both figures were hugely influential, this fixation with prioritizing their lives – something Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth describe generally as ‘reinforcing an obsession with the [male] designer as hero’ – starts to become problematic when it distorts understanding of a movement which influenced, and was influenced by, a great many people.14 Cormack proposed it would be more useful to assess the movement’s long-term social dimension: ‘not least because it actively involved large numbers of people – probably far more than any art movement before or since’. Focus on such a narrow canon of material has ‘seriously undervalued activities, objects and people that, to its protagonists, would have been seen as central’.15 Our research expands Cormack’s argument, emphasizing the importance the Arts and Crafts movement played in motivating women to engage in suffrage and feminist politics. The chapters within begin the process of rectifying this narrow canonization, in both overt and subtle ways. For instance, it is intriguing to

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note how many women in the campaign, outside of the formal ceremonial of parades, are captured in photographs as dressed in artistic fashion: loose, comfortable and without corsets. The unification of various local constitutional groups into the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897, the formation of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903, and the militant Women’s Freedom League in 1907 mark important milestones in the history of feminist politics. However, it is important to acknowledge that visuality had increasingly been used as a tool by women to participate in the emerging culture of modernity before the twentieth century: as evidenced in 1880, when members of the London and Westminster Tailoresses’ Society marched across central London carrying a yellow silk banner with the motto ‘We’re far too low to vote the tax/But not too low to pay’.16 As Deborah Cherry has insightfully shown, across the final decades of the nineteenth century, painting, sculpture and comic drawings ‘became a battleground for intense debates about the role of women in contemporary society’. Columns in periodicals from The Art Journal to Punch picked out female artists for special attention – some supportive, some disapproving – due to their deviation from a normative middle-class model of femininity.17 These offensive stereotypes provoked or underscored some women’s support of female enfranchisement. Ninety-seven women artists and musicians were listed amongst the 2,000 signatories of the 1889 ‘Declaration in Favour of Women’s Suffrage’, arranged in professional categories and positioning the vote as a benefit to respectable women actively contributing to public society.18 The commitment of artists to the cause continued to be a consistent presence during the early twentieth century, when the campaign, in the words of Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘took on new colour and new urgency’ with the emergence of a younger generation of leaders, who started to adopt new violent methods which were more sensational than those of earlier decades.19 Alongside militancy, the campaign was greatly influenced by the ongoing energies of artists, many who rejected militant tactics, and who instead frenetically developed an array of supportive visual representations of the campaign to attract the attentions of a rapidly growing local, national and international audience.

Surveying the field: From suffrage history to art history Except for Sylvia Pankhurst, fine and applied artists have usually only played a cursory role in major narratives of the campaign – perhaps as a result of the traditional scholarly tendency to view suffrage as a singleissue campaign.20 That the movement was far more complex, and that those involved were routinely also invested in a wide sphere of social

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reforms, is now well recognized. There has also been a wave of scholarship demonstrating the continuing vibrancy of the women’s movement after partial (1918) and full (1928) emancipation for women. Alongside new biographies of prominent individuals, such as June Purvis’s meticulous study of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) and Lyndsey Jenkins’s insightful account of the aristocratic militant campaigner Constance Lytton (1869– 1923), there has been growing interest in recovering the histories of the foot soldiers who sustained the movement.21 Mirroring developments in social history, researchers have become increasing concerned with capturing the ‘politics of everyday life’ and the negotiation between feminist ideals and lived experience of the campaigns. As Elizabeth Crawford has emphasized, the campaigns constituted ‘a landscape teeming with life and incident’.22 Contributors have benefitted from these extensive developments, which enable this book to interweave the artistic context alongside an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated analysis of the campaigns and the lives of those involved. There have been substantial attempts to move away from geographically positioning suffrage as a London-based political phenomenon, to instead stress the far-reaching commitment, and regional particularities, of women across England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland.23 In fact, dual membership of ‘competing’ suffrage groups could be common at grass-roots level.24 Krista Cowman has shown how the campaign could bond women previously divided by religious beliefs, such as in Liverpool where allegiances formed between women from segregated Catholic and Protestant communities.25 A desire to bypass retelling nationalistic histories has also led to a new generation of scholars placing emphasis on the importance of assessing suffrage and feminism on a comparative and global scale. This impetus was stimulated by Antoinette Burton’s exploration of the ways some women in Britain used imperialistic ideologies to validate their own fight for equality, grounded in a troubling rhetoric of moral and racial superiority.26 Increasingly, scholarship has recognized that ‘the campaigns in Britain did not take place in a vacuum’, and we should not measure ‘the British campaign as a yardstick against which the suffrage campaigns in all other countries or regions must be measured.’27 Still, particularly in popular accounts, there continues to be a tendency to minimize racial, nationalistic, class and engrained societal hierarchies in the suffrage movement in an attempt to provide a more unifying national version of British history, which underplays the rifts and inequalities perpetuated by those involved. More work is needed to assess the extent to which nationalistic, imperialistic and class-based discourse enmeshed with suffrage and feminist activity in Britain.28 Developments in the field of art history, while immensely important, have often existed separately to advances in suffrage historiography. Deborah Cherry, Lynne Walker, Janice Helland and Pamela Gerrish Nunn have played an instrumental role in unpacking the myriad associations between

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art, feminism, space, work and political agency across the long nineteenth century.29 Following the general trend of women’s, gender and feminist historians, in moving away from writing about the lives of ‘exceptional’ women, these scholars have expertly assessed how contemporary gender norms influenced artistic production and art historical discourse.30 Deborah Cherry’s Beyond the Frame, in particular, revised traditional masculinist histories of Victorian art, to instead stress the growing relationship between feminist politics, visual culture, women’s artistic practices and new metropolitan models of living and working in a period of rapid social change. She problematized a neat essentialist definition of ‘women’s experience’, by addressing how artistic women’s experiences intertwined with their male peers, alongside the increasingly blurred divisions between the public, the private and the political by the final decades of the century. More recently, Maria Quirk, Lucy Ella Rose, Zoë Thomas and Tara Morton have taken these ideas forward, addressing how women subverted gendered spaces at home and rented studios to form new professional, artistic identities and to find create satisfaction at work across this era.31 Beyond the Frame, published at a point when scholars had begun to debunk the mythology of a uniformly idle middle-class Victorian femininity, highlights the vast range in women’s experiences and the myriad of ways women engaged in politics. Yet, although scholarship has identified the emergence of professional opportunities for middle-class women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in fields such as teaching and nursing, further research exploring what ‘professionalism’ meant to individuals working in the creative sphere needs to be undertaken.32 In recent years, the ability of the suffrage campaign to professionalize women’s occupations has become a productive area of enquiry. For example, Sowon Park has argued that, although short lived, the Women Writer’s Suffrage League (established 1908) played a significant role in professionalizing the writing of female campaigners who had published at least one text.33 A similar burst of research into other creative fields from the perspective of revisionist women’s history has not matched the increasing interest in suffrage theatre.34 Despite Tickner’s call-to-arms in the 1980s, scholars tend to only briefly note that suffrage organizations used and procured banners and posters. Artists and visual culture are routinely utilized as an additional illustrative aid, rather than an area of prolonged enquiry.35 Seeking to combat this, our book is interested in turning the lens of enquiry onto the lives of those who designed, painted and painstakingly stitched works for the campaign, alongside assessing the impact of visual culture. In so doing, we draw from a series of disparate but significant developments in recent years, such as Maria DiCenzo, Lucy Delap and Leila B. Ryans’ research into feminist periodicals, Ken Florey’s study of suffrage memorabilia in North America and Maureen Goggin’s research into Janie Terrero’s (1858–1954) prison embroidery.36 The recent exhibition and book celebrating the photography of Christina Broom (1862–1939), who documented the suffrage campaign and captured

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the staging of bazaars, exhibitions and marches, alongside intimate and chance portrayals of unknown individuals, has provided another medium through which future scholars can reconceptualize the campaign.37

Archival silences Archival absences have long constrained and shaped research into the lives of women across history. Cultural institutions in the long twentieth century often undervalued women’s papers and artworks, believing they represented causes now obsolete and of limited relevance. Feminist scholars seeking to uncover the diversity of women’s suffrage experiences, or hoping to delineate the entrepreneurial or commercial elements of women’s artistic creativity, must cast a wide net, and continue to question the silences in the archive. For instance, it is unusual for records of small businesses to survive, particularly if established and managed by childless or unmarried women. The peculiar demands and constraints of the suffrage campaign adds an additional layer of complexity as the artists and makers discussed were involved in controversial causes and, in some cases, subversive activity, often making documentation scarce. Likewise, not intended for longevity, much of the material produced for the campaigns has not survived. It is also difficult to find traces of the everyday lives of the artistic women and men deemed ‘ordinary’, whose lives are of key interest to the contributors. Still, this need to bring together a diverse variety of textual fragments and objects – as exemplified in this book through analysis of surviving advertisements, suffrage badges to lavishly painted portraits – has resulted in an effective, nuanced portrayal of the diversity of contributions and commitment to the campaign. Contributors have drawn upon little-known autobiographies, obituaries, lectures, letters and institutional archives alongside a rich trail of printed materials in mainstream and regional newspapers, art journals, women’s periodicals and suffrage journals. Benefitting from the technological developments of the last thirty years, contributors have mined new digital databases, alongside making use of ‘chance’ discoveries of major new archives. A central motivation for writing this book was a wish to provide a platform for the wealth of archival materials that our contributors have analysed and collated in recent years, resulting in a collection of chapters characterized by richness and depth.

Contributors The chapters that follow serve an important purpose in mapping the diversity of ways artistic women and men interacted with the movement and the influence this had on their lives, alongside assessing how artistic culture fuelled the campaign, advanced the fight for equality, and challenged

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engrained stereotypes. Section one, ‘Institutional Politics’, focuses on the cultural institutions women in the fine and applied arts established, and gained access to, across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the efforts women made to map out new artistic identities at this particular historical juncture; and the productive collaborations and conflicts between art, politics and suffrage. This section begins with Zoë Thomas’s chapter, which introduces readers to the organizations that women began to establish in retaliation to their exclusion from prestigious male-only cultural institutions such as the Art Workers’ Guild and the Royal Academy. Focusing on a cache of recently discovered papers pertaining to the Women’s Guild of Arts, an exclusive Arts and Crafts organization for women formed by textile designer May Morris (1862–1938) in 1907, Thomas uses the Guild to explore why women in art institutions often refused formal association with the suffrage question, despite the substantial individual involvement of different members through the design and making of banners, postcards and posters. Thomas ultimately argues that the urgent need to forge professional networks in a hierarchical and masculine-dominated art world meant women focused their energies on trying to find ways to close the gendered gap separating them from their male peers, rather than collectively engaging in debating their position within the electoral process. Within the climate of rising militancy in the early twentieth century, women such as May Morris felt that the emergence of separatist strategies was not helpful when their livelihoods and attempts at professionalization were often dependent on working closely with male figures in the arts. The following chapter, by Liz Arthur, concentrates on the art world in Glasgow. Arthur argues that female Glasgow-based art students were deeply interested in the vote, and she captures this interest through the time and labour they contributed to the design and making of banners and materials for the cause, alongside their fundraising and hosting of bazaars to raise public awareness of the campaigns. Scottish women, similarly to their Welsh peers, and whatever their organizational loyalties, were imaginative in their use of publicly recognizable symbols and rhetoric, taken from Scottish folklore and associated with national characteristics, such as traditional symbols of tartan, heather, thistle or songs. Throughout, with productive links to Thomas’s chapter, Arthur emphasizes the importance of assessing the wider networks, spaces, institutions and artistic efforts of women, to more effectively understand how women across different regional contexts sought to show commitment. Finally, Tara Morton’s chapter provides a detailed account of the Suffrage Atelier which, from its formation in 1909, built on the ethos that underpinned the Arts and Crafts movement – of handcrafted work and working in guilds – but adapted this model to facilitate supportive opportunities specifically for women to train and find economic recompense, alongside providing an opportunity to engage in political reform. The Suffrage Atelier shows we must use categories such as ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ with caution, as although helpful terms, they are riven with gendered

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and class hierarchies. Morton’s research enriches knowledge of the inner workings of the Atelier, revealing that persistent attempts were made to forge cross-class friendships and reverse conventional hierarchies of power between the classes, in this organization at least, in early twentieth-century Britain. The next section, ‘Enterprise and Marketing’, explores the incentives driving the entrepreneurs who marketed their wares to suffrage supporters. Were business owners motivated by the potential for profits and to grow their customer base, or were they driven by a feminist aspiration to convert individuals to the cause through cleverly targeted products in their shops and strategic advertisements in the press? Building on the focus on institutions and artistic identities in the previous section, this section specifically addresses the artists, makers and commercial traders who operated fixed-location businesses, alongside their customers. The first chapter, by Miranda Garrett, argues for the importance of considering Emmeline Pankhurst’s (1858–1928) professional life, prior to her formation of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union, as a pioneering interior decorator. Garrett explores Pankhurst’s entrepreneurship in tandem to the career of suffragist and hugely successful interior decorator Agnes Garrett arguing that, for both women, their substantial professional experiences bolstered a commitment to women’s political equality. Additionally, Emmeline Pankhurst and Agnes Garrett both strategically tapped into feminized and feminist networks to encourage trade for their respective businesses, regularly promoting their ‘celebrity’ statuses and businesses within the pages of the suffrage and women’s press. Following on from this, Elizabeth Crawford begins the substantial process of mapping the array of businesses (such as milliners, dressmakers and jewellers) who repeatedly advertised across the pages of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s Votes for Women, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ The Common Cause and the Women’s Freedom League’s The Vote. Such businesses ranged from being openly supportive through to apathetic, often preoccupied with the need to sustain their enterprises, but they all enabled a much wider sphere of individuals to purchase objects and to display support in transitory, everyday ways. This ranged from selling suffrage hat pins, bags and belts, through to offering to decorate domestic rooms in suffrage colours. In the concluding chapter to this section, Kenneth Florey focuses on one of these objects in detail: assessing the production, marketing and usage of suffrage badges in Britain, and the motivations driving those designing, producing and selling them. Such badges were unique in their power to forge a bond between women across the country, creating a feeling of empowerment for individual women, who could show their community they were active supporters of the franchise. Additionally, badges were inexpensive, one of the very few pieces of suffrage culture that working-class women could afford.

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The third section, ‘Paintings on Display’, considers the role of paintings and picture galleries as works and sites of interest (and frustration) for suffrage campaigners, artists and the wider public. Large public institutions, such as the National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery, were attractive venues for militants, as attacks on art work attracted public interest, but they were also spaces of increasing frustration for women. Exhibitions continued to uphold in visual form the hegemonic dominance of elite males in British national life – both through the tendency to prioritize displaying the work of male painters and in the idealized manner in which women were frequently depicted. The first chapter in this section, by Rosie Broadley, uses a 1909 portrait of Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958) painted by Ethel Wright as the starting point to introduce readers to the role of portraiture in raising the status and profiles of prominent militant campaigners, and in carving a new space for the commemoration of women in the history of the nation. Portraiture gave respectability and cultural authority to campaigners, as they were drawing from a long-established model of elite culture, which customarily depicted prominent male figures in large-scale portraits. Broadley traces the apathy of major institutions, such as the Royal Academy of Arts and the National Portrait Gallery, to exhibit or collect the work of artists such as Ethel Wright across the twentieth century, and the transitory placement of such portraits at suffrage and women’s exhibitions, and in domestic spaces, instead. In the second half of this section, Krista Cowman addresses the iconoclasm enacted by housekeepers, governesses and university graduates, who attacked paintings in picture galleries as a targeted way to pledge allegiance to suffrage militancy, and to encourage press interest. Deviating from previous scholarly perspectives, Cowman suggests that these women strategically attacked the famous pieces of art most likely to provoke an extreme reaction from the state and the public, instead of being guided by any aesthetic wish to destroy art works which idealized female nudity. The concluding section,‘Representing Suffrage’, considers representations of the campaign. The three contributors demonstrate the productivity of analysing the movement’s visual culture and its potential to enrich knowledge of circulating societal anxieties about masculinity, the attempts made to evoke mass emotional responses, and to provide – at times the only – clues about women’s political perspectives. The first chapter in this section, by Joseph McBrinn, emphasizes the need to consider male artistic contributions to the cause. McBrinn’s research departs from the historiography of male suffrage, which has concentrated on mapping men’s activity within the movement through organizations such as the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, Men’s Political Union, alongside the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage. Instead, the chapter interrogates the ways men used visual culture to conceptualize and contest tropes about masculinity. McBrinn bases his research around needleworker, actor and artist Ernest Thesiger

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(1879–1961) to provide a window onto circulating views about male chivalry, emasculation, effeminacy and hysteria. His analysis of visual representations of masculine identities, both hegemonic and subordinate, reminds us afresh of the importance of suffrage studies to the wider historiography of gender studies and modern British history. The following chapter, by Janice Helland, comprises a detailed analysis of the textile art of embroiderers Una Taylor (1857–1922) and Ann Macbeth (1875–1948). Helland’s primary concern is two objects not directly linked to the campaign itself but, nonetheless, political in bringing together themes of ethnographic identity and cultural resistance alongside unpicking the complexities of the ethereal femininity of Pre-Raphaelite imagery, which continues to challenge modern-day feminists. Helland uses these embroideries as illustrative of the different paths taken by women in the suffrage movement in Ireland and Scotland. Concluding this section, and the book, is Chloe Ward’s chapter which takes as its focus the iconic depictions of force feeding produced for the Women’s Social and Political Union by artist Alfred Pearse (1855–1933). Representing force feeding, a visceral subject imbued with an inherent visuality irresistible to the public imagination, was of key importance in fostering public support at the height of the campaign. Ward’s chapter addresses the emotional and empathetic engagement of the public with these disturbing images, to draw wider conclusions about their significance in establishing a new mode for looking at and reacting to visual materials, alongside reclaiming the importance of illustration in the history of suffrage.38 *** Members of the Suffrage Atelier, perhaps including the designer(s) of The Polling Station, marched in the Women’s Social and Political Union procession on 23 July 1910, brandishing beribboned artists’ palettes as though as weapons, and seeking to represent the important role played by female artists in British society. Now, while many of these impassioned protesters’ histories, and much of the artworks they produced, are lost, a surviving photograph (Figure 0.6) serves as a stark reminder of the role artists sought to play in the suffrage movement. The contribution of artists to the fight for the vote was extensive. As political individuals, they joined prominent suffrage organizations, marched, wrote letters and signed petitions, often feeling their status in society added weight to their arguments for enfranchisement. As designers and makers, they produced a wealth of visual culture that served to promote the ideals of the campaign and (tried to) unify its members, and they even responded to the increased need to generate visual culture by organizing themselves into dedicated groups. Against this backdrop, such women pursued their own professional, political and personal lives: they exhibited and sold artworks, ran businesses and pushed for wider societal reforms alongside forever trying to balance domestic and professional needs. This book, which asserts the breadth and complexity of artistic contributions to the campaign, as well as emphasizing the impact the movement had on

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FIGURE 0.6  The Artist’s Contingent preparing to march in a suffrage procession in support of the Conciliation Bill, 1910 © Museum of London. the lives of a diverse group of people who remain little recognized, is being published to mark the centenary of women’s partial enfranchisement after the Representation of the People Act of 1918 granted the vote to women over the age of thirty meeting a property qualification. While this event was an important milestone, it ended neither the suffrage campaign (full equality with men was granted in 1928) nor the inequalities facing the artistic women associated with it, many of whom continued to live and work well into the mid twentieth century. This book is part of a much wider programme of publications and events associated with the centenary. Parliament will be presenting ‘Vote 100’, a major centenary exhibition in Westminster Hall covering the growth of the male franchise, the campaign for votes for women, and the representation of women in the House of Commons and House of Lords, while modern-day campaigners have sought to increase the visibility and memorialization of figures central to the suffrage campaigns through the erection of a statue of Millicent Fawcett (1847–1929) in Parliament Square and another, of Emmeline Pankhurst, in Manchester. We hope this book will, alongside other events and publications, encourage the inclusion of visual culture and the lives of the designers and makers of such works in future histories and narratives of suffrage and feminism in modern history.

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Notes 1

2 3 4

5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18

Constitution of the Suffrage Atelier, Women’s Library, LSE (2LSW/E/12/4). That The Polling Station was a block cut print, a technique traditionally deemed unsophisticated, suggests that there was a general emphasis on producing images cheaply and at short notice. Broadsheet, Museum of London (2003.46/175). Postcard, Women’s Library, LSE (TWL.2002.245), Museum of London (50.82/817); poster, Victoria and Albert Museum (E.644-1972). See also, for instance, the Suffrage Atelier poster What a Woman may be, and not yet have the Vote, Victoria and Albert Museum (E.646-1972), Museum of London (50.82/1070) and Women’s Library, LSE (7JCC/O/10/3). By 1911, approximately 7.9 million men were parliamentary voters in Britain. All adult males were granted suffrage in 1918 after the Representation of the People Act. Francesca Carnevali and Julie Marie Strange, eds., 20th Century Britain: Economic, Cultural and Social Change (London: Routledge, 1994), 98. Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987). Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘The Suffragist and the “Average Woman”’, Women’s History Review, 1:1 (1992): 9–24. A potential designer could be Suffrage Atelier artist Catherine Courtauld (1878–1972), as the Polling Station is strikingly like her block print Waiting for a Living Wage, Museum of London (50.82/1081a) and Women’s Library, LSE (TWL.2002.250 and (TWL.1999.13). Women’s Library, LSE (7JCC/O/02/015). Caroline Speck, Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars (London: Reaktion, 2014). Zoë Thomas, ‘Historical Pageants, Citizenship, and the Performance of Women’s History Before Second-Wave Feminism’, Twentieth Century British History, 28:3 (2017): 319–343. Katy Deepwell, Women Artists Between the Wars: A Fair Field and No Favour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). Peter Cormack, ‘A Truly British Movement’, Apollo: The International Magazine of the Arts, April 2005, 48–53, 50. This view is perpetuated in all the major survey books on the topic such as Pamela Todd, William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Home (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012); Fiona McCarthy, William Morris: A Life For Our Time (London: Faber & Faber, 1994); Rosalind Ormiston and Nicholas Michael Wells, William Morris: Artist, Craftsman, Pioneer (London: Flame Tree, 2010). Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth, eds., Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870–1950 (London: Ashgate, 2007), 1–16, 3. Cormack, ‘A Truly British Movement’, 51. Deborah Cherry, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain 1850–1900 (London: Routledge, 2000), 1. Ibid., 2. Clarissa Campbell Orr, ‘Introduction’, in Women in the Victorian Art World, ed., Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 1–30, 5.

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19 Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Women and the Vote’, in Women’s History Britain, ed., June Purvis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), 235–260, 277. 20 Richard Pankhurst, Sylvia Pankhurst, Artist and Crusader: An Intimate Portrait (London: Paddington Press, 1979) and Barbara Winslow, Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism (London: UCL Press, 1996). 21 June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2002); Lyndsey Jenkins, Lady Constance Lytton: Aristocrat, Suffragette, Martyr (London: Biteback Publishing, 2015). 22 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 2000), xiii. 23 Senia Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward, eds., Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens (Co. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2007). 24 Krista Cowman, ‘Women’s Suffrage Campaigns in Britain’, Women’s History Review, 9:4 (2000): 815–823, 816. 25 Claire Eustance, Joan Ryan and Laura Ugolini, eds., A Suffrage Reader: Charting Directions in British Suffrage History (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2000), 7–8. 26 Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 27 Eustance, Ryan and Ugolini, eds., A Suffrage Reader, 1–2. See also: June Hannam, ‘International Dimensions of Women’s Suffrage: “At the Crossroads of Several Interlocking Identities”’, Women’s History Review, 14:3–4 (2005): 543–560; Caroline Daley and Melanie Norton, eds., Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Ellen Carol Dubois, Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Irma Sulkunen, Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi and Pirjo Markkola, eds., Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009); Kathryn Gleadle and Zoë Thomas, ‘Global Feminisms, c. 1870–1930: vocabularies and concepts – a comparative approach’, Women’s History Review (2018), available online, advanced access: https://www.tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/09612025.2017.1417685 28 Burton, Burdens of History; Sumita Mukherjee, ‘The All-Asian Women’s Conference 1931: Indian Women and Their Leadership of a Pan-Asian Feminist Organisation’, Women’s History Review, 26:3 (2017): 363–381. See also Mukherjee’s forthcoming book, Indian Suffragettes: Female Identities and Transnational Networks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 29 Deborah Cherry and Janice Helland, eds., Local/Global, Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006); Cherry, Beyond the Frame; Cherry, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists (London: Routledge, 1993); Janice Helland and Beverly Lemire, eds., Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th–20th Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); Lynne Walker, ‘Women Patron-Builders in Britain: Identity, Difference and Memory in Spatial and Material Culture’, in Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century, eds., Deborah Cherry and Janice Helland (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), 121–136; Lynne Walker, ‘Home and Away: The Feminist

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SUFFRAGE AND THE ARTS Mapping of Public and Private Space in Victorian London’, in The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space, eds., Iain Borden, Joe Kerr, Jane Rendell, with Alicia Pivaro (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 296–310; Janice Helland, Professional Women Painters in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Commitment, Friendship, Pleasure (Farnham: Ashgate, 2000); Janice Helland, The Studios of Frances and Margaret MacDonald (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); Pamela Gerrish Nunn, ‘Dorothy’s Career and Other Cautionary Tales’, in Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century: Artistry and Industry in Britain, eds., Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski (London: Ashgate, 2013), 167–184; Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Victorian Women Artists (London: Women’s Press, 1987); Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Canvassing: Recollections by Six Victorian Women Artists (London: Camden Press, 1986); Anthea Callen, Angel in the Studio: Women in the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870–1914 (London: Astragal Books, 1979); Isabelle Anscombe, A Woman’s Touch: Women in Design from 1860 to the Present Day (London: Virago, 1984). See also Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (London: Women’s Press, 1989); Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, in Art and Sexual Politics: Women’s Liberation, Women Artists, and Art History, eds., Thomas Hess and Elizabeth Baker (New York: Collier, 1973); Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013). Lucy Ella Rose, ‘A Feminist Network in an Artists’ Home: Mary and George Watts, George Meredith, and Josephine Butler’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 21:1 (2016): 74–91; Lucy Ella Rose, Suffragist Artists in Partnership: Gender, Word and Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Tara Morton, ‘Changing Spaces: Art, Politics, and Identity in the Home Studios of the Suffrage Atelier’, Women’s History Review, 21:4 (2012): 623–637; Zoë Thomas, ‘At Home with the Women’s Guild of Arts: Gender and Professional Identity in London Studios, c. 1880–1925’, Women’s History Review, 24:6 (2015): 938–964; Maria Quirk, ‘An Art School of Their Own: Women’s Ateliers in England, 1880–1920’, Woman’s Art Journal, 34:2 (2013): 39–44. Kathryn Gleadle, Borderline Citizens: Women, Gender, and Political Culture in Britain, 1815–1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Ellen Jordan, The Women’s Movement and Women’s Employment in Nineteenth Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1999); Gillian Sutherland, In Search of the New Woman: Middle-Class Women and Work in Britain, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Dina Copelman, London’s Women Teachers: Gender, Class and Feminism, 1870–1930 (London: Routledge, 1996); Krista Cowman and Louise Jackson, Women and Work Culture: Britain, c. 1850–1950 (London: Routledge, 2005); Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, Public Lives: Women, Family and Society in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). Sowon Park, ‘The First Professional: The Women Writers’ Suffrage League’, Modern Language Quarterly, 58:2 (1997): 185–200. Sophia A. van Wingerden dedicated a whole chapter of her book on the suffrage campaign to Quakers, actresses, gymnasts, and other suffragists. Sophia A. van Wingerden, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain, 1866–1928 (London: Palgrave

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Macmillan, 1999), 108–117. See also J. F. Geddes, ‘The Doctors’ Dilemma: Medical Women and the British Suffrage Movement’, Women’s History Review, 18:2 (2009): 203–218. Irene Cockroft and Susan Croft, Art, Theatre, and Women’s Suffrage (Twickenham: Aurora Metro Books, 2010); Carolyn Marie Tilghman, ‘Staging Suffrage: Women, Politics and the Edwardian Theater’, Comparative Drama, 45:4 (2011): 339–360. See also Naomi Paxton’s forthcoming book, Stage Rights! The Actresses’ Franchise League, Activism and Politics: 1908–1958 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018). Stacy Boldrick and Tabitha Barber, Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm exhibition catalogue (London: Tate, 2008); Suzanne Macleod, ‘Civil Disobedience and Political Agitation: The Art Museum as a Site of Protest in the Early Twentieth Century’, Museum and Society, 5:1 (2007): 44–57; Rowena Fowler, ‘Why Did Suffragettes Attack Works of Art?’, Journal of Women’s History, 2:3 (1991): 109–125. Maria DiCenzo, Lucy Delap and Leila Ryan, eds., Feminist Media History: Suffrage, Periodicals and the Public Sphere (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Ken Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: An Illustrated Historical Study (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2013); Maureen Daly Goggin, ‘Fabricating Identity’, in Women and Things, 1750–1950 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 31–50. See also Barbara Miller, ‘Smashing Handkerchief’, Spare Rib, 27 (1973): 10–13; John Mercer, ‘Media and Militancy: Propaganda in the Women’s Social and Political Union’s Campaign’, Women’s History Review, 14:3–4 (2006): 471–486; John Mercer, ‘Commercial Places, Public Spaces: Suffragette Shops and the Public Sphere’, University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 7 (2004), 1–10; Ian McDonald, Vindication! A Postcard History of the Women’s Movement (London: Bellew Publishing, 1989); Alice Sheppard, ‘The Relation of Suffrage Art to Culture’, in Politics, Gender and the Arts: Women, the Arts and Society, eds., Ronald Dotterer and Susan Bowers (Selinsgrove, Canada: Susquehanna University Press, 2002), 32–51 and her ‘Suffrage Art and Feminism’, Hypatia, 5 (1990): 122–136; Katrina Rolley, ‘Fashion, Femininity and the Fight for the Vote’, Art History, 13:1 (1990): 47–71. Diane Atkinson, The Suffragettes in Pictures (London: The History Press, 1996); Anna Sparham, ed., Soldiers and Suffragettes: The Photography of Christina Broom (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2015). See also Barbara Green, ‘The Feel of the Feminist Network: Votes for Women after The Suffragette’, Women: A Cultural Review, 27:4 (2016): 359–377.

PART ONE

Institutional Politics

CHAPTER ONE

‘I loathe the thought of suffrage sex wars being brought into it’: Institutional conservatism in early twentieth-century women’s art organizations Zoë Thomas

In 1950, painter Margaret Geddes (1914–1998) wrote an article about the history of the Women’s International Art Club – of which she was the Chair – for the celebrated art journal The Studio. Although the Club had been founded in Paris at the turn of the century, it quickly moved to London to ‘promote contacts between women artists of all nations and to arrange exhibitions of their work’. In her article, Geddes informed readers that: There is a good deal of prejudice, both amongst the lay public and amongst artists themselves, against any society which exists exclusively for women artists, and the Women’s International Art Club has come in for its share of criticism … Whatever may have been the case in the past, it is said, nowadays there is surely no reason for women to segregate themselves in this way? It is apparently necessary, therefore, when writing of a women’s club, that one should start with an apology for its existence!

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Geddes then proclaimed that she refused to ‘get involved in an argument about women’ and instead wanted to focus on the ‘interesting’ and ‘outstanding work’ at the Club’s exhibitions. A final caveat was added when she reassured readers that the group was ‘entirely non-political’.1 The article was published five years after the Second World War, twenty-two years after full emancipation had been granted to women in Britain in 1928. Written by a painter born in 1914, Margaret Geddes belonged to a later generation than many of the artists whose lives are explored within this collection. This extract is significant, however, as her comments reveal the prevalent anxieties about women’s art groups and intrigue about the political preferences of members in the 1950s, an anxiety that had been present throughout the suffrage campaign and had clearly continued long afterwards. Geddes’ refusal to ‘get involved in an argument about women’ was the official stance taken by many of the major women’s art organizations in Britain across the early-to-mid twentieth century. Alongside the Women’s International Art Club, these organizations included groups such as the Society of Women Artists (founded during 1856–1857), the Glasgow Society of Women Artists (founded in 1882) and the Women’s Guild of Arts (founded in 1907).2 These organizations were created because women were often barred entry to prestigious male-only art institutions (no woman had been a member of the Royal Academy of Arts since the eighteenth century, for instance), which, alongside more insidious gendered prejudices, produced a masculine environment which dominated the professional art scene.3 Naturally, each women’s art organization developed different characteristics and aims. The Society of Women Artists was proud of its royal patronage and exhibited the works of those designated ‘amateurs’ alongside ‘professionals’ while the Women’s International Art Club concentrated on forging transnational links between artistic women at annual exhibitions, although, as Grace Brockington has shown, it was dominated by British members.4 In contrast, the Women’s Guild of Arts focused on providing an exclusive network for professional women associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. The Guild was formed because women were not allowed to join the Art Workers’ Guild, a prestigious group for radical male architects and designers, which was established in 1884 and prohibited female members from joining until 1964. During the suffrage campaign and in the years that followed, individual members, separate from their activities within these art organizations, were often at the forefront of those advocating political and social reforms. They designed and made suffrage banners, posters, postcards and other ephemera, and their role in the fight for political and social change deserves greater prominence in histories of the movement, as does the potential of the arts to awaken a sense of selfhood that fed directly into feminist causes. But despite being institutions seeking to improve women’s professional and artistic opportunities, as the scholarship of Pamela Gerrish Nunn, amongst others, has demonstrated, the committees of all these major women’s art organizations appear united in their refusal to take a public stance on topics deemed overtly political,

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and there is little evidence of any sustained collective support for suffrage in the twentieth century.5 Alongside this, to date, it has been difficult for researchers to assess the institutional perspectives of the networks of women who made up these organizations due to a lack of surviving archival materials.6 However, a recently discovered archive pertaining to the, at times fraught, private institutional debates between different members of the Women’s Guild of Arts at the height of suffrage militancy, c. 1907–1913 – alongside reappraisal of the Women’s International Art Club’s meeting minutes – allows this chapter to focus on this apparent contradiction between the institutional and personal responses of female artists to suffrage and feminism. Behind the scenes in early twentieth-century Britain, members of artistic women’s organizations had become increasingly polarized in their perspectives about feminist politics and the appropriate influence of this on the arts. The neutrality and abstention from political concerns which these institutions outwardly demonstrated were not mirrored in internal discussions. Debates raged, members resigned and opinionated letters were exchanged. Some began to find it impossible to separate the quest for equal citizenship from their positions as professional artists and became frustrated by institutional apathy. But for others, the daily gendered challenges they faced in the arts led them to prioritize the fight for artistic equality above fighting for constitutional reforms. Many identified first, and foremost, as artists (rather than disenfranchised women) and prioritized closing the gendered gap separating them from their male peers over their engagement in the electoral process. Crucially, it was felt by a considerable number that the heightened societal anxieties about gender relations and suffrage in the early twentieth century, and the increasingly separatist approach of suffrage groups such as the Women’s Social and Political Union, exacerbated gender tensions and moved women further from the ultimate goal of artistic gender unity. As such, these individuals greatly encouraged the organizations they were members of to avoid any discussions about gender or politics and to simply try and exist as exemplars of artistic expertise. As Helen McCarthy has noted, many women – working across the professions – were often ambivalent to feminist ideology because they instead wanted ‘to claim for themselves an identity that was not solely defined by gendered political struggle’.7 There was no obvious correlation, such as age, political allegiance or artistic field, between the women who were increasingly split between these two perspectives. The pursuit of ‘equality’, and what this objective represented to different women across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Britain, was influenced by fluctuating professional needs, class, ethnicity, age and a complex personal reconciliation of ideals and everyday necessity. Relative priorities could focus on the constitutional, civic, financial or (pertinent to the subject of this chapter) professional. Assumptions that the focal point of early twentieth-century feminist and women-centred politics was always ‘the vote’ are not tenable. As Lucy Delap has argued, it is ‘anachronistic

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to treat suffrage as coterminous with feminism’.8 Moving away from positioning commitment to suffrage as the sole marker through which women’s activity of this era is evaluated, this chapter shows that even the more conservative members of women’s art organizations were, in their own – not unproblematic – way, committed to promoting opportunities for professional equality. Addressing the multiplicity of, at times incompatible, ways women in the arts sought societal change, is vital when assessing why groups such as the Women’s Guild of Arts appear to have outwardly shown so little interest in suffrage. In so doing, this chapter stresses the need to situate the campaign amidst the wider historical landscape, as this provides a window onto the intersecting political and professional allegiances that shaped women’s priorities and responses to suffrage and feminism in twentieth-century Britain. *** The Women’s Guild of Arts was established as an Arts and Crafts organization for women in 1907. Textile designer May Morris (1862–1938) was the driving force but others were involved in its foundation and early years, such as embroiderer Mary Thackeray Turner (1854–1907), tempera painter and art patron Christiana Herringham (1852–1929), gilder Mary Batten (1874–1932), embroiderer Grace Christie (1872–1953), muralist Mary Sargant Florence (1857–1954), sculptor Feodora Gleichen (1861–1922), calligrapher Florence Kate Kingsford (1871–1949) and stained-glass artist Mary Lowndes (1856–1929).9 There were approximately sixty full members and candidates gained membership through a vigorous entry procedure where their work was inspected and voted on by existing members. Members included many of the most renowned artistic women of the era, such as painter Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919) and women who individually appear in many chapters of this book: Honorary Associate and embroiderer Una Taylor (1857–1922), illustrator Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951) and interior decorator Agnes Garrett (1845–1935). London-based members encouraged women to join from across the country by offering reduced fees to ‘country’ members, which included individuals such as the weaver Annie Garnett (1864–1942) in the Lake District.10 Although the Guild was formed because women were not allowed to join the Art Workers’ Guild, official papers always avoided inflammatory statements about why it had been necessary to form a separate group for women. Across the first sixty years of the twentieth century, the Guild provided a, now largely forgotten, network for professional women active in the fine and applied arts, and facilitated regular lectures and meetings, informal demonstration evenings, exhibitions, parties and ‘At Homes’ in the homes and studios of members. Members were much influenced by circulating debates about whether to collaborate professionally with, or separately from, men – a topic also being debated within suffrage societies.11 By the early twentieth century, female art groups were increasingly seen as concessionary among women

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who wanted to be defined as professionals as it was felt these groups created an unnecessary segregation of the sexes, strengthening perceptions of the feminine persona of the perceived amateur ‘lady artist’. In a 1913 letter from Guild member Feodora Gleichen to May Morris, Gleichen exemplified the view of many of her peers when she insisted there ‘ought to be no such thing as distinction of sexes in art’. She continued: ‘I have always been dead against any women’s societies of art … and if this society is going to become one of the many women’s society things, I shall certainly leave it. I only joined because I understood it to be on a totally different basis to these other narrow societies.’12 Instead, women sought to train, exhibit and work alongside men, while also joining a growing number of mixed-sex art groups. But despite the mounting feeling that women’s organizations were anachronistic, women continued to be denied access to certain cultural institutions. Consequently, single-sex spaces where women could work, collaborate and display work remained a practical necessity, even though women often sought to separate themselves ideologically from these feminine, spatially segregated spaces to their peers, customers and in the press. Members of the Women’s Guild of Arts tried to adopt the approach taken by the established Art Workers’ Guild to generate respect and avoid being denigrated as a ‘women’s society’. This influenced their choice of name and style of meetings, and the Guild even began to meet for formal meetings at the same hall as their male peers, a fourteenth-century hall at Clifford’s Inn, Fleet Street in central London. The members hoped that sharing the same venue as their male peers, although still segregated in ‘male’ and ‘female’ Guilds, would enable them to foster new mixed-sex collaborations. As member, the enamellist Edith B. Dawson (1862–1928) approvingly confided in a letter to May Morris in 1908, ‘For years the Art Workers’ Guild has held its meetings there and perhaps only those of us who have men folk belonging to the guild know how attached they are to the fine old hall with its many associations, and what a dignifying and benign influence such a place of meeting would have on any gathering.’13 The Women’s Guild of Arts committee actively encouraged joint meetings and events between the two Guilds such as a lecture on ‘William Morris’ in 1917, another on ‘Banners’ in 1919 and a variety of other informal events, although there is little evidence to suggest there was ever any widespread male enthusiasm for mixed-sex networking.14 Cultivating a sense of privacy was vital for both Guilds, as it was to other artistic and intellectual clubs of this era, such as the Cambridge Apostles. Both Guilds avoided publicity, which fit with their creative, anti-commercialist pursuits and conveniently added to the prestige of events. For the Women’s Guild of Arts, this also enabled members to avoid a public proclamation of institutional femininity. Clifford’s Inn Hall, an established enclave of masculine professionalism in the city due to its historic role as part of the law courts, and during this era rented by a range of professional organizations, marked a substantial deviation from the feminized institutionalism routinely being

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implemented by professional women and suffragists. This was something increasingly embodied in the architecture and interior arrangements of the premises women were establishing. For instance, the London headquarters for the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was an elegant eighteenthcentury town house, which Lynne Walker has written was considered ‘appropriate to the femininity of the suffrage occupants’, due to the ‘dainty honeysuckle ornament on the pilasters and the rich plasterwork detailing of the interiors’.15 Such an approach – which emphasized the femininity of the occupants – was not adopted as a strategy by the Women’s Guild of Arts. Having a visible presence through their own designated clubhouse, alongside being unaffordable, would have gone against their attempts to link their activities with the Art Workers’ Guild. The year 1907 marked a turning point in the Arts and Crafts movement, the moment when the Women’s Guild of Arts, albeit ephemerally, began to claim this masculine area at the heart of the city, encouraging artistic women to enter the hall for meetings to demonstrate commitment to bringing about artistic equality.16 This shift was contemporary to the moment at which the suffrage campaign became increasingly militant and embraced a more visible spectacle through marches, processions and pageantry. The year before, in 1906, the militant Women’s Social and Political Union had also moved its headquarters a five-minute walk away from Clifford’s Inn Hall at 3 and 4 Clement’s Inn. Close to the law courts, it was the ideal hub for their frenetic campaigning in the city.17 Despite the different aims of these organizations – one focused predominantly on political equality and another on artistic equality – both groups of women were now asserting their right to occupy ‘male’ metropolitan space. Members of the Guild held two broad perspectives about women’s political rights and their associated responsibilities as a group of women, although on an individual level these views could change, and, notably, no members have been identified as having engaged in suffragette violence. Some were committed to using the Guild as a ‘non-political’ institution that focused on persistently – but non-controversially – blurring the gendered boundaries between the Art Workers’ Guild and the Women’s Guild of Arts. Many of these women supported female political emancipation, but prioritized eliminating the gendered hierarchies they perceived to be thwarting artistic equality. May Morris, who was at this point Honorary Secretary, exemplifies how women could, at discrete moments, show considerable support for suffrage, but at other points appeared disinterested and consistently focused on promoting artistic interests first and foremost. She showed commitment by designing and providing the materials for a Fabian Society banner in 1908 intended for a National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ procession. The banner was emblazoned with the motto ‘Equal opportunities for men and women’ (Figure 1.1).18 Morris also consented to having her name included in a list of contributors to the suffrage paper The Coming Citizen, although she was reluctant to join in any work to which she could only lend occasional aid.

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She wrote that she hoped the paper would bring about women’s suffrage, so that people could then ‘give place to other matters’.19 During a 1909– 1910 lecture tour of North America, audiences assumed Morris would be heavily immersed in the British suffrage campaign, but they were surprised when she ‘shrank into herself as a snail into its shell as she was bombarded with questions about woman suffrage and such topics of the hour’. When pushed to present her perspective, she replied simply that ‘her interest with suffrage is linked with the guild workers in the arts and crafts’.20 Traditional accounts have foregrounded her socialist beliefs, which prioritized class and economic hierarchies as the major issues to be overcome over the needs of bourgeois feminism and suffrage. However, overlapping with this, Morris clearly wished to focus on artistic unity and professional mixed-sex collaboration, something which she perceived to, at times, be at odds with the separatism and gendered strategies prevalent in the suffrage campaign.21 Other members considered the quest for artistic equality to be more deeply entwined with their desire for political emancipation. Writer, sculptor and painter Julia Chance (1864–1949) even resigned because the suffrage movement took up all of her ‘time and interest’.22 The extensive contributions of numerous other members to the cause can be traced through their

FIGURE 1.1  Photograph showing Fabian Women, Equal opportunities for men and women banner, c. 1908 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

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writing, alongside a rich trail of surviving visual culture. Member Louise Jacobs (1880–1946) designed the famed The Appeal of Womanhood poster in 1912 which provides a glimpse of her views about the wider social consequences of women getting the vote, as it included an idealized female figure holding a scroll stating ‘We want the vote to stop the white slave traffic, sweated labour, and to save the children’ and featured a huddle of working-class women in the background.23 The illustrator Pamela Colman Smith, gilder Ada Ridley (born c. 1864) and illustrator Alice B. Woodward (1862–1951), who were all members of the Guild, all contributed stencils to the 1911 booklet An Anti-Suffrage Alphabet designed by Laurence Housman (1865–1959). The booklet sardonically depicted, in alphabet form, the sexism women routinely faced (Plate 1). Painter Emily Ford (1850–1930), Mary Sargant Florence and Mary Lowndes appear particularly committed to the campaign. Ford played an integral role in the Manchester Society for Women’s Suffrage and designed suffrage posters such as Factory Acts which addressed the legislation passed on behalf of women without their involvement, while Mary Sargant Florence subscribed to numerous suffrage organizations including the Women’s Social and Political Union and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, designed banners and posters, co-authored the text Militarism versus Feminism and was on the committee of the Tax Resistance League.24 Mary Lowndes should be singled out for her extensive contributions to feminist causes, through her articles in the suffrage press debating topics such as ‘Genius and female painters’, alongside designing an astonishing number of banners for suffrage pageants and marches.25 For some of these banners, Lowndes was aided by individual members of the Women’s Guild of Arts. For instance, the stained-glass artist Mabel Esplin (1874– 1921) is known to have worked alongside Lowndes, making banners to represent professional women for the 1909 Pageant of Women’s Trades and Professions in London.26 A number of banners produced by these women represented professional women from across history, their names carefully handstitched in sizeable lettering, so that they were readable by the crowds, fluttering with the names of writers such as Charlotte (1816–1855) and Emily Brontë (1818–1848) and painter Mary Moser (1744–1819). For Moser’s banner, special attention was taken to stitch ‘RA’, the signifier which reminded knowledgeable spectators that female artists had been members of the Royal Academy in the eighteenth century but were no longer involved (Plate 2). Indeed, it is striking that Lowndes had been instrumental in founding the Artists’ Suffrage League in 1907, the very year the Women’s Guild of Arts was formed. Members of both organizations, alongside Lowndes, included Christiana Herringham, Mary Sargant Florence, Alice B. Woodward, her sister, the metalworker E. C. Woodward (1860–1943) and illustrator M. V. Wheelhouse (1869–1947), among others. The closely intertwined political–artistic lives of these women were fostered through

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increasing involvement with, and formation of, new art organizations which variously sought to bring about political, social and artistic equality. In a very different manner to the Women’s Guild of Arts, the League was established specifically to provide a new forum for professional artists to use their creative skills to publicize the suffrage campaign, such as through the production of the banners discussed in the previous paragraph. But even though the priorities of these two groups differed, the friendships and professional links between the membership meant the two groups had a shared history from the beginning. It is also noticeable that all of these women advocated a collaborative, non-militant approach in their quest for political and artistic equality. Members of the League promoted this aspect of their work widely, as demonstrated through the League’s official banner which was embroidered with the words ‘Alliance Not Defiance’, which Guild member Christiana Herringham assisted in stitching.27 Although the Women’s Guild of Arts met in a private hall to discuss art, avoided publicity and was notably quiet on the suffrage question, those involved in the Artists’ Suffrage League quickly began to parade the streets, using their artistic skills to generate public spectacle to encourage political rights for women. A representative example can be found in The Times in 1908, which described a National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ procession where various Guild members who were attached to the Artists’ Suffrage League had stitched banners and marched to demonstrate their support. The League had organized the creation ‘of nearly a thousand beautiful banners … each different, each wrought in gorgeous colour and in rich materials, and each … of some famous woman leaders and pioneers, or of the locality whence the processionists are drawn’. They were part of ‘Thousands and thousands of women representative of every class in society’ who marched ‘in procession at 3 o’clock … to the Albert-hall, where a mass meeting will be held to demand the abolition of the legal disqualification which prevents women from voting in the election of members of Parliament’. Every one of the ‘distinguished women artists’ singled out for praise were, at this point, Guild members. They included painter Marianne Stokes (1855– 1927), Mary Lowndes, May Morris and Emily Ford. These women had ‘generously given their services in the production of these banners; and the result is that a display of colour may be expected such as seldom gladdens the eyes and heart of the Londoner’.28 Alongside such spectacle, militancy was also on the rise. Several Guild members grew increasingly frustrated, feeling violence to be unproductive. In 1908, Women’s Guild of Arts member Christiana Herringham, alongside the painter Bertha Newcombe (1857–1947), sent a petition to The Times, carefully pointing out that the signatures collected were from ‘leading women’ and not as ‘the act of a party or society’. There had been promise of a speech from the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George (1863–1945) at a meeting at the Royal Albert Hall for the Women’s Liberal Federation, an organization formed in the 1880s to encourage legislation for women on the

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same terms as men. The proposed event ‘had aroused a great interest and expectation among women of all shades of political opinion who desire the Parliamentary vote’. The petition had been raised because the Women’s Social and Political Union apparently planned to break up the meeting and prevent Lloyd George from speaking, something the petition described rather cuttingly as ‘part of their usual tactics’. Those who signed the petition included May Morris, alongside other prominent women such as social reformer Beatrice Webb (1858–1943) and President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929). This petition captures the frustrations felt by many of the leading professional women in British society in 1908 who found militant tactics frustrating and counterproductive. Herringham, Morris, Garrett Fawcett and Webb, amongst others, had decided to take to the pages of the national press ‘to point out that nothing can, from any point of view, be gained by such action equal to the advantage of having a Cabinet Minister’s pronouncement on this burning question’. The petition stressed that the statement from Lloyd George must ‘in the first instance, be heard, and then reported, as it would be, all over the English-speaking world’.29 Clearly, these women wished to avoid separatism and encourage change through constitutional, mixed-sex discussions and collaborations. The tactics increasingly promoted by militant organizations were problematic for the women wishing to minimize gendered tensions as an integral part of their battles for professional equality. This perspective was continually reiterated to the members of the Guild. At one meeting in 1911, May Morris reminded members they did not wish to be ‘self-supporting’ (meaning to be reliant on female speakers) for lectures or to encourage separatist strategies. Instead, the Guild was to encourage ‘stimulating intercourse with … other workers outside’.30 The committee was forever trying to balance a desire to provide new opportunities for female artistic sociability with their concerns about being ghettoized as a ‘women’s group’. May Morris actively promoted male involvement by regularly asking men, often from the Art Workers’ Guild, to give lectures at Women’s Guild of Arts meetings, telling female members that ‘one of our traditions which from the first included men in the invitations to attend our meetings and to lecture before us, is really one of our strong points as a body of artists’. At this meeting, she even finished by stressing that the Guild was to focus ‘purely’ on ‘questions of art’. In 1912, Morris went even further, writing in a handwritten version of the 1912 Secretary’s Report that: ‘I believe too we are agreed that we are not banded together to show what we can do alone – an isolated society in the community bound together by sex rather than by art’. The Guild instead aimed to mirror the Art Workers’ Guild, ‘men already having their own organisations’, and simply ‘to do what they are doing, i.e. to keep at the highest level the arts by which and for which we live’.31 Members focused their energies on emulating the Art Workers’ Guild, even though this created an inherent tension in their activities. These women

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wanted to be considered as art workers on the same level as, and linked to, ‘the men’, rather than as a ‘sisterhood’. However, the gendered hierarchies inherent to early twentieth-century society, which forced women to create a segregated organization due to the attitudes of their male peers, meant they were unable to achieve the degree of mixed-sex artistic networking they hoped for. Alongside these institutional tensions across the period in the run-up to the war, individual artistic women who committed their time to suffrage causes began to feel an increasing pull between their political and professional commitments. In a letter from the feminist organizer Philippa Strachey (1872–1968) to Millicent Garrett Fawcett in 1908, Strachey stressed the extensive contributions Mary Lowndes had made to the campaign through her involvement in the Artists’ Suffrage League and worried about the impact this must be having on her stained-glass business: Her organising capacities are … remarkable. She got the banners made & she worked out every detail in connection with them without letting me have the smallest trouble about them from first to last … She really did an immense amount of work for us & I shudder to think of what was happening to her own trade.32 The evident impact this was having on Lowndes was revealed the following year when Lowndes’ partner, suffragist and fellow stained-glass worker Barbara Forbes (1871–1946), wrote to Strachey lamenting ‘we have a lot of work, and as she spends all her time on suffrage I must do what little I can for the despised customer’.33 Lowndes herself commented on these difficulties in 1911. When asked to be involved in the Coronation Procession for King George V (1865– 1936), she wrote to Strachey that ‘Miss Forbes and I are both absolutely unable to give the time required for organising such a thing at this moment; and I do not know anyone else in the Artists’ League who will give up their home and all their work for some weeks’.34 The campaign was increasingly demanding full-time commitment, something women who needed to make money, and had established professional lives, found extremely difficult to juggle. By 1912, tensions had reached breaking point in the campaign, something mirrored in the Women’s Guild of Arts. The period from 1912 to 1913 marked the point when societal anxiety about the escalating militancy of the suffragettes came to a head, provoked by nationwide arson attacks, vandalism and destruction of art works. As Lucy Delap has argued, suffrage was also ‘demanding a more wholesale commitment that might run counter to suffragists’ other political affiliations’. The Women’s Social and Political Union became increasingly isolated in its outlook, and other suffrage campaigners became disillusioned and ‘looked for alternatives’.35 In the Guild, internal politics had become increasingly tense between different members. Some thought the Guild should take a more active stance against male involvement, as this had been increasing each year with growing

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numbers of lectures being given by men, while others wished to continue to try and encourage this approach of mixed-sex professional sociability. At the Guild’s annual meeting in 1912, poet and artist Alys Fane Trotter (1862– 1961) proposed to members that they needed to do more to encourage mixed-sex sociability.36 She suggested the creation of Honorary Associates, so they could invite not only eminent figures such as textile designer Una Taylor to join, but also crucially key members of the Art Workers’ Guild such as engraver Emery Walker (1851–1933), architect W. R. Lethaby (1857–1931) and art scholar Laurence Binyon (1869–1943). This proposal led to a flurry of letters from concerned members and an ‘Extra-ordinary General Meeting’ to debate the issue. A cluster of women, including known suffragists such as Mary Lowndes and Emily Ford, wrote a joint letter of complaint arguing men should not be allowed to join as Honorary Associates, as it created a gendered hierarchy, worsened because it was a free position, while members had to pay an annual sum. In addition, it also ‘endors[ed] a policy which has of late limited the functions of the Guild almost entirely to listening to lectures’.37 In early 1913, however, over thirty members of the Women’s Guild of Arts wrote a formal letter to the Chairman of the Guild (Mary Seton Watts, 1849–1938) disagreeing with the suffragists who wanted to stop male participation. They stated: We welcome any means of widening the scope of the Guild, such as stimulating and interesting lectures, not only from our own members but from men and women outside. Such lectures we have been in the custom of having and they help to keep our body in touch with the work and thought of the world in a way perhaps not otherwise possible for many women whose time is much occupied.38 This letter provides unprecedented insight into the united perspective of a considerable number of women artists from this era and reveals that most members did not wish to use separatist strategies, seeing ‘outside’ artists – which here seems to have symbolized men – as a useful link to keep their body connected to the world of work. Alongside this group letter, a series of individual letters were sent to the Honorary Secretaries of the Guild, May Morris and etcher Mary A. Sloane (1867–1961). All the surviving letters are from women who were in favour of male involvement, although it is impossible to determine whether it was decided to simply keep those letters, or whether these supporting letters were the only ones sent. These letters show the extent to which members were being influenced in their views by wider societal anxieties about feminism and suffrage. Illuminator Ethel Sandell thought the concerns about male Honorary Associates ‘excessively silly and feminine’. She had recently been commissioned by the Guild to scribe a Guild roll, but warned she had stopped as ‘she didn’t want to go down in posterity as being involved in making the roll of a Guild of man-eaters!’39 A letter from decorative painter

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Edith K. Martyn (born c. 1863) revealed she had had long-term worries about the motives of the Guild: The strong movement against it seemed to me to be from a purely antiman tendency and to go towards weakening the Guild altogether … I have felt rather doubtful whether I ought to remain in the Guild if it stood at all for the possibly political or above tendency for years … I’ll resign if the Guild is evidently going to be an anti-man affair.40 Similarly, illustrator Ethel Everett (1878–1951) felt ‘that our great art should be ideally human and neither man nor woman should be excluded from anything connected to it’. Everett worked through her justifications for the Guild being separated from the Art Workers’ Guild in the letter by writing: ‘of course it’s necessary sometimes to have clubs and societies for one and other. But to get a feminine element into art is a mistake which must be unless there is somewhere an interchange of ideas’.41 One unnamed member even wrote that ‘Personally, I do not feel strongly about it, except that I loathe the thought of suffrage sex wars being brought into it and warmly welcome new lecturers … instead of … little papers by half-baked people who think it their duty to stand on their legs because they are members’.42 The fact that so many women chose to sign this group letter, alongside the many women who wrote individual letters where they detailed further their personal perspectives on the issue, provides clear evidence of the weight members placed on this matter. There was no other occasion in the history of the Guild which resulted in so much interest. There was a general consensus, articulated most fully by Feodora Gleichen, that the ‘letter from the … malcontents seems … very vague and disconnected … looks to me as if it was only a cloak for their real reason … the objection to admitting men at all, however of course that is my private opinion!’43 She felt that to: Reject any form of external help, such as lectures by outsiders whether men or women is narrowing it all down to a silly sort of childish game. There can be no possible question of politics in such a society and the sort of retaliation about not admitting men as Associates, because they do not admit us to their Guild seems to me unutterably small and petty.44 In a later letter, Gleichen did, however, comment that if having Honorary Associates ‘causes such dismay amongst certain members … that it is not of sufficient importance to allow it to make a permanent split in the Society’.45 Pamela Colman Smith confided in a letter to Mary A. Sloane that she felt members were ‘old enough’ to know their own minds, but to her, limiting male involvement meant going against the founding principles, as it would ‘make this Guild into a purely woman’s affair – which it was never originally started on’.46 Even though the Guild had been created in direct reaction to male dominance of the artistic scene, these women evidently did not want

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to portray themselves as separatists and showed remarkable distain for female self-segregation. At the ‘Extra-ordinary’ meeting on 28 February 1913, Mary Sargant Florence, backed by Mary Batten, proposed it be reconsidered whether men should be allowed to join as Honorary Associates. However, after a vote of twenty-one for and sixteen against, the principle of admitting male Honorary Associates was reaffirmed.47 This caused considerable frustration for the women who had complained about male involvement, and some felt there had been no opportunity to diplomatically work through these problems. At the October 1913 committee meeting, Mary Sargant Florence said she was ‘dissatisfied with the way the Guild was managed’, and resigned from the committee.48 A scribbled note in the margin of the minute book shows many of the same members who had been concerned about male involvement supported her in this, leaving dramatically mid-meeting. These members then resigned, which the committee accepted ‘with regret’. Those who resigned included individuals such as Emily Ford, Alice B. Woodward and M. V. Wheelhouse.49 Mary Batten took care to add a concluding comment in the book, noting her dissatisfaction and writing that she ‘entirely agreed with the protest that had been made and entirely disagreed with the way in which it had been done’.50 The 1913 Annual Report told members that invitations to join the Guild as Honorary Associates had been sent to Una Taylor, Laurence Binyon, W. R. Lethaby and Emery Walker who had all accepted. The men were members of the Art Workers’ Guild, and this opportunity to begin to merge memberships between the two must have been enticing. The report finished by stating: Now, the Art Workers’ Guild for reasons of their own are unable to admit women, but as far as our Guild is concerned, there is no principle involved in keeping men at a distance. It is undeniable that the principal workers in most crafts are men, and from the first our Guild has felt that the best authorities in every branch of Arts and Crafts should, regardless of sex or distinction, be encouraged to come into our midst and talk to us in the intimate and comrade-like way that is so stimulating to an artist’s work capacity.51 The dilemmas and disagreements which played out in meetings and letters between 1907 and 1913 in the Women’s Guild of Arts speak fundamentally of the diversity of approaches to professional and artistic equality held by members. Some women, who otherwise appear to have supported the aims of female constitutional emancipation, permitted their political ideologies to be subsumed to the demands of their professional aspirations, seeking to collaborate with men and forge close alliances with their male peers in the hope of being considered artistic equals. Others did not, and could not, see the encroachment of men on women-only groups as anything other than

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an affront to their previous structural renegotiation of hierarchies which excluded them from male artistic circles. A useful comparator in this regard, for which meeting minutes and other documentation survive, is the Women’s International Art Club, about which Margaret Geddes was discussing in the opening paragraph to this chapter. This Club focused on encouraging new international, professional opportunities and recognition for women through annual exhibitions. Both groups already shared a number of the same members but after the spate of Women’s Guild of Arts resignations several former members immersed themselves in this alternative group instead. M. V. Wheelhouse quickly became Chair of the Club’s committee from 1914 to 1917, while E. C. Woodward began to host many of the Club’s annual meetings at her workshops in Notting Hill.52 Other Guild members, such as Edith B. Dawson and Mary Sargant Florence, who had resigned, joined as members and started to exhibit their work with the Club. The ease with which these women formed new institutional ties amply demonstrates the sophisticated, multilayered kinship, friendship and professional networks female artists had developed, moving between groups they felt to be the most beneficial to them at different moments in their lives. Scrutiny of the Women’s International Art Club’s meeting minutes quickly uncovers that debates about the role and status of this Club for women had also become a feature of private committee meetings. Clearly, the worries that they might be perceived to be engaging in separatist strategies caused considerable anxiety and permeated group discussions. In 1917, at the height of the First World War, the Club decided to host an ‘Extra-Ordinary General Meeting’ to discuss the ‘Character’ of the Club, a meeting reminiscent of the Women’s Guild of Arts’ own ‘Extra-Ordinary’ meeting four years earlier.53 At this meeting, with M. V. Wheelhouse in the Chair, painter and etcher Elsie Druce (1880–1965) asked members to make their feelings known about ‘changing the Club and making it a mixed society’. The meeting minute book diplomatically notes that ‘Several arguments were brought forwards’. The first perspective was that ‘the Club had attained a certain reputation, which it could not afford to lose’ as a women’s organization focused on developing international connections. Another argument, perhaps put forward by those members who were knowledgeable about the Women’s Guild of Arts – which was now dominated by invited male speakers coming to give lectures at general meetings – suggested that ‘it would be better to disband altogether than to be submerged into the men’s societies’. The final decision made by the Women’s International Art Club was to remain women-only, especially as it was war time. They felt that ‘after the war it would be easier to maintain the international element for which the club was formed’.54 The Women’s Guild of Arts and the Women’s International Art Club stayed remarkably similar in their institutional approaches from this point onwards, both steadfastly committed to promoting the professional, creative potential of women as artists. The Women’s International Art Club continued to play an important role in the art scene in the 1920s and 1930s.

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Each year, at the annual exhibition, members worked hard to create an empowering space focused on women’s creativity, alongside generating new opportunities for financial reward. Members also continued to encourage international networking by joining the International Federation of Business and Professional Women in the 1930s.55 Surviving scrapbooks reveal the commitment of members to pasting in all references of the Club, from highly critical through to emphatically encouraging, and many of these newspaper entries are testament to the continued commitment of individual members to improving women’s lives alongside their dedication to encouraging debate about women’s artistic production within the national press. For instance, in 1938, the then president, Ethel Walker (1861–1951), was praised in a newspaper article for her role in ‘The Fight’. Her ‘big achievement’ was said to be the ‘building of the club over nearly four decades and against the critical opposition’. Similar tributes were paid to a member named Maude Reignier Conder (known as ‘Mrs Julian Lousada’, 1878/1879–1952) ‘for twelve years’ work for full recognition of British women artists’.56 The Women’s Guild of Arts archive is limited after the war, but it is evident that general meetings continued to be dominated by lectures from male speakers discussing their design skills. The Guild supplemented this with a wide sphere of additional activities such as day trips to cultural sites including the Victoria and Albert Museum and by hosting meetings and private exhibitions at the studios, workshops and homes of members. In contrast, and perhaps wary of such merging, the Women’s International Art Club stayed women-only after the war, although this continued to be a challenged point. In 1925, a flier for the ‘Annual General Meeting’ reveals Elsie Druce had again put forward a resolution to the committee, seconded by a painter called Josephine Mason (1872–1952), ‘to draw up a scheme which would admit men as members of the Club; and that the scheme when ready should be submitted to an Extraordinary Meeting of the Club for their consideration’. This suggestion was evidently met with hesitation as Druce quickly added at the meeting that her intention had not been ‘to make any sudden or drastic change in the club’. Instead she hoped that ‘Possibly at first some friends or husbands of members … might join in a friendly spirit of cooperation which was the tendency of the day’. She felt many women ‘did not like joining a club without men members, especially younger artists, whom she wished to encourage’. Mason added that ‘in earlier days’ there had been ‘fewer exhibitions open to women, but now she did not feel there was room’ for different women’s art organizations, particularly as ‘Several artists who she knew sent their best work elsewhere’ and preferred clubs open to men. Again, we see members voting to decide whether to allow male members, but unlike the Women’s Guild of Arts, in the Women’s International Art Club the result in 1925 was sixteen votes for and seventeen votes against, and so the Club remained women-only.57 When examining the histories of the women in these art organizations from a contemporary feminist perspective, the tactics adopted by the more

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conservative and conciliatory members of groups such as the Women’s Guild of Arts appear to tacitly accept gendered hierarchies more readily than those used by the women focused on suffrage and temporary separatism, who openly supported, and prioritized, causes aimed towards women’s political enfranchisement. However, rising early twentieth-century tensions surrounding militancy (‘sex wars’, ‘man-eaters’), and a perceived route to professional equality through mixed-sex collaboration and mutual respect, underlay the decision to maintain an institutional space where – in theory – support for suffrage would not interfere with their roles as professionals. The members who welcomed male participation were motivated by a desire to ameliorate gendered tensions in the arts, alongside daily, practical struggles to earn a living and a reputation. They faced a constant battle: trying to balance a need for empowerment through female networking and exhibitions, but feeling acutely that such strategies took them away from their wish to be considered as professionals on a level footing with their male peers, who often played central roles as co-workers, husbands, family members and champions of their work. This led to a situation whereby women who broadly supported the struggle for women’s rights felt they should maintain a policy of organizational neutrality, categorizing this as part of their professional, rather than personal, political or civic ambitions. The Women’s Guild of Arts, alongside the Women’s International Art Club, provide striking examples of cultural institutions for women which thought deeply on questions of equality. Tracing the surviving records of these institutions greatly enriches understanding of how the societal discord present at the height of the suffrage movement offered up an existential challenge to the principles of professional institutional neutrality being adopted by women in early twentieth-century Britain. Despite outwardly attempting to avoid the suffrage question and gender politics, behind the scenes these institutions provided empowering spaces where women could ardently debate their opinions from a range of perspectives, all while pursuing and bolstering their professional roles.

Notes 1 2

Margaret Geddes, ‘The Women’s International Art Club’, The Studio, 139 (1950): 65–70, 65. For a short history of the first three groups, see Deborah Cherry, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists (London: Routledge, 1993), 67–70. See also Katy Deepwell, Women Artists Between the Wars: A Fair Field and No Favour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). In contrast, the Manchester Society of Women Painters, founded in 1879, appears to have had more clear links with the suffrage campaign from its beginning. See Cherry, Painting Women, 69–70. For the Women’s Guild of Arts see: Zoë Thomas, ‘At Home with the Women’s Guild of Arts: Gender and Professional Identity in London

40

3 4

5

6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15

SUFFRAGE AND THE ARTS Studios, c. 1880–1925’, Women’s History Review, 24:6 (2015): 938–964 alongside my 2018 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry about the Guild. Painter and suffrage campaigner Annie Swynnerton (1844–1933) became the first elected female member since the eighteenth century in 1922. Grace Brockington, ‘Women’s Art Clubs and Their International Aspirations at the Fin de Siècle’, (unpublished paper) from the ‘Internationalism and the Arts: Anglo-European Cultural Exchange at the Fin de Siècle’ conference, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, 2006. Pamela Gerrish Nunn has highlighted that while female art groups unquestionably advocated support for women, whether they regarded themselves as feminist is a more complex question. Focusing on the Society of Women Artists in particular she stated that it would be ‘ultimately impossible to infer from the running of the Society, the work displayed or its manner of self-presentation, any precise political let alone militant premise; the evidence for such a conclusion is not apparent, however much a conclusion would seem probable’. Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Victorian Women Artists (London: The Women’s Press, 1987), 88. For instance, the archive covering the Society of Women Artists’ early years was destroyed in the Second World War. Helen McCarthy, ‘Service Clubs, Citizenship and Equality: Gender Relations and Middle-class Associations in Britain Between the Wars’, Historical Research, 81:213 (2008): 531–552, 545. Lucy Delap, The Feminist Avant-Garde: Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 5. Women’s Guild of Arts Secretary Report 1908, handwritten. Women’s Guild of Arts Archive, William Morris Society, London (henceforth WGAA). Corroborated in an uncatalogued document announcing the formation of the Guild in the William Morris Gallery, London. In addition, H. J. L. J. Massé describes the Guild as having been founded by May Morris and Mary Thackeray Turner. Turner died in 1907 and so May Morris must have been largely responsible for setting up the Guild. H. J. L. J. Massé, The Art Workers’ Guild, 1884–1934 (London: Shakespeare Head, 1935), 28. In 1907, May Morris also wrote to Emery Walker saying she was preparing the ‘Guild Rules’ for the printer. WMG J389, William Morris Gallery, London. The fee was known to have been 10/- for town members and 5/- for country members between 1907 and 1922. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was more encouraging of male participation, whereas the Women’s Social and Political Union and Women’s Freedom League became increasingly separatist in outlook as events unfolded. Still, it is important to note that many men such as Frederick Pethick-Lawrence (1871–1961) and George Lansbury (1859–1940) were involved in the Women’s Social and Political Union. Feodora Gleichen to May Morris. February 1913. WGAA. Edith B. Dawson to May Morris. 5 February 1908. WGAA. Cards for 1917 and 1919. WGAA. Lynne Walker, ‘Locating the Global/Rethinking the Local: Suffrage Politics, Architecture and Space’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 34:1/2 (2006): 174–196, 178.

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16 Members of the Women’s Guild of Arts met at Clifford’s Inn Hall for all formal meetings until 1914, at which point they followed the Art Workers’ Guild to its new home at 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. 17 Diane Atkinson, The Suffragettes in Pictures (Stroud: The History Press, 2010), xvi. 18 Sally Alexander, ed., Women’s Fabian Tracts (London: Routledge, 1988), 147. 19 May Morris to ‘Miss Ward’. 3 January 1909. 9/01/0457. The Women’s Library, London School of Economics (henceforth WL). 20 Natasha Thoreson, ‘The Reluctant Reformer: May Morris’ United States Lecture Tour of 1909–1910’, Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings (2012): 1–9, 3, 8. 21 Jan Marsh, Jane and May Morris: A Biographical Story, 1839–1938 (London: Pandora Press, 1986), 258. 22 Julia Chance to Mary A. Sloane. Undated. WGAA. 23 Louise Jacobs, The Appeal of Womanhood poster, 1912. 001266. Museum of London. 24 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 2000), 358–359, 223–224, 225–226. 25 Mary Lowndes, ‘Genius and Women Painters’, The Common Cause, 17 April 1914, 31. 26 Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 358. 27 Ibid., 283. 28 ‘The Woman Suffrage Procession’, The Times, 13 June 1908, 9. 29 ‘Woman Suffrage by Christiana J. Herringham and Bertha Newcombe’, The Times, 3 December 1908, 10. 30 Women’s Guild of Arts Annual Report 1911, handwritten. WGAA. 31 Women’s Guild of Arts Secretary Report 1912, handwritten. WGAA. Underlining in original. 32 Philippa Strachey to Millicent Garrett Fawcett. 22 June 1908, 9/01/0417, WL. 33 Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–1914 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1987), 20. 34 Ibid., 123. 35 Delap, The Feminist Avant-Garde, 17. 36 For more on the 1912 annual meeting please see the WGAA. 37 Letter from Ruby W. Bailey (presumed to be Ruby Gervase Bailey), Mary Batten, Helen Bedford, A. G. I. Christie, Edith B. Dawson, Mary Sargant Florence, Emily Ford, Mary Lowndes, Phoebe Stabler, M. V. Wheelhouse, Alice B. Woodward, E. C. Woodward. 22 February 1913. WGAA. 38 Letter to the Chairman ‘To be read out at the Extraordinary General Meeting’. The names listed were: Elinor Hallé, Katharine Adams, Marianne Stokes, Feodora Gleichen, Julia Bowley, Eleanor Rowe, May Morris, Ethel K. Martyn, Mary A. Sloane, M. D. Spooner, Ethel Sandell, E. M. Rope, Maud Beddington, Alys Fane Trotter, Pamela Colman Smith, Amelia M. Bowerley, Kate E. Bunce, Estella Canziani, Evelyn De Morgan, Mabel Esplin, Ethel F. Everett, Lola Frampton, Georgie Cave Gaskin, Edith Goodman, Letty Graham, Camilla Edith Harwood, Margaret Kemp Welch, Esther M. Moore, Ella L. Moore, Jane Morris, Clara Tustain, Mary Newill, Violet G. M. Ramsay, Anna Simons, Marie Stillman, H. Mabel White. WGAA. 39 Ethel Sandell to Mary A. Sloane. 9 March 1913. WGAA.

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40 Copy of Edith K. Martyn letter to Mary A. Sloane. 22 January 1913. WGAA. 41 Copy of letter from Ethel Everett. 1913. WGAA. 42 Copy of anonymous letter. Note attached saying ‘From a member who had not quite understood’. WGAA. 43 Feodora Gleichen to Mary A. Sloane. 25 February 1913. WGAA. Underlining by Gleichen. WGAA. 44 Feodora Gleichen to Mary A. Sloane. February 1913. WGAA. 45 Feodora Gleichen to May Morris. 25 February 1913. WGAA. 46 Pamela Colman Smith to May Morris. 22 January 1913. WGAA. 47 Extraordinary meeting 28 February 1913. Meeting Minutes Book, 1913–1917. WGAA. 48 Committee meeting 24 October 1913. Meeting Minutes Book, 1913–1917. WGAA. 49 Committee Meeting 27 November 1913. Meeting Minutes Book, 1913–1917. WGAA. Their names were: Mary Sargant Florence, Emily Ford, Ruby Gervase Bailey, Margaret M. Jenkin, Edith B. Dawson, Alice B. Woodward, E. C. Woodward and M. V. Wheelhouse. WGAA. 50 Committee Meeting 27 November 1913. Meeting Minutes Book, 1913–1917. WGAA. 51 Women’s Guild of Arts Annual Report 1913, printed version. WGAA. 52 There were at least twenty-two members who were involved in both clubs. The actual number is likely to have been substantially higher as the Women’s Guild of Arts’ membership lists only go to the mid-1920s. Women’s International Art Club membership list, The Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London (henceforth WAL) and Women’s Guild of Arts’ membership list, WGAA. 53 Women’s International Art Club, Meeting Minutes Book, 29 November 1917. WAL. 54 Women’s International Art Club, Meeting Minutes Book, 29 November 1917. WAL. 55 Women’s International Art Club Annual Report, 1933–1934. WAL. 56 Women’s International Art Club Scrap Book, newspaper clipping from Cavalcade, 19 November 1938, unpaginated. WAL. 57 Women’s International Art Club, Meeting Minutes Book, 9 December 1925. WAL.

CHAPTER TWO

The artistic, social and suffrage networks of Glasgow School of Art’s women artists and designers Liz Arthur

In 1908, Dumfries solicitor David Fergusson (1872–1941) wrote to his fiancé artist, Chris Stark (1876–1957), in Glasgow, expressing his concern that if women were enfranchised they would become ‘engulfed in the political whirlpool and must to a large extent involve themselves in business affairs and become like men’. He regarded ‘a true woman as the embodiment of all that is sweet, soft, gentle and sympathetic and unselfish’. Her reply is playful, but quite clear, ‘Am I not always womanly dearest? You say you love me best when I am most womanly. I don’t ever want to be masculine but I would like to be respected for my mental faculties, as well as for other reasons.’ Chris Stark was clearly eager to alleviate Fergusson’s concerns, taking care to inform him that ‘I mean to say that I would like to be thought capable of taking an intelligent and reasonable interest in even political affairs, or any other public question; and I hope that such an interest would never make me unwomanly or hard’.1 Stark had studied at the Glasgow School of Art (1900–1904) and subsequently wished to develop a career as an artist, but opportunities for women were limited. Her exchange with her fiancé exemplifies the anxieties about middle-class femininity prevalent in Scotland at a time when women were challenging many areas of social convention

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by demanding equal rights of employment, educational opportunities and political rights. Stark was one of the many talented women artists and designers who studied at the Glasgow School of Art during the 1890s and early 1900s when the school was at the forefront of the British Arts and Crafts movement (Figure 2.1). The school had flourished under the dynamic, innovative leadership of Francis (Fra) Newbery (1855–1946) who was appointed Headmaster in 1885. At the time of his arrival, there were no female members of staff, but by 1910, one-third of the staff were women, an unusually high percentage at that time.2 To further the school’s commitment to design, ‘Technical Art Studios’ were established in 1893. These provided facilities for metalwork, jewellery making, enamelling, stained glass, decorated ceramics, gesso, bookbinding and illustration. Such facilities were of great use as the majority of the school’s female staff worked in the crafts, part of a wider trend in Britain as women increasingly sought to carve out new professional roles within these fields, rather than the ‘High Art’ of painting. As one contemporary commentator remarked in The Studio in 1900, ‘The movement of modern decorative art is largely controlled by women, and as we know it is not the habit of modern woman to desert a cause in which she is actively interested.’3 The day students were mainly middle-class women seeking training in art and

FIGURE 2.1  Photograph of female student’s life class, Glasgow School of Art, 1904. Chris Stark is furthest from the camera © Private family collection of W. J. C. Henderson.

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design as a means of accessing further education or training to become teachers. The idea of women artists trying to make a living was uncomfortable and contested by the male art establishment because the attributes of womanliness were seen by many art critics, including French critic Octave Uzanne (1851–1931), as incompatible with the production of good art. In 1900, he wrote that ‘A perfect army of women artists threaten to become a veritable plague, a fearful confusion and terrifying stream of mediocrity’.4 As a result of such criticisms, the growing number of women who were establishing themselves and earning their own living consistently had to try and safeguard their positions. It was a logical step for women defining themselves as professionals in the arts to develop political commitments and become involved in the suffrage movement, to encourage a new era of egalitarianism in the arts and in society. As such, and although often little recognized in major accounts of the suffrage campaign, there was a predominance of women in the arts among members of all women suffrage societies in Scotland.5 Little concerning the Scottish suffrage campaign had been published until Leah Leneman’s pathbreaking 1991 work, A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland, in which she explained the distinctive character of the Scottish movement, where branches had a high degree of autonomy and more cooperation between militants and non-militants than in England.6 However, the relationship between these semi-autonomous bodies and national headquarters was still at times fraught. For example, Teresa Billington-Greig (1876–1964), who had established the Glasgow branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1906, broke from the union because of dissatisfaction with Christabel Pankhurst’s (1880–1958) autocratic control. In 1907, together with Charlotte Despard (1844–1939), she founded the Women’s Freedom League which promoted civil disobedience as a nonviolent form of protest. Membership grew to 4,000, including a large proportion of members in Scotland. Elspeth King’s The Hidden History of Glasgow’s Women included chapters on the local suffrage societies but she, like Leneman, concentrated on the main personalities, about whom there is more information rather than the foot soldiers who sustained the campaign.7 There remains little scholarly work about the majority of the lesser-known members, many of whom were artists. Similarly, until the 1980s, Scottish women artists remained a much neglected area. As a result of the revival of interest in the work of architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) and the students at the Glasgow School of Art, the progressive ideas of his female contemporaries were finally examined by Jude Burkhauser in her 1988 exhibition, a more extensive exhibition, and in the accompanying book Glasgow Girls, Women in Art and Design, 1880–1920 in 1990.8 Although Burkhauser acknowledges the importance of these women and their contribution to art and design, suffrage is not discussed in detail. Since this point, apart from Janice Helland’s research, there has been no

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feminist perspective of the creative output or politics of the school. As yet, although there have been histories of the students, teachers and their work, there is still little record of their political views. This chapter rectifies this imbalance by examining both the engagement of Scottish women artists with the suffrage campaign and their role in the wider women’s movement. It discusses the importance of the Glasgow School of Art in giving women the space to develop belief in their own abilities and to sustain and nurture their political beliefs. The commitment of these women to the artistic value of their production was testament to their belief they were equal, if not in some cases superior, to their male counterparts in art and design. The chapter also emphasizes how women, such as Chris Stark, developed sophisticated networks and new feminized social, professional and political spaces across the city through the use of tea rooms and membership of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists.

Women artists and designers at the Glasgow School of Art Following the appointment of Fra Newbery, Glasgow School of Art was unusual in providing new opportunities and encouragement to female students who began to follow the same course as men but had separate life drawing classes. Women were also admitted to the Department of Architecture when it opened in 1904. The school was progressive in that creativity and individuality were encouraged, in contrast to London colleges such as South Kensington and Central Saint Martin’s College of Arts and Design which emphasized theory, draughtsmanship and copying ornament from the antique. As rigidly defined gendered roles in Arts and Crafts practice shifted at the turn of the century, the Glasgow School of Art also began to offer a diploma in Applied Design and the widest range of courses available in Scotland. The first of these was repoussé metalwork and, despite metalwork being traditionally regarded as a male craft, most of the students were women. Other courses included art needlework, bookbinding, illustration, stained glass, china painting and silversmithing. Later, mosaics and enamelling, gesso, block-cutting, scraffito and wood and stone carving were added. The skill in drawing fostered in the school underpinned design in the Technical Art Studios and supported the production of artworks using many different techniques and materials. This was advantageous when students such as Euphemia Thomson (1862–1941) and sisters Margaret (1860–1942) and Mary Gilmour (1872–1938) began to set up their own small businesses (Plate 3). The female students were particularly attracted to this training as it provided opportunities to gain a degree of financial and professional independence. They were encouraged to be versatile and this enabled a generation of women to attain their potential as successful

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designers. Many exhibited internationally and, for example, their work was particularly well received at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art, Turin 1902, where individuals such as Jessie King (1875– 1949) and Ann Macbeth (1875–1948) were awarded medals and De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar (1878–1959) sold her work. There were many female designers and artworkers at the school who openly interconnected their professional and political interests. For instance, Dewar was a student from 1892 to 1900, before studying enamelling at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Arts and Design. She then returned to Glasgow School of Art as an ‘instructress’ in enamelling in 1902. Dewar became internationally known for her metalwork and enamelling, although she also exhibited paintings and was a prolific graphic designer (Figure 2.2). She was very active politically, serving on the executive committee of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage for many years and using her artistic skill to show political support and to advertise and commercialize the campaign: designing bookplates, programmes and calendars for various suffrage organizations. These designs were often in black and white, characterized by their Glasgow style and vigorous outline, although later they became more geometric and she introduced bold colours. Dewar’s commitment to the campaign is demonstrated in a letter to her mother in February 1903 in which she wrote, ‘You must have worked very hard for the franchise before you were married, and I think my interest in it must be partly owing to heredity.’9 Jessie Rowat (1864–1948), a student at the school from 1884 to 1888, was another student to forge a long-term commitment to suffrage and feminism alongside her professional career. She married Fra Newbery, the headmaster, in 1889. Rowat was the daughter of a wealthy Paisley businessman, a keen Liberal whose radical views included belief in education for women. Although Rowat taught enamelling, mosaics and book decoration, her main contribution was to establish embroidery classes in 1894, in which the teaching took a new form, with embroidery seen as a specialist subject linked to the other arts. Her encouragement and development of individual skill was a break with the prevalent belief that laborious execution was more important than originality. Rowat’s artistic needlework was accepted in the school as an art form and her approach gained widespread recognition for the school’s embroidery department. In 1897, in an interview with Gleeson White for The Studio, Rowat said: I believe in education consisting of seeing the best that has been done. Then having this high standard set before us, in doing what we like to do: that for our fathers, this for us. I believe that the greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own, and that the great end in art is the discovery of the self of the artists.10 Rowat’s sound education, combined with both access to her father’s library and travel in Italy, enabled her to discover a sense of self that found expression

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FIGURE 2.2  De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar, Jus Suffragii Alumnae, 1909. Design for Queen Margaret College, University of Glasgow. through her art training and gave meaning to her life.11 Her realization of the importance of self-determination led her to become a member of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage and later a member of the Glasgow branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union. As the suffrage movement in Scotland was intensifying its activities through

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the formation of new branches of the Union, it is inevitable that students would become more politically aware. Therefore, it is not surprising that an influential figure such as Jessie Newbery should become a role model for her students as she was also a successful designer in her own right (Figure 2.3). Another artistically successful female student who showed interest in suffrage was Ann Macbeth who enrolled at the school in 1897 and became assistant to Jessie Newbery in 1901. Newbery retired in 1908 and was succeeded as head of the department by Macbeth, who became the only female member of the staff council. Like Jessie Newbery, she quickly became active in the Women’s Social and Political Union and began designing banners which were made by her students who took turns between classes to stitch them.12

FIGURE 2.3 Photograph of Daisy McGlashan and daughters, after 1898. McGlashan wears a dress designed and made while a student of Jessie Newbery. The dress is of green linen with violet and white embroidery and applique © Glasgow School of Art Archives.

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Many other students focused their attention on committing themselves to their training and furthering professional opportunities for women, even if it is unknown whether they were involved in the suffrage campaigns. Jessie King, similar to Dewar, was offered work at the Glasgow School of Art after completing her studies, which demonstrates the institution’s commitment to furthering professional opportunities for women. After her final student year in 1899, King remained at the school to teach the bookbinding design course and ceramic decoration. Her bookplates, gesso panels, wallpapers, fabrics, interior design and decorated ceramics demonstrate her versatility. In addition, she designed silver and jewellery for Liberty, and later made batik fabrics. King maintained her own style of meticulous black-and-white drawing which was ideally suited to book illustrations. Her work was shown internationally, and across her career she was associated with more than seventy book titles. Sisters Margaret (1864–1933) and Frances Macdonald (1873–1921) were two other students at the school who, from 1890, worked closely together to create distinctly original work and were committed to furthering professional opportunities for women. They produced watercolours, graphics, gesso panels, embroideries, book-cover designs and, in metal, created jewellery, decorative panels, clocks, candlesticks and mirror frames. The Macdonald sisters used various metals including lead, which is malleable and ideal for decorative objects, but more usually associated with the plumbing and roofing trades. The sisters worked independently in their shared studio, and Margaret Macdonald, in particular, contributed to over forty exhibitions and served on the Council of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour from 1907 until 1913. The Macdonalds collaborated professionally with Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Herbert McNair (1868–1955). The group became known as ‘The Four’ and their work attracted attention at the Vienna Secession. Their designs appeared in leading foreign periodicals of the day such as Decorative Kunst and Ver Sacrum, and Margaret even designed the cover for a May 1902 edition of Deutsch Kunst und Dekoration. ‘The Four’ combined the formal organization and economy of Japanese art with organically inspired motifs, and created attenuated, conventionalized human figures that challenged accepted images of women and femininity. Janice Helland describes these figures, painted in the mid-1890s, as ‘a mockery of the languid, sensuous Pre-Raphaelite woman’.13 The figures show the influence of the Aesthetic Movement, as well as the revival of interest in folk art tradition which, in Scotland, took the form of a Celtic revival. The distinctive interlacing zoomorphic forms of illuminated manuscripts and stone carving provided an alternative artistic aesthetic and a distinct Scottish identity. This became the core of a new style, an idiosyncratic, more austere version of art nouveau peculiar to Glasgow designers that became associated with the Glasgow School of Art. However, their work differs from the former, more commercially acceptable style, in its imaginative, complex layers of meaning. Together, these well-educated, influential women at the Glasgow School of Art not only used their talents to develop their own professional careers but also, in the process, became role models for others

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and strengthened the women’s movement. In addition, several women, in particular Newbery and Macbeth, utilized their public positions politically by engaging in efforts to improve the position of women in society.

Glasgow suffrage societies In Glasgow, suffrage received considerable support from socialists, particularly through Forward, the socialist weekly newspaper and main publication of the Independent Labour Party in Scotland, established in 1906. Many of those who joined the Women’s Social and Political Union were also members of the Labour Party, a fact noted by Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) who commented that the socialist and suffrage movements ‘were closely intermingled in Glasgow’.14 The early twentieth century was a time of frenetic feminist and socialist action in Scotland. In 1902, the Glasgow West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage was formed. Several suffrage associations were asked if they wanted to appoint representatives to the executive committee and, the following year, the Glasgow Association affiliated to the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The Women’s Social and Political Union’s Scottish headquarters was also established in Glasgow in 1906, and embroiderer Helen Fraser (1881–1979) even abandoned art to become its Scottish organizer, although she became disillusioned with its violent tactics and resigned in 1908.15 Many women moved between suffrage organizations to find the one that most suitably reflected their political views, and Fraser was no different: she instead became a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and served on their national committee for the next fourteen years. Male support was more overt in Scotland than in England. Playwright and author Graham Moffat (1866–1951) established the Glasgow Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage in 1907 after his actress wife Maggie (1872– 1943) spent two weeks in Holloway.16 The Glasgow Men’s League marched under their own banner in the first Edinburgh procession in 1907. Six years later, the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage held its inaugural meeting in Glasgow.17 In 1912, the Scottish Churches League was formed, and Glasgow Town Council, like many local councils throughout Scotland, was also sympathetic. There was also support from the Temperance movement which in Scotland officially supported women’s equal enfranchisement, and with close cooperation between the organizations, many women and men were members of both.18 The Scottish thistle became a widely used potent symbol of identity for Scottish suffrage. Crucially, its colours of purple, green and white matched those of the Women’s Social and Political Union, deftly binding together the local and national politics which motivated members. Thistles were a constant motif of Scottish suffrage. For example, Flora Drummond (1878–1949), who organized a welcome party for Mary Phillips (1880–1969) on her

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release from Holloway in 1908 included a banner with thistle finials and the legend ‘Message to Mr Asquith [the Prime Minister] – ye maunna stamp on the Scots thistle, Laddie’.19 Thistles were also used in a bookplate designed by De Courcy Dewar for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ Glasgow branch and adopted as the symbol of the Scottish Votes for Women, a shortlived paper launched in May 1908 (Figure 2.4). The significance of these colours in visually motivating women and men in their activism was even more potent

FIGURE 2.4  De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar’s thistle design.

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for artists. Purple, green and white had also been adopted as the School of Art’s colours as there were many staff and students involved in the movement. As such, these colours functioned as a powerful symbol of the interwoven nature of the artistic and political organizations in Scotland during this era.

Glasgow women artists and suffrage spectacle The year 1908 marked a period of particular vigour in the national suffrage campaigns, and there was an upsurge of interest and engagement by Scottish women in suffrage debates, public meetings and protests. In December, there was a special exhibition of banners at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. This was organized by the Glasgow West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage, and the banners were designed by the Artists’ Suffrage League. The Glasgow Herald declared that ‘everyone, whether sympathizers with the movement or not’ would find the exhibition ‘unique’.20 It is not known whether this exhibition inspired the production of banners at the Glasgow School of Arts, but Jane Parkes (1888–1974), a student from 1906 to 1911, later recalled that the embroidery department became a busy production venue for political banner-making.21 That this work was undertaken within the school by Ann Macbeth’s students demonstrates the extent to which she was able to integrate covert subversive suffragist ideas within the guise of traditional feminine craft production. As Rozsika Parker has explained, suffrage campaigners were aware of the power and symbolism of the materials they used. This perspective aligns with the collective workmanship of Ann Macbeth and her students who created a shared network of entwined political and artistic allegiances at the school.22 The importance of this collaborative artistic and political effort was demonstrated the following year, in 1909, when the Glasgow branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union was presented with a banner designed by Ann Macbeth and industriously worked by her students. This was carried at the Women’s Suffrage pageant and procession in Princes Street, Edinburgh, on 9 October 1909, at which there were tens of thousands of spectators.23 Groups of women, dressed appropriate to their trades and professions, marched under their own banners, and there was a pageant of historic Scottish heroines. The theme was ‘What Women Did’ and ‘What Women Can Do’, with Glasgow students making their own costumes and banners to march in the procession (Figure 2.5). Such spectacle continued into the next year, when in April 1910, St Andrew’s Halls in Glasgow was used for a Grand Suffrage Bazaar and Exhibition, drawing on the well-established tradition of using bazaars for fundraising. Bazaars, generally organized by middle-class women, were supported by networks between female friends and were frequently subverted by suffrage campaigners to market the cause. The St Andrew’s Halls Bazaar was the first in aid of suffrage in Scotland and was organized

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FIGURE 2.5  Photograph of the Women’s Suffrage Demonstration, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 9 October 1909 © The Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright.

collaboratively by the Women’s Social and Political Union’s Glasgow and Edinburgh branches both to raise funds and ‘to reach the men and women untouched by the Movement’.24 There were many prestigious women involved: it was opened by Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917) and attended by Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928). The goods on sale consisted of craft items, particularly metalwork, jewellery and decorated ceramics made by local women. Specially commissioned Women’s Social and Political Union china, originally designed by Sylvia Pankhurst but with the addition of the Scottish thistle, was also available. A photograph of this china can be seen on p. xviii of this collection. The bazaar showcased the substantial involvement of artists in the Glasgow suffrage movement. For example, the frontispiece of the catalogue was an advertisement designed by Jessie King for Glasgow’s popular Lunch and Tea Rooms owned by Kate Cranston (1850–1934). The stallholder for the Woman’s Press was Kate Wylie (1877–1941), a painter, former student at the school and a member of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists, an important artistic centre in the life of the city. In addition, there were entertainments, including tableaux of famous women, arranged by De Courcy Dewar and artist Dorothy Carleton Smyth (1880–1933). The bazaar did not shy away from depicting the stark realities of the campaign: in one of the smaller rooms, replicas of prison cells with ‘Miss Jolly’ and ‘Miss Savage’, who had both experienced prison life, as suffragettes, were depicted. There was also a small modelled group to illustrate the horrors of force feeding and to raise public awareness of the extreme lengths to which these women were prepared

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to go for the cause. Female artists also used this opportunity to connect their work with many ‘celebrity’ figures in the national movement. Jessie Newbery organized the ‘Art and Curio’ stall, and an embroidered linen quilt donated by Ann Macbeth was exhibited. Her design included the names of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954), Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney (1879–1953) in Glasgow-style lettering and, below, the signatures of eighty suffrage hunger strikers, such as Scottish artist Marion Wallace-Dunlop (1864–1942), the first hunger striker, were embroidered in purple silk on cream linen. The whole quilt was bordered with green and purple cotton. It was purchased for ten pounds by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and subsequently converted into a banner and carried in the From Prison to Citizenship procession in London, in June 1910.25 Prior to 1912, there was little militant action in Scotland, although Scottish suffrage supporters did travel to take part in London demonstrations and pageants. In March of that year, a significant number of supporters participated in the wave of window-smashing in London, in which Scottish suffragettes were delegated to break windows in Kensington High Street.26 Thereafter, in Scotland, militant action began with attacks on pillar boxes, and violence quickly escalated to the cutting and bombing of telephone links and arson. In March 1912 Ann Macbeth was arrested and suffered two weeks solitary confinement with force feeding, presumably for her involvement in militant action. Intriguingly, Macbeth and her colleague, Margaret Swanson, had travelled to London independently and were not part of the group of high-profile Glasgow activists who had also travelled south to participate in the window-smashing. This group of middle-class women included Annie Swan (1859–1943), a prominent member of the Independent Labour Party, and Frances (1880–1940) and Margaret McPhun (1876–1960), graduates of Glasgow University and daughters of Bailie John McPhun, a respected Glasgow councillor. Several women of the group were arrested, including Helen Crawfurd (1877–1954), wife of a minister of religion, who later recorded her prison experiences in her autobiography.27 It is likely that Macbeth gave a false name, as her arrest was not reported in the press. However, her incarceration is documented in her correspondence in the Glasgow School of Art archive, revealing that she wrote to the school that ‘I am still very much less vigorous than I anticipated after a fortnight’s solitary imprisonment with forcible feeding and sleep very badly, but the doctor thinks this will improve when I get away’.28 We know little of her experience except that it had a severe effect on her health. However, it is notable that Macbeth did receive considerable support from the School Governors. In an abstract from the minutes of a meeting on 30 April 1912, it was noted that The committee heard with regret of the illness of Miss Macbeth and it resolved that she be granted leave of absence for the remainder of the session. It was also agreed that an honorarium of £30 be granted to Miss Macbeth in consideration of her excellent work in the Embroidery Section.29

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Although the official minutes are couched in diplomatically vague terms and refer to her ‘illness’, that the school as an institution was supportive of women’s suffrage is clear. Unlike others, such as Glasgow office worker Janet Barrowman (1879–1955) who was imprisoned at the same time and was then quickly dismissed, Ann Macbeth was given every consideration until well enough to return to work.30 This evidence demonstrates the commitment of these artists to the suffrage cause and the tacit approbation of the School’s Governors of their involvement in the growing diverse efforts to rally public support.

Patronage and networks of female sociability In the middle decades of the nineteenth century in Britain, areas where middle-class women could meet socially outside the home were limited. However, from the 1880s, shops, and particularly large department stores, were increasingly geared towards female consumers. In the 1880s in Glasgow, the centre of the Scottish Temperance Movement, tea rooms became exceedingly fashionable. Women, who sought an alternative to male-centred pubs, were the Movement’s main driving force.31 Tea rooms provided new opportunities for socializing, and tea room proprietor Kate Cranston competently exploited this. Cranston’s tea rooms had separate areas for men and women, including comfortable restrooms for business women and joint dining rooms. These new places enabled women to meet and relax publicly and are testament to the increasing visibility of middle-class women in public life at the turn of the century. Lynne Walker has discussed the importance of the metropolitan built environment to women’s social and political interaction, and how buildings such as the tea rooms frequented by women in central London helped to determine social identity.32 This was also true in large cities such as Glasgow, and tea rooms and restaurants quickly became hotbeds of Scottish women’s political activism and networking. For example, The Glasgow Herald reported that, at the Fruitarian Restaurant of Messrs Stuart Cranston, ‘A woman who had been quietly lunching with three companions rose and addressed the customers on the subject of women’s suffrage while the rest distributed leaflets. The Suffragette claimed that interest of the diners was keenly aroused’.33 Artists played a crucial role in decorating these new metropolitan sites of sociability. Kate Cranston’s most famous and innovative tea room was the Willow Tearoom in Sauchiehall Street, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1903. At its centre was the Salon de Luxe, which the press described as ‘the acme of originality’.34 This was a feminine room with silk dado, mirror glass around the walls, silver high-back chairs with purple velvet upholstery and, as its centrepiece, a richly textured gesso panel by Margaret Macdonald (Plate 4).35 Menus were designed by Jessie King, and both

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Macdonald sisters and Ann Macbeth’s embroideries were displayed in one of Kate Cranston’s other tea rooms.36 Cranston was a pioneer who, through her patronage, introduced her middle-class clientele to artistic avant-garde interiors, widening both their decorative horizons and domestic ambitions.37 The Willow Tea Room became a regular meeting place for students and female staff as it was conveniently close to the Glasgow School of Art, the various city centre studios and workshops nearby and the Lady Artists’ Society (Figure 2.6).38

FIGURE 2.6  Jessie M. King, menu cover, 1917. Designed for Kate Cranston’s Glasgow Establishments © Glasgow Museums.

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Similarly, the Women’s Freedom League opened its Scottish Suffrage Centre on Sauchiehall Street, the main shopping street in Glasgow, in 1909. It included a stylishly modern tea room, a meeting place and, as they regarded women artists as central to Scotland’s suffrage campaign, there was also a showroom for their work.39 The public were deeply interested in the new style of work being produced by the Glasgow School of Arts’ artists and designers, and a showroom was a means of attracting not only potential customers, but also potential recruits. Nearby was The Scottish Guild of Handicraft, the gallery of which was established in 1900. It was a cooperative organization, whose membership held shares, and had a committee to maintain standards. Members included Jessie King, Jessie Newbery, De Courcy Dewar, Ann Macbeth, illustrator Annie French (1872– 1965), and painter and embroiderer Helen Paxton Brown (1876–1956), all of whom taught at the Glasgow School of Art. There were frequent exhibitions with sales direct to the public. Another, the short-lived Arcadian Gallery (1907–1912), held continuous exhibitions of progressive art and had a vegetarian restaurant with a menu designed by Jessie King.40 Although by the early 1900s there were more professional opportunities for women, an earlier generation of women painters and art teachers had found it difficult to socialize, exhibit and further their work after leaving the Glasgow School of Art, because the Glasgow Art Club was an all-male preserve, not voting to admit women members until 1987. Therefore, in the early 1880s, eight women artists including Georgina Greenlees (1849– 1932), Jane Nesbit (1886–1907) and Elizabeth Salmon (1855–1891) set up their own residential club. This became the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists’ Club, thereafter better known as the Lady Artists’ Society. The Society, the first of its kind in Scotland, provided life classes, lectures and workshops and was a professional organization through which members could further their careers.41 Jessie King, Jessie Newbery, Ann Macbeth and painter Norah Neilson Gray (1882–1931) were all members of the Society. Their work set a high standard at exhibitions, and they were among the few women whose work was shown regularly at the male-dominated Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts. In addition to the painters and embroiderers, the Society’s membership included several metalworkers such as De Courcy Dewar, Helen Muir Wood (1864–1930), Marion Henderson Wilson (1869– 1956), and jewellers Mary Thew (1876–1953) and Agnes Bankier Harvey (1874–1947), whose work was often praised in press reviews of shows held in the gallery. Many members were active in the suffrage movement, although the club itself was non-political. A request from Eve Baker enclosing ‘a memorial in favour of women’s enfranchisement asking that it should lie on the hall table for signatures’ was unanimously rejected by the Council which said it could not be responsible for individual members’ views.42 Baker was a militant suffragette who studied in London and Paris, started an atelier in Albany Chambers, Glasgow, in 1898, and exhibited work at the Royal

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Glasgow Institute before returning to London in 1915.43 However, the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists’ Club was, at certain moments, more open to showing some interest in suffrage. In 1911, the President of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, Lady Frances Barbour (1858–1931), was invited to lecture and, in October of that year, members were involved with the Union of Women Workers’ Conference, with a reception for the delegates to the conference held in the Society’s premises. Janie Allan (c. 1868–1968), a key suffrage activist and a lay member of the Society, was reputed to carry on much of her organizational work from the premises, and it has been suggested that it became a suffrage meeting place.44 For example, Allan even wrote letters on Lady Artists’ Club stationery regarding the scandalous force feeding of suffragettes in Perth prison.45 Allan, who came from a wealthy family of committed socialists, was instrumental in founding the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage and became its representative on the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ committee. In addition, Allan was a major financial supporter of the Women’s Social and Political Union and the Women’s Freedom League. Alongside this, she continued to show interest into the non-violent suffragist efforts of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and remained a committee member until 1909. She organized meetings and invited visiting speakers to Glasgow, including Emmeline Pankhurst, who was smuggled in to address a mass meeting at the St Andrew’s Halls in March 1914. The police response was brutal, and Allan and other women spent several months attempting, unsuccessfully, to take legal action.46 In July, that same year, when King George V (1865–1936) was due to visit Glasgow, Allan tried to bargain with the Lord Provost, promising there would be no militant action by Glasgow’s Women’s Social and Political Union members if force feeding in Perth prison could be stopped. As a result, Allan was dismissed by the Pankhursts for bargaining with the enemy.47 From this array of evidence, and with the increasing political interests of members such as Allan, one can only conclude that the Society did have an interest in suffrage issues, and that it was indeed a centre where both militant and non-militant members met, and where political activity was carried on alongside creative work.

The First World War and the aftermath Although organized militant action on behalf of women’s suffrage ceased in Glasgow in 1914 (of the suffrage societies, the Women’s Freedom League alone continued its work until 1933), it is important to remember that the networks women established through suffrage organizations and the Lady Artists’ Society continued as efforts turned to voluntary work. The new focus of the Lady Artists’ Society fundraising was for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, the war effort of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage

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Societies, which had been founded by Dr Elsie Inglis (1864–1917), a prominent suffragist and member of the Women’s Freedom League, who set up hospitals in France, Greece and Serbia entirely staffed by women. After the First World War, those remaining at the Glasgow School of Art continued to teach, run workshops and exhibit regularly at the Lady Artists’ Society. Many were involved with the ongoing facets of the women’s movement across the 1920s and 1930s. For example, Jessie King lectured to branches of the Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes, promoting craft skills and the value of art as a profession for women. De Courcy Dewar was involved in a charitable trust that provided hostel accommodation and financial support for unmarried mothers, alongside serving both as an artist member of the Central Committee for the Training and Employment of Women and as the executive of the National Council of Women. Helen Fraser continued her political work and was a member of various organizations including the Executive Committee of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. In 1918, when women gained the right to stand for parliament, Fraser campaigned to elect women as members and, in 1922, was the first woman to be adopted as an official parliamentary candidate in Scotland. These women were well aware of the ongoing gendered hierarchies faced by women in society – despite women having achieved partial emancipation – and they took time away from their professional roles to help sustain and invigorate the wider interwar women’s movement. *** Despite its widespread success, the Glasgow style was a short-lived phenomenon that declined after 1920. Although Charles Rennie Mackintosh was the best-known adherent, women far outnumbered men as active participants in the decorative arts. Men were more inclined to pursue fine art or salaried positions in interior and industrial design than handcraft, which was dismissed by some male critics and artists as a female concern. We will never know the political views held by many of these women as, apart from the banners they are known to have designed and made, the works of art they produced were not overtly political. Still, by their commitment to their craft, and with the encouragement of pioneers of art education like Newbery, they did not allow their daring innovative designs and rich paintings to be overshadowed. Such determination to compete on all levels demonstrated a powerful belief in their own ability and enabled them to make their mark on fine art establishments and design institutions both at home and abroad. They collaborated extensively with their Glasgow School of Art male colleagues and fellow members of the Scottish Guild of Handicraft who were predominantly male. They also created sophisticated feminized networks through artistic, social and political organizations, and contributed practically to the suffrage movement through fundraising, and for some through a variety of militant activities. In addition, their work gave them a strong public presence, as did their attendance, in artistic dress, at suffrage public meetings and events,

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exhibitions, concerts and theatres. Artists and designers, such as Dorothy Carleton Smyth and Jessie Newbery, were confident, successful, professional women who were politically active in the pursuit of women’s enfranchisement and ignored the societal norms and status quo that would have hampered their aspirations. As suffragette Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence observed, ‘The discovery of their own identity, that source within of purpose, power and will … while working for the idea of political liberty, we were individually achieving liberty of a far more real and vital nature’.48

Notes 1

Correspondence from 1903 to 1908 between Chris Stark and her fiancé, private family papers. Italics in original text. The couple married in 1908, and Stark continued to paint under her married name, exhibiting regularly with the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Lady Artists’ Society and the Royal Academy. W. J. C. Henderson, Chris Fergusson, A Dumfries and Galloway Artist (Dumfries: Gracefield Arts Centre, 2001). Chris Fergusson’s work is available online: http://www.artistsfootsteps.co.uk/search_ results_artists.a_z.aspID=40%20&loadType=2 (accessed 5 August 2016). 2 Enrolment Records, Glasgow School of Art Archives. 3 ‘Glasgow Studio Talk’, The Studio, 56 (1912), 318. 4 Octave Uzanne, ‘The Modern Parisienne’, The Studio, 21 (1900), 13. 5 Elspeth King, The Scottish Women’s Suffrage Movement (Glasgow: People’s Palace Museum, 1978), 18. 6 Leah Leneman, A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1991). 7 Elspeth King, The Hidden History of Glasgow’s Women: The Thenew Factor (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1993). 8 Jude Burkhauser, Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design, 1880–1920 (Edinburgh: Canongate Publishing, 1990). 9 Dewar Letters, 22 February 1903, from a collection written to her parents John Lewthwaite Dewar, tea planter, and Amelia Cochrane in Ceylon from 1903 to 1906. Collection H. L. Hamilton. 10 Gleeson White, ‘Some Glasgow Designers and Their Work: Jessie Newbery’, The Studio, 12 (1897), 48. Italics in original text. 11 William Rowat, her father, had an extensive library. He donated many of his books to Paisley Public Library over the period 1901–1912 that now form the Rowat Collection. 12 Jane Parkes in an interview with Elspeth King. Glasgow Suffrage Collection Mitchell Library, Glasgow. 13 Janice Helland, The Studios of Frances and Margaret Macdonald (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 36. 14 Leneman, A Guid Cause, 43. 15 The Eagle Portrait Gallery (Glasgow: The Eagle Publishing Company, 1909). Helen Fraser opened a studio in Glasgow, specializing in black-and-white illustrations and embroidery. However, she was not a Glasgow School of Art student, and the whereabouts of her studio has not yet been discovered.

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16 Elizabeth Ewan, Sue Innes, Sian Reynolds and Rose Pipes, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 269. 17 Leneman, A Guid Cause, 156. 18 Megan K. Smitley, Woman’s Mission: The Temperance and Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland, 1870–1914 (PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow, 2002). 19 King, The Hidden History of Glasgow’s Women, 101. 20 ‘Exhibition Review’, Glasgow Herald, 2 December 1908, 5. 21 Jane Parkes in an interview with Elspeth King. Glasgow Suffrage Collection Mitchell Library, Glasgow. 22 Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: Women’s Press, 1984). 23 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003), 245. 24 Catalogue of the 1910 Women’s Social and Political Union Grand Bazaar and Exhibition, Peoples’ Palace Museum, Glasgow. 25 The banner is now in the Museum of London, collection ID 26092. There is also a photograph of the banner being carried in the procession. 26 Leneman, A Guid Cause, 110. 27 The members of the group who went to prison were Helen Crawfurd, Janet Barrowman, Margaret and Frances McPhun, a ‘Mrs A. Wilson’, Nancy A. John and Annie Swan. Typescript copies of Helen Crawfurd’s unpublished autobiography are held in the Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University and the Marx Memorial Library, London. 28 Letter dated 11 May 1912 from Ann Macbeth to a ‘Mr Groundwater’, Glasgow School of Art Secretary, Glasgow School of Art Archives. 29 Minutes of the Governors Meeting, 30 April 1912, Glasgow School of Art Archives. 30 Letter dated 8 April 1912 from Groundwater to James McAully which states ‘Regarding the Conference, I beg to state that Miss Macbeth has been asked, for the sake of her health and her work to remain away as long as possible’, Glasgow School of Art Archives. 31 Perilla Kinchin, Tea and Taste: The Glasgow Tearooms, 1875–1975 (Pendlebury: White Cockade Publishing, 1991), 65. 32 Lynne Walker, ‘Vistas of Pleasure: Women Consumers of Urban Space in the West End of London 1850–1900’, in Women in the Victorian Art World, ed., Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 70–85. With thanks to Zoë Thomas for bringing this reference to my attention. 33 Leneman, A Guid Cause, 172. 34 Alan Crawford, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 114. 35 Ibid. 36 Marjorie Ives, The Life of Ann Macbeth of Patterdale (published privately, 1981). 37 The Glasgow women’s studios provided fashionable decorative art for the middle classes in the growing suburbs of the west-end and south-side of the city as well as new commuter towns such as Helensburgh.

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38 Dewar’s letters mention frequent visits to the tea rooms with her Glasgow School of Art friends and colleagues. 39 Interior photographs from a private collection are included in King, Hidden History of Glasgow Women, 110. 40 Kinchin, Tea and Taste, 65. 41 Glasgow Society of Lady Artists: Centenary Exhibition Catalogue (Glasgow: Glasgow Society of Women Artists, 1982), 5. 42 Meeting of the Council Minutes, 10 January 1907, Glasgow Society of Lady Artists Archive, Special Collections, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. 43 At the Royal Glasgow Institute, Baker exhibited mainly landscapes, but later was better known as a painter of seacoasts and harbours. 44 Margaret Bain, ‘Scottish Women in Politics’, Chapman, 4 (1980): 190. 45 Janie Allan suffrage papers, Acc. 4498, National Library of Scotland Special Collections. With thanks to Janice Helland for this reference. 46 Ibid. Includes evidence collected against the police from individuals. 47 Leneman, A Guid Cause, 199. 48 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), 215.

CHAPTER THREE

‘An arts and crafts society, working for the enfranchisement of women’: Unpicking the political threads of the Suffrage Atelier, 1909–1914 Tara Morton

The Suffrage Atelier, which was formed in 1909, was described in the Suffrage Annual and Women’s Who’s Who, and regularly in the suffrage press, as ‘an Arts and Crafts society working for the enfranchisement of women’.1 Ideologically, this aligned the society with not only the feminist ideals of gender equality which underpinned women’s demands for political citizenship, but also the class principles of socialism synonymous with the Arts and Crafts movement. Yet, as Anthea Callen has demonstrated, the movement’s social doctrines ascribed a domestic, if venerated, role to women which sat uncomfortably with feminist notions of emancipation and the realities of women’s labour.2 Moreover, while it sought to combat the so-called evils of industrialization by reviving handicrafts traditionally practised by women, the main arts and crafts industries were dominated by men.3 As such, the formation of the Suffrage Atelier, an organization which used crafts with the explicit intention of furthering women’s political rights, marked a substantial shift in the ways some artistic women were collectively working by the early twentieth century. This chapter unpicks the

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political and artistic threads of the Suffrage Atelier, asserting its significance in providing a new space for women to engage in, and further debates about women’s labour politics and international debates about an arts and crafts alternative to women’s industrial exploitation, alongside improving women’s interclass access to income, training and employment in craft industries via suffrage work.

‘The society shall be called the Suffrage Atelier’: Background and context The Suffrage Atelier was formed with a small number of artists living and working in London in the spring of 1909 at a period when the public momentum of the women’s suffrage campaign was gathering pace.4 Suffrage societies began to regularly organize parades and marches through the streets of London. These demanded the production of large colourful banners and posters to brighten the processions and to concisely illuminate the arguments for female suffrage and the organizations that supported it. The Artists’ Suffrage League was the first artist’s organization to form in 1907 and to work explicitly for the cause. It initially assembled to support and enliven the lines of the ‘mud march’ held that year by the law-abiding National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, with which it was thence affiliated.5 In notable contrast, the Suffrage Atelier, which formed two years later, was a non-partisan society. Thus, it could produce work for all suffrage organizations, law-abiding or otherwise. Details of the Suffrage Atelier’s exact membership are sketchy.6 Still, it is known that the society had an egalitarian structure with an elected committee and officials, and it allowed both female and male artists to join.7 Nevertheless, the Suffrage Atelier’s arts and crafts work remained womencentred, and male artists were fewer.8 Among its founding and earliest members were artists Agnes E. Hope Joseph (1878–1953) who trained for a time at the Newlyn School in Cornwall; her friend and teacher Ethel Willis (1870–1954) who was its chief organizer, Honorary Secretary and likely amateur artist; and siblings Clemence (1861–1955) and Laurence Housman (1865–1959), multitalented artists and writers originally from Bromsgrove in the West Midlands.9 Other early members were Catherine Courtauld (1878–1972), a wealthy heiress who nevertheless worked as an artist and maintained a studio in Hampstead, and possibly sculptor Kathleen Shaw (1865–1958).10 They were likely joined within the first year or so by other prominent artists, including painters and illustrators Louise Jacobs (1880– 1946), ‘draughtsman of many of the Atelier’s publications’, and Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951).11 Smith was an experienced arts and crafts artist who had already played a pivotal role in helping designers Evelyn Gleeson (1855–1944) and Lily Yeats (1866–1949) found the female-centred

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Dun Emer Arts and Crafts Guild and Press in Ireland in 1902.12 The Suffrage Atelier also attracted artists who did not contribute work but supported it in other ways. For example, Louise Jopling Rowe (1843–1933), a successful painter and long-time campaigner for women’s suffrage, adopted a role as patron. She was an avid supporter of the society, giving speeches and hosting meetings and exhibitions on its behalf.13 So too was Edith Craig (1869–1947), stage manager, costumer and daughter to the famous actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928), who similarly took on a supportive role, hosting a Suffrage Atelier General Meeting in May 1909.14 By 1910, the Suffrage Atelier had around 100 regular members whom it encouraged to form local branches.15 It later claimed to have artists living all over the country.16 This claim has some validity, but there is no evidence to suggest that it succeeded in establishing branches beyond London.17 In this vibrant metropolitan environment, the society operated simultaneously from several of its artists’ homes and studios producing simplistic, often twodimensional, black-and-white poster and postcard designs.18 Through the Suffrage Ateliers’ endeavours, posters, postcards and embroidered banner work became synonymous with the spectacle and imagery of the women’s suffrage campaign. In addition, the Suffrage Atelier also produced everyday items including curtains, book covers, and statuary – items to decorate the home or the suffrage office.19 Sadly, such ephemeral items appear not to have survived, though numerous examples of the society’s posters, postcards and some banner work do.20 The breadth of the Suffrage Atelier’s artistic work, and its design simplicity, enabled workers with varied skills, with or without formal training, and in multiple arts and crafts mediums, to participate. This approach differed from the high ‘professional standards’ demanded by the Artists’ Suffrage League.21 First and foremost, the Suffrage Atelier described itself, and was defined by the suffrage press, as an ‘Arts and Crafts society’ and explicitly committed to producing all its suffrage work using only traditional handicraft methods. In contrast, the Artists’ Suffrage League employed arts and crafts techniques during its suffrage work, but not exclusively, sending its posters out to modern printers such as David Weiners of Acton and Carl Hentschel of Fleet Street.22 Thus, it was not described as, nor did it commit itself to being, an arts and crafts society. The Suffrage Atelier also professed its ‘special object’ of providing training in the arts and crafts, making a formal pledge to educate its artists in contrast to the Artists’ Suffrage League which expected trained artists.23 Moreover, where the Artists’ Suffrage League relied chiefly on voluntary contributions, the Suffrage Atelier formulated a comprehensive payment scheme for its artists. This was based on commissions from suffrage work sold – giving the society a commercial edge.24 These are significant differences. Yet, beyond its role in forwarding women’s suffrage by ‘pictorial publications’ (as the Artists’ Suffrage League did), the Suffrage Atelier’s unique commitment to arts and crafts has seldom been analysed politically.25 Nor have the diverse material

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economies surrounding its arts and crafts practices, whether inside or outside the historiography of the women’s suffrage movement.26 Lisa Tickner’s pioneering work recognizes the Suffrage Atelier and the Artists’ Suffrage League’s invaluable contribution to the spectacle and imagery of the campaign. She also suggests that the politics of most artists working for women’s suffrage ‘leaned toward the radical end of liberalism and socialism’, though whether and how the Suffrage Atelier may have articulated this through its arts and crafts commitment were only touched upon.27 Since then, scholarship on the Suffrage Atelier has been limited, not only by the paucity of surviving material about the society, but also by the remnants of the disciplinary divide between the study of art and politics. Female artists’ voices have often been lost within women’s political histories and their political agencies overlooked within the histories of women’s art. As it stands, the Suffrage Atelier has not yet been considered within the context of the increasing numbers of female-centred arts and craft guilds that emerged in the early twentieth century, despite its explicit commitment to arts and crafts. Regardless of the inherent sexism of the main Arts and Crafts movement, arts and crafts revivalism struck a chord with a new generation of women. They were attracted to it either as an artistic vehicle for establishing unity between women across the classes, or by the potential of arts and crafts as a new source of legitimate employment for women.28 Thus, the endeavours of societies like the Haslemere Hand Weaving Industry, founded in 1902, are acknowledged for raising the social status and opportunities of craft women and especially of amateur working-class women.29 Similarly, the Women’s Guild of Arts, formed in 1907, aided professional, mostly middle-class, craft women who were excluded from the male Art Workers’ Guild simply because of their gender.30 Recent scholarship about women’s engagement in the arts and crafts is leading to a gradual shift away from the perception that the Arts and Crafts movement represented a depressingly familiar story of female marginalization.31 Instead, their subordination within male guilds is now understood to have encouraged alternative female-centred arts and crafts societies and industries by the early decades of the twentieth century.32 The Suffrage Atelier was integrally connected to these societies and industries. This is exemplified, not least by its artists Louise Jacobs, Mary Sargant Florence (1857–1954) and Pamela Colman Smith’s overlapping membership with the Women’s Guild of Arts at the same time as the Suffrage Atelier.33 Nevertheless, while some of its objectives connected with women’s guilds, the Suffrage Atelier differed fundamentally. It is vital to emphasize that it contrasted in its overtly politically feminist approach, when women’s guilds did not typically encourage a formal association between arts, crafts and politics, as highlighted in Chapter 1. Female employment in the crafts was not seen as ‘political’, and the crafts themselves were not generally viewed as a vehicle for women’s radicalism.34 As many guilds were also

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philanthropic, the Suffrage Atelier was somewhat unique in functioning both as a commercial and a political arts and crafts enterprise. To better understand this uniqueness, the political principles behind the Suffrage Atelier’s commitment to arts and crafts must be unpicked. It is to this task that the chapter now turns, exploring the Suffrage Atelier and its artists’ philosophies, friendships and affiliations, particularly with socialist and women’s labour politics.

‘True art … is bound up with … social conditions’: Politics in principle In a paper delivered at the Manchester Municipal School of Art in 1911, artist, writer and Suffrage Atelier member Laurence Housman argued that ‘true art … is bound up with … social conditions’.35 ‘Who designs for textile fabrics’, he went on to say, should be concerned with ‘getting cleanly conditions … in the towns and dwelling-houses’ where ‘designs have to live and look beautiful, or grow ugly and rot’.36 These sentiments echoed the class-conscious, socialist philosophies of the Arts and Crafts movement which encouraged art and artists to become active in social reform. Laurence and his sister Clemence Housman were deeply embroiled at that time in the women’s suffrage campaign and were central figures in facilitating the Suffrage Atelier’s London activities.37 Their Kensington home and its garden studio were used for Suffrage Atelier work from 1909.38 It thence became a hub of artistic activity and, for a period between 1910 and 1912, acted as the Suffrage Atelier’s official headquarters. Clemence, in her brother’s words, was a ‘chief worker’ on suffrage banner-making.39 She was an exemplary crafts artist working in many genres including wood engraving and embroidery. She likely helped head the Suffrage Atelier’s banner-making team from the society’s earliest days. Certainly, she chastised a Mrs Watson for ‘a stupid mistake’ on bannerlettering that it was ‘too late to remedy’.40 However, Clemence was hardest on herself. Her brother’s autobiography and letters reveal her dedication to the Suffrage Atelier, on whose behalf she often ‘wore herself out’.41 Laurence also produced designs for the society, but his talents for writing prose, plays and for public speaking often pulled him in a different direction.42 He was gregarious by nature compared to his diligent but reserved sister. Hence, Laurence took a more visible role in the ‘Votes for Women’ campaign, occasionally acting as a spokesperson for the Suffrage Atelier. Consequently, while women like Clemence and other female artists dominated the society and its work, Laurence’s dialogue is comparatively well documented. Thus, the Housman siblings’ lives serve as a useful starting point to begin unravelling the more obscure political ties of the society’s other artists and workers, alongside editorials by and about the Suffrage Atelier in the

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press. These may then be considered collectively in relation to the politics underpinning its arts and crafts pledge. In the 1880s, both Clemence and Laurence Housman underwent training at the South Lambeth Millers Lane School in London, where they were exposed to radical politics and to the philosophies of influential social reformers like socialist Arts and Crafts artist William Morris (1834–1896) and writer and art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900).43 Ruskin occupied a complex position in relation to socialism and the political ‘left’ in Britain. He often expressed antithetical views that were reactionary and anti-democratic.44 Yet, he was also an incisive critic of industrial capitalism and of workers’ exploitation. Thus, Morris’s proselytization often drew on those aspects of his work that advocated the social and economic benefits of joy in labour and of cooperative working. Ruskin became ‘a major influence especially amongst socialist sympathisers’ in this period.45 Laurence Housman later claims in his autobiography that Ruskin was his ‘spiritual father’.46 Along with several other Suffrage Atelier members, the Housman siblings also shared numerous friendships with leading socialist figures in the main Arts and Crafts movement.47 For example, Laurence shared a lifelong friendship with the Guild of Handicraft founder and socialist Charles Ashbee (1863– 1942) and especially with his wife Janet (1877–1961).48 Ashbee, inspired by William Morris’s socialist philosophies, founded the Guild in London’s East End in 1888 chiefly to provide employment for impoverished workingclass men.49 During the suffrage campaign, and despite their differences over feminism (Ashbee was not a feminist sympathizer), both Laurence and Clemence often visited the couple when they moved to Chipping Campden, an English village in the Cotswolds, where Ashbee relocated the Guild from the East End of London in 1902.50 Clemence also produced designs for the Essex House Press, founded and run by the Ashbees.51 At the wedding of Ashbee’s daughter in 1938, Laurence even declared, ‘I am myself still a socialist!’52 Whether he so strongly identified his politics in his earlier years with the Suffrage Atelier is less clear; however, they were certainly ‘on the left’, as were many in the Housman siblings’ circle. At the height of the suffrage campaign, Laurence was friends with socialist George Lansbury (1859–1940), who was elected a Labour MP in 1910. Lansbury vociferously supported women’s suffrage and became editor of the left-wing newspaper, the Daily Herald, in 1913.53 Laurence also backed the parliamentary Labour Party in 1912 by supporting the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ Election Fighting Fund. It sought to aid Labour candidates who had declared a commitment to women’s suffrage at by-elections as ‘the best means for defeating the government’.54 Interestingly, Laurence’s support for the Fund had sown the seeds of his expulsion from the inner circles of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union whose leadership refused to endorse it.55 This was because, in Laurence’s words, the Labour Party would not ‘throw out the government bodily’, and his support for the scheme was perceived as a betrayal.56

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Clemence nevertheless remained close to the Women’s Social and Political Union’s leadership, and her political affiliations during the campaign are more difficult to define.57 In 1912, as Laurence expended his energies on the Election Fighting Fund, Clemence took part in the Union’s self-denial week. This required Women’s Social and Political Union supporters to raise money by giving up little luxuries for sponsorship and/or by performing extra work. Laurence donated to his sister’s fund that year, but wrote to his close friend and suffragist Sarah Clark (1877–1973): ‘I hope my contribution will go to militancy and not to the anti-labour propaganda’ being peddled.58 His concern over how the Women’s Social and Political Union would use his donation confirms Laurence’s pro-Labour stance in this period. That Clemence seems not to have shared his uneasiness perhaps hints at a differing emphasis between the siblings over the relationship between class and gender politics within the suffrage campaign. There was a growing sense of cooperation between Labour supporters, progressive socialists and supporters of women’s suffrage in the years prior to the outbreak of war.59 This relationship was in many ways embodied in the Election Fighting Fund that Laurence Housman endorsed. Socialist and feminist politics (to use Sheila Rowbotham’s phrase) remained ‘uneasy bedfellows’, but socialist and feminist organizations and causes increasingly elided, with some declaring that ‘the Cause of women, of labour, and socialism’ were inseparable.60 Thus, others within the Suffrage Atelier shared Laurence Housman’s interest in cooperative politics. For example, Louise Jopling Rowe worked together with him to help found the United Suffragists in February 1914.61 The society was described in its inaugural year as trying to align ‘the suffrage movement with the rebel socialist politics of the Daily Herald’, the newspaper edited by Lansbury.62 The United Suffragists also held demonstrations together with Sylvia Pankhurst’s working class and Labour-orientated East London Federation of Suffragettes.63 The Suffrage Atelier shared further entanglements with ‘rebel’ socialist politics, and with the women’s labour movement, through its non-artistic workers. For example, its secretary from 1912, Katherine Gatty (1870– 1952), was a committed militant suffragette.64 Less well-known is that Gatty was also an outspoken socialist who, on defending herself in court against window-smashing charges in 1911, stated that ‘if there was a revolution in this country, a much greater amount of damage would be done to private property’.65 Gatty was a trade unionist with the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks and later had links with the Communist party.66 Similarly, in 1912, Eilian Hughes, a Welsh writer, lecturer and member of the Women’s Industrial Council, started classes every Thursday evening at the Suffrage Atelier offices on the art of public speaking.67 The Women’s Industrial Council was an organization close to the labour movement and was especially concerned with female sweated home industries.68 Gatty and Hughes were well-known within suffrage circles, as were their links with socialist and women’s labour politics. Gatty

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was a prominent figure, not least because of her numerous imprisonments for the cause commemorated in several photographic postcards.69 In addition, public speaking was a mainstay of both women’s activities as union and women’s labour representatives, alongside suffrage political agitation and propagandizing in this period.70 Their successes in these fields were also reported in the press.71 Therefore, Gatty and Hughes’s work with the Suffrage Atelier likely had implications for the public perception of the society’s political sympathies in ways that have since been lost. Although officially the Suffrage Atelier remained non-partisan, it became closest as an organization to the Women’s Freedom League. The League was a splinter group that broke from the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1907 due to the Pankhurst’s increasing autocracy. This is significant because the League’s leadership kept a very close relationship with socialist and labour movements and with working women’s concerns (including with organizations like the Women’s Industrial Council).72 The Suffrage Atelier made a rare collective donation to the Women’s Freedom League in 1910 and struck an artistic deal for a regular poster feature in its newspaper The Vote in 1912.73 A soirée launching the venture on 18 April that year was attended by Anne Cobden Sanderson (1853–1926). Sanderson was a committed socialist instrumental in forming both the Women’s Freedom League and, with her husband Thomas in 1899, the arts and crafts inspired Doves Press.74 Sanderson commended the Suffrage Atelier’s work at the meeting, claiming, ‘art should touch life at all points including politics’.75 The Suffrage Atelier’s front cover for the Christmas edition of The Vote that year symbolized visually the interplay between the class and gender politics within both organizations (Figure 3.1).76 Addressed ‘to our readers’ and designed by Louise Jacobs, the image depicts a family of labourers overseeing a rural landscape together. Their young baby and the rising sun signify a new life and new beginning. The design strongly echoes popular socialist imagery, but re-appropriates it for feminist ends.77 Importantly for the Suffrage Atelier’s scheme, such new feminist perspectives about women’s labour reform tied it together with women’s arts and crafts practice. Most feminist thinkers had, by the early twentieth century, ‘framed the question of women’s labour as a central problem of the [women’s] movement’.78 Writing respectively in March and June of 1912, feminists Rebecca West (1892–1983) and Dora Marsden (1882–1960) emphasized women’s suffering and exploitation under the capitalist system, focusing on their relationship to industry.79 West and Marsden questioned how any feminist could condone the existing capitalist system which combined ‘physical drudgery’ with ‘mental inertia’ for women.80 Thus, despite its masculinist assumptions about the labouring economy, the vision of work in arts and crafts doctrines as the ‘joy of labour’ proved popular with feminists particularly in Britain and the United States.81 Internationally, feminists began looking towards the revitalization of female arts and crafts work as a potential vehicle for tackling women’s industrial exploitation.

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FIGURE 3.1 Louise Jacobs, Suffrage Atelier illustration from The Vote, 28 December 1912 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

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Having shed light on the Suffrage Atelier’s various entanglements with socialist and women’s labour politics, new feminist thinking on women’s labour reform should be considered a factor in the society’s commitment to arts and crafts work. Women’s industrial exploitation was the subject of several Suffrage Atelier postcards and posters, such as In the Shadow, Waiting for a Living Wage, and Comfortable Women, and its members attended sweated industry exhibitions, for example, at the Pixmore Institute in the ‘new garden city’ of Letchworth in 1913.82 Feminist concerns over women’s industrial exploitation were also mirrored in Laurence Housman’s dialogue during his time with the Suffrage Atelier. In 1911, he spoke out about the social evils of the capitalist system and the ‘inhuman system of specialisation’. The greatest effect of this ‘industrial disease’, he argued, was upon women ‘whose industries used to be home industries before machinery drew them out of the homes’. This was a clear reference to the loss of traditional home craft work to industrial labour, meaning women were now ‘being thrown out of one useless employment into another … at a starvation wage’.83 He also remarked that ‘if handicraft does not offer to the worker worthier conditions … it is no good pinning our faith to it’.84 The women’s suffrage movement in Britain was certainly permeated by new feminist conversations linking the resolution of women’s industrial exploitation with a revival of arts and crafts practice internationally. For example, at the height of the suffrage campaign in 1911, Sylvia Pankhurst outlined her vision to an American newspaper for a scheme in England ‘to form arts and crafts guilds … to raise the value and the dignity of women’s labour … ’, thus tackling exploitation while ensuring ‘there would also be instruction and training provided’.85 As a leading figure in the socialist and women’s suffrage movements, Pankhurst juxtaposed her feminist politics with the arts and crafts scheme by describing it as ‘almost co-equal’ in importance with obtaining the vote in improving women’s working conditions.86 The similarities between Pankhurst’s proposed arts and crafts scheme and that already enacted by the Suffrage Atelier are more than palpable. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to suppose that behind the Suffrage Atelier’s arts and crafts pledge was a similar interplay between socialist and feminist politics, and that its scheme too, through prospective local branches and arts and crafts training, hoped to raise the value of women’s labour. However, there was a critical difference. Pankhurst’s proposed scheme was to be implemented ‘after the enfranchisement of women’ when ‘nothing big or important is given them [women] to do’.87 The Suffrage Atelier, on the other hand, inextricably bound its arts and crafts scheme to the sexual politics of the Votes for Women campaign. What might it have gained by tying the causes of arts and crafts and women’s suffrage so closely together? Speculatively, an alliance between arts and crafts and the resurgent suffrage and wider women’s movement offered new possibilities for an alternative, feminist-centred craft economy, one that women of all classes could

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participate in, benefit from and patronize as consumers. A speech at one of the Suffrage Atelier’s earliest meetings in July 1909 delivered by Laurence Housman suggests the society was, at the very least, alive to the potential of the women’s movement to bolster female arts and crafts both nationally and internationally, enabling arts and crafts in turn to act as a vehicle for reforming women’s social and economic conditions.88 The speech first evokes the social reform principles of the Arts and Crafts movement by stating that ‘art had long suffered from a want of connection with life’. It also suggested that previous attempts to unite the two had failed because ‘the growth of internationalism in [artistic] technique had not been followed by any international idea or inspiration’ to carry it. Significantly, the speech urged that now a new opportunity existed for the unification of art and life, as art could now be supported by a national and international ‘idea and inspiration, such as the women’s movement now supplied’.89 The report of the speech is tantalizingly brief, but suggests, nonetheless, a new era for female craft and for women-centred reform, reliant on realigning arts and crafts principles and practices with the international women’s movement. The Suffrage Atelier’s own commitment, entwining arts and crafts with women’s suffrage, embodied this ideal, locating it at the vanguard of feminist conversations about women’s art and politics.

To ‘best serve the purpose of the working artist’: Politics in practice Feminist ambitions to combat women’s industrial exploitation through arts and crafts revivalism did remain largely esoteric in Britain during this era. Neither did hopes materialize that alignment with the international women’s movement would stimulate a sufficiently widespread feminist arts and crafts market, to engender significant reform in women’s social and economic conditions. Still, the Suffrage Atelier’s artwork did reach beyond British boundaries. Its posters were sold, for example, in the United States.90 However, the creative processes and tangible economies of its suffrage arts and crafts scheme, especially in the absence of hoped for regional branches, remained firmly centred in London. Nevertheless, metropolitan press reports and the Suffrage Atelier’s own constitution allow an assessment of whether and how its politics, in principle, played out in practice. The remainder of the chapter considers the society’s attempts at class inclusiveness in its everyday material operations and arts and crafts training. The Suffrage Atelier’s actions as a politically feminist arts and crafts society are also explored, including how it resisted gender inequities in arts and crafts industries through the division of labour between its male and female artists. Generally, arts and crafts schemes were (and still are) viewed as a means of social inclusion and as a way of attempting to bridge class divides.91 Within

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the suffrage movement itself, the press proudly reported that ‘nimble fingered ladies of all classes’ and abilities regularly came together to participate in embroidery and banner-making for the suffrage cause.92 However, few working-class women have yet been identified, and their contribution remains difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, there are important points to make here. Although middle class, few Suffrage Atelier artists were independently wealthy, and many struggled to make ends meet. Even established and well-connected artists like Pamela Colman Smith found that money was tight. She wrote to her mentor American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), just a few months after the Suffrage Atelier formed, complaining about having ‘just finished a very big job for very little cash’. She also asks whether he had received payment for the sale of one her works and, if so, ‘can you send it to me? … I want some money for Christmas!’93 Lynne Walker has rightly argued that it was this stratum of impoverished middle-class women that chiefly benefitted from female-centred crafts guilds, and the Suffrage Atelier was likely no exception.94 However, this does not necessarily preclude working-class women from participation in Suffrage Atelier work. Nor should it negate efforts made by the society to attract them. Working-class women’s often amateur (so defined by a lack of formal school training) rather than professional status and lack of free time made them prone to making ad hoc contributions.95 They were also more likely to have produced and collaborated on embroidered, lace and needlework items, as indicated in the suffrage press report earlier. These factors make author identification problematic, increasing the likelihood of their falling within the ranks of the many anonymous artists and crafts workers thought to have contributed to suffrage artwork.96 Therefore, the Suffrage Atelier’s commitment to class inclusiveness is more fairly assessed not solely through the identification of individual working-class women, but by the various ways it strove in its everyday practices to encourage working women of all classes to contribute arts and crafts work. That it did so is evident in the society’s constant focus on low costs and accessibility, payment and training. The Suffrage Atelier set its annual subscription fee at a minimum of just one shilling and sixpence per annum.97 This was within the means of those on a low income and appears to have remained fixed throughout the campaign.98 The society also sought to reduce travelling time and expenses for prospective artists by allowing them to send designs by post.99 It also encouraged its experienced members to run local satellite classes.100 In the early years, between 1909 and 1910, cartoon clubs and banner-making demonstrations were held at Catherine Courtauld and Kathleen Shaw’s studios in Hampstead.101 Classes were also held at the Housman’s studio in Kensington and later at Agnes Hope Joseph and Ethel Willis’s new home and neighbouring studio at Stanlake Villas in Hammersmith. This address superseded the Housman’s studio as the society’s official headquarters sometime in 1911, although suffrage work continued there.102

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Most Suffrage Atelier classes were held during the daytime and continued from Monday to Friday.103 However, classes were also held in the evenings, enabling working women to attend. For example, a design club was held on Tuesday evenings from 7.00 pm until 9.30 pm and Eilian Hughes’s speaker classes on Thursday evenings at 5.30 pm.104 The societies’ accessibility to working-class women may have been enhanced by the regular presence of well-known women trade unionists and labour representatives, like Hughes and secretary Katherine Gatty, at its offices. The society also exhibited working women’s wares at Suffrage Atelier events from time to time. For example, in 1910, a fete was held in the Housman siblings’ garden featuring a stall selling ‘piles of pottery – much of it from Staffordshire’ whose industries relied heavily on female workers.105 The society’s payment scheme must have also proved attractive to artists and artisans on low incomes, whether middle-class or working-class, amateur or professional. Potential earnings were available from commission on a variety of arts and crafts items produced for the campaign. The society outlined the commission: ‘On post cards and other cheap publications shall be 50% on the first 2000 sold, and 25% on subsequent editions. The percentage due to the artist on Pictures, Statuary and Cartoons not published by the Society shall be 75%.’ Meanwhile, ‘designs for posters published by the society and not intended for sale, shall be paid by the society at a rate agreed upon between the artist and the society’.106 In paying its artists, the Suffrage Atelier acknowledged them as ‘workers’ who needed to earn a wage irrespective of their status or class. Its broad range of products, statuary, curtains and book covers as well as poster and postcard designs, opened the payment scheme to those with varied craft skills and economic needs. It also encouraged those who could not otherwise afford the time to participate in feminist politics. The Suffrage Atelier’s scheme meant that producing arts and crafts work for the cause could, at the very least, provide a supplemental income. In addition, the Suffrage Atelier also appears to have held open days which sought to aid women’s creative enterprises on a low budget. For instance, in 1912, it offered demonstrations in ‘designing and constructing plant [equipment] which shall in a most inexpensive fashion, best serve the purpose of the working artist’ and that ‘the various processes form a most interesting, object lesson as to what can be done on small means’.107 At a Suffrage Atelier Christmas party in 1911, it was also suggested how a mangle could be ‘of great value’ and put to good use.108 What the society defined as the ‘working artist’ is not entirely clear. Professional artists with dedicated studios, for example, seem unlikely recipients for such elementary instruction. Perhaps, the demonstrations meant to benefit amateur ‘working’ artists, in other words, those whose primary income was not derived from artistic work? Either way, such practical demonstrations using common household items, coupled with the society’s attention to those on ‘small means’, suggest that it attempted to encourage and embrace women’s small-scale artisanal

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practice at home, inclusive of all classes and economic circumstances. This might have also represented a practical expression of more esoteric feminist principles, to alleviate women’s industrial exploitation through their return to home craft industries. Suffrage Atelier workers’ earnings relied on creating sales, and these were generated by the society in several ways: through regular advertisements placed in the suffrage press; the display of posters and postcards in various suffrage society shops and office windows (an advantage of nonpartisanship); and the holding of regular exhibitions at numerous venues where there is evidence to suggest that its artists’ non-suffrage as well as suffrage work was displayed and sold.109 Postcards, posters and bannerettes had set prices, and the society was keen to stress that its products ‘come within the means of everyone … in cheap and costly materials to suit all purses’.110 It was efficient enough for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, despite its affiliation with the Artists’ Suffrage League, to place an order with the Suffrage Atelier in 1911 ‘at a very small cost’ and to encourage other societies to similarly use it.111 The low-cost strategy was likely intended to encourage widespread consumption of its goods within the suffrage marketplace, keeping the Suffrage Atelier’s arts and crafts scheme and its artists afloat.112 However, despite its best efforts, it struggled financially. One supporter commented that the Suffrage Atelier work was ‘the worst sweated labour’ she knew.113 This statement was ironic given the society’s interest in sweated industries and its ties to socialist and women’s labour politics seeking to alleviate women’s exploitation. The frustration was, a Suffrage Atelier member wrote, that ‘a good many do not understand what an unfinanced business is like to work’.114 Nonetheless, through its ‘special object of training in arts and crafts’, the society worked tirelessly to improve women’s employment prospects in arts and crafts industries, irrespective of its own limitations.115 In this aspect of its scheme, the society’s sexual politics are acutely evident as it focused particularly upon instruction in skills and industries where women were the most marginalized. Thus, it is significant that the Suffrage Atelier issued a constitutional directive encouraging knowledgeable members to instruct others in woodcarving from their homes and studios.116 This may be viewed as a deliberate tactic to redress its masculinist practice, opening new employment and teaching opportunities to the society’s majority female members. The Suffrage Atelier’s most explicit challenge to female marginalization related to the design and printing trades. Women’s education and employment in both industries had been an ongoing struggle.117 In theory, new design schools linked to the manufacturing industry offered increased opportunities for women as designers. However, in practice, many of the classes only admitted students who were already engaged in design and handicraft industries – in other words those on apprenticeships.118 As many women were boycotted by employers and male employees, this meant that in

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real terms the design classes were not available to them. A 1912 editorial in The Vote, likely informed by Suffrage Atelier members, highlighted the poor state of education and employment for women in design and print processes. ‘The artist’, it stated ‘on leaving the schools, frequently has … little real knowledge of the style and subject lending itself most effectively to printing work’ and therefore of those designs ‘most likely to succeed commercially’ hampering employment prospects.119 This was compounded when tacit practices excluding women from the printing trades were increasingly underpinned by state legislation. Suffragists became particularly concerned about ‘a number of attempts … to limit women’s work opportunities, notably legislation aimed at ending women’s employment … as printers’.120 The Suffrage Atelier was unequivocal in its intention to tackle the ‘definite campaign on foot to drive women out of the printing trades’.121 In 1910, the society purchased a hand printing press, which had practical and stylistic implications for the Suffrage Atelier’s work and importantly for the gendered politics of its arts and crafts practice.122 First, the press enabled the society to design, print and publish its own suffrage material, meaning it could produce designs more quickly than other suffrage societies.123 Stylistically, the bold, two-dimensional, often black-and-white block poster designs that resulted were ‘primitive’ but forceful.124 In this sense, the Suffrage Atelier’s commitment to hand printing, partly informed by the design simplicity needed to attract and train amateurs, paradoxically effected a move away from the fussier designs traditionally associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. Instead, its poster designs looked stylistically towards the more rustic, communist Russian, Chinese and Mexican revolutionary posters of the era.125 The purchase of the printing press also represented the Suffrage Atelier’s collective ownership of the means of its own print production. Ownership of the means of production was a fundamental class principle of revolutionary and anti-capitalist socialist politics. It allowed the reorganization of the hierarchy and division of labour and underpinned the guild philosophies (if not the realities) of the main Arts and Crafts movement.126 The Suffrage Atelier used its ownership of the means of print production to create a hierarchy, dividing its labour based explicitly on gender. The society stressed in the suffrage press that despite welcoming male members ‘every stage of the process of poster preparation is being done by women’ and that all ‘the work of printing and publishing is carried out by women only’ and not by male members.127 Thus, women workers at the Suffrage Atelier were ‘fully trained in all the branches of design and printing’ with design clubs on Tuesday evenings, ‘designer’s day’ all day on Wednesdays and ‘printing days’ on Thursdays.128 Women’s primacy in the Suffrage Atelier’s design training, and its outright exclusion of men from the means and processes of print production, was a symbolic, political and practical response to women’s marginalization in design and print trades. Feminist authors have since argued that in the face of male domination, ownership of the

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means of production is a fundamental requirement of any feminist political project seeking to transform local economies and women as local economic subjects.129 Unusually, the Suffrage Atelier also ran classes in the latest modern design and printing techniques, at the same time making clear that all its suffrage products were made using strictly traditional arts and crafts methods.130 Training women in modern techniques that were directly responsible for the demise of handicraft methods was a paradoxical approach, but illustrates the Suffrage Atelier’s pragmatism and the depth of its commitment to improving women’s employment prospects across the design and print industries. By 1912, the suffrage press claimed that improving women’s opportunities in the design and print trades ‘is what the Suffrage Atelier has attempted with a very large measure of success’ and that its efforts ‘should enlist the active sympathy and support of the whole suffrage movement’.131 Suffrage Atelier work continued for a further two years, but demand gradually dwindled and it probably ceased to operate at the outbreak of war in 1914.132 Its finances indicate that it never truly enlisted the breadth or depth of support it had hoped for its arts and crafts project. Nevertheless, the Suffrage Atelier’s diverse scheme created an alternative, if principally metropolitan, suffrage arts and crafts economy that produced an array of goods and sought to attract a variety of workers inclusive of class and artistic status. Its training classes broadened employment opportunities for women of all classes in arts and crafts industries, especially in the design and print trades where it resisted male attempts at marginalization. The society’s arts and crafts scheme entwined its interests in socialist and women’s labour politics, with new international feminist thinking on an arts and crafts alternative to women’s industrial exploitation. An arts and crafts scheme aimed at improving women’s labour, Sylvia Pankhurst argued, was almost as important as the vote.133 For the Suffrage Atelier, which uniquely aligned the two, it was as important. Therefore, whatever its shortcomings, this unobtrusive and pioneering society should take its rightful place not only in the historiographies of women’s suffrage, of women’s art and in narratives of the Arts and Crafts movement, but also in broader accounts of the complex and experimental relationship between art, gender and politics in the early twentieth century.

Notes 1 2

‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Common Cause, 1 July 1909, 158–159; A. J. R, Suffrage Annual and Women’s Who’s Who (London: Stanley Paul, 1913), 6. Anthea Callen, Angel in the Studio: Women in the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870–1914 (London: Astragal Books, 1979), 184–218; Filio Diamanti, ‘The Treatment of the “Woman Question” in Radical Utopian Thought’, in The Philosophy of Utopia, ed., Barbara Goodwin (London: Frank Cass, 2001),

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117–139. More generally, Gillian Naylor, The Arts and Crafts Movement: A Study of Its Sources, Ideals and Influence on Design Theory (London: Studio Vista, 1971). 3 Callen, Angel in the Studio, 184–215. 4 Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1988), 20. See also, ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Common Cause, 24 July 1909, 144. 5 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 16. 6 Membership lists for the society have not survived. Dates when artists joined the Suffrage Atelier are therefore based primarily on references to them in the suffrage press and/or on the approximate date when art work was produced for the society. 7 Suffrage Atelier Papers (SAP), constitution, 1909, Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London (henceforth WL). 8 Tara Morton, ‘Changing Spaces: Art, Politics and Identity in the Home Studios of the Suffrage Atelier’, Women’s History Review, 21:4 (2012): 605–623; Tara Morton, ‘Everywhere and Elsewhere: Mapping Suffrage Artists Interventions in Gender Power Relations’ (PhD dissertation, University of Warwick, Coventry, 2019). 9 For more on the Housman’s see, Elizabeth Oakley, Inseparable Siblings: A Portrait of Clemence and Laurence Housman (Warwickshire: Brewin Books, 2009); Rodney Engen, Laurence Housman (Stroud: Catalpa, 1983); Laurence Housman, The Unexpected Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937). Thanks to Elizabeth Crawford for pinning down dates for Ethel Willis. See, Elizabeth Crawford, Art and Suffrage: A Biographical Dictionary of Suffrage Artists (London: Francis Boutle, 2017). 10 On the Suffrage Atelier’s formation and Kathleen Shaw’s role, Morton, ‘Everywhere and Elsewhere’. See also, Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 605–623; Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 243–249; Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 662. 11 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Suffragette, 8 November 1912, 59. 12 Thanks to Melinda Boyd Parsons of Neuman University for her generous sharing of documents and information relating to Pamela Colman Smith throughout the chapter. See also, Nicola G. Bowe, ‘Two Early TwentiethCentury Irish Arts and Crafts Workshops in Context: An Túr Gloine and the Dun Emer Guild and Industries’, Journal of Design Industries, 2:2/3 (1989): 193–206; Nicola G. Bowe and Elizabeth Cumming, The Arts and Crafts Movements in Dublin and Edinburgh, 1885–1925 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1998). 13 Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 629. 14 She may have contributed to the Suffrage Atelier’s embroidered or banner work given her expertise as a costumer, but there is no evidence of this. (SAP) constitution, 1909 (WL); Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 24; ‘The Only Lady Stage Manager in the World’, The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, 26 January 1907, 53; Katherine Cockin, Edith Craig (1869–1947) Dramatic Lives (London: Cassell, 1998). 15 ‘Women Artists in Procession’, Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 26 May 1910, 2; (SAP) constitution (WL) 1909.

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16 ‘The Poster Campaign: What the Atelier Does’, The Vote, 15 June 1912, 145. 17 The Suffrage Atelier artists have been identified in Ireland and in the Midlands. See Morton, ‘Everywhere and Elsewhere’. 18 The Suffrage Atelier’s official London headquarters shifted in chronological order (with overlaps) between 1909 and 1914: 53 Broadhurst Gardens, Hampstead (1909); 192 Marylebone Road (1909); 1 Pembroke Cottages, Edwardes Square, Kensington (1910); 4 Stanlake Villas, Hammersmith (1911); 6 Stanlake Villas, Hammersmith (1912); and possibly 2 Robert Street, Adelphi Terrace (offices of the Minerva Publishing company who published The Vote) (1913–1914). See Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 242; Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 662. The Suffrage Atelier also used a network of supporting addresses for meetings, exhibitions and demonstrations. See, Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 630; Morton, ‘Everywhere and Elsewhere’. 19 ‘Mrs Jopling Rowe & The Suffrage Atelier’, The Vote, 10 August 1912, 281. 20 These are chiefly held at the Women’s Library and at the Museum of London. 21 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 21. 22 Ibid., 18. 23 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Common Cause, 24 June 1909, 144. 24 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 14–26; (SAP) constitution, 1909 (WL). 25 (SAP) constitution, 1909 (WL); Morton, ‘Everywhere and Elsewhere’ seeks to redress this. 26 Some of these are explored in Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 605–623. 27 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 30. 28 Lynne Walker, ‘The Arts and Crafts Alternative’, in A View from the Interior: Feminism, Women and Design, eds., Judy Attfield and Pat Kirkham (London: The Women’s Press Ltd, 1989), 165–173; Jan Marsh, Back to the Land: The Pastoral Impulse in Victorian England from 1880 to 1914 (London: Quartet Books, 1982), 161–169; Stella K. Tillyard, The Impact of Modernism, 1900– 1920: Early Modernism and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Edwardian England (London: Routledge, 1988), 6–9. 29 Alla Myzelev, ‘Craft Revival in Haslemere: She, Who Weaves … ’, Women’s History Review, 18:4 (2009): 597–618; Tillyard, Impact of Modernism, 7. 30 Zoë Thomas, ‘At Home with the Women’s Guild of Arts: Gender and Professional Identity in London Studios, c. 1880–1925’, Women’s History Review, 24:6 (2015): 938–964. 31 Such as in Callen, Angel in the Studio; Naylor, The Arts and Crafts Movement. 32 Walker, ‘The Arts and Crafts Alternative’; Bridget Elliott and Janice Helland eds., Women Artists and the Decorative Arts, 1880–1935: The Gender of Ornament (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002). 33 Thanks to Zoë Thomas for a list of Women’s Guild of Arts members. Artist Suffrage League artist Mary Sargant Florence is seldom connected to the Suffrage Atelier, but is mentioned in the suffrage press as lending ‘her aid’ to the society in ‘The Suffrage Atelier’s Poster Campaign’, The Vote, 29 June 1912, 177. The full nature of her involvement with the Suffrage Atelier is unclear. Sargant Florence resigned from the Women’s Guild of Arts over the proposal in 1913 that men be made eligible for election as Honorary Associates. See Chapter 1. 34 For example, despite their private support for the women’s suffrage campaign, Haslemere founders Mary Blount and Maude King (1876–1927) remained

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publicly silent on the issue of female enfranchisement. Myzelev, ‘Craft Revival’; Tillyard, Impact of Modernism, 38–39; Walker, ‘The Arts and Crafts Alternative’, 70. 35 Laurence Housman, National Art Training, pamphlet of speech delivered at the Manchester Municipal School of Art, 18 September 1911, 7, Housman Papers (hereafter HP), Street Library, Somerset. 36 Housman, National Art Training (HP), 6. 37 Clemence was a supporter of the Women’s Social and Political Union, a founding member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League and was briefly imprisoned for tax evasion in September 1911. Laurence contributed numerous plays and delivered public speeches in support of women’s suffrage. See Morton ‘Changing Spaces’; Oakley, Inseparable Siblings; Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage Citizenship and the Battle for the Census (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 36–48; Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Women’s Suffrage Among the Bohemians: Laurence Housman Joins the Movement’, in Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement, ed., Sandra Stanley Holton (London: Routledge, 1996), 139–161; Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 293–295; Housman, The Unexpected Years; Engen, Laurence Housman; Linda Hart, ‘Laurence Housman: A Subject in Search of a Biographer’, Housman Society Journal, 31 (2005): 15–36. 38 That year the society requested via the suffrage press that someone lend a large room for banner-making for the upcoming processions, to which the Housmans appear to have responded some months later. ‘Board Residence, Rooms Holiday Homes, Etc.’, Votes for Women, 23 July 1909, 902. 39 Housman, The Unexpected Years, 274. 40 Letter from Clemence to Laurence, undated (HP). 41 Laurence Housman’s letter to Sarah Clark, 6 December (no date, but likely 1911/1912), (HP). 42 Laurence claimed to have produced five or six designs for the Suffrage Atelier. Housman, The Unexpected Years, 274. 43 Clemence trained there at the same time as Charles Ricketts (1866–1931) who went on to set up the Vale Press with lifelong partner, Charles Shannon (1863–1937), Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 23. 44 Not all advocates of the Arts and Crafts movement were socialists, with some such as Ruskin possessing what Alan Crawford describes as ‘right-wing sentiments’. See Alan Crawford, ‘Ideas and Objects: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain’, Design Issues, 13:1 (1997): 15–26. 45 Gill Cockram, Ruskin and Social Reform: Ethics and Economics in the Victorian Age (London: Taurus Academic Studies, 2007), 2. Cockram’s fascinating work makes explicit the depth of Ruskin’s influence on Morris and, indeed, on British socialism. See especially 168–177. 46 Housman, The Unexpected Years, 126. 47 Pamela Colman Smith is a prime example having close links with the Yeats family and friendships with Arts and Crafts practitioners such as Emery Walker (1851–1933). 48 Laurence Housman and Janet Ashbee shared many letters, some of which have survived; see (HP). There are also numerous references to their relationship in Felicity Ashbee, Janet Ashbee: Love, Marriage and the Arts and Crafts Movement (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002).

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49 Shelia Rowbotham, ‘Arts, Crafts and Socialism’, History Today, February 2008, 44–50. 50 Laurence was the more frequent visitor of the two to Chipping Campden; see Celia Jones, ‘Bete Grise, Buttercups and Bicycles: Laurence Housman and Chipping Campden, Housman Society Journal, 34 (2008): 35–50. For more on Ashbee’s life in Chipping Campden, see Fiona MacCarthy, The Simple Life: C. R. Ashbee in the Cotswolds (London: Faber & Faber, 1981). 51 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 23. 52 Jones, ‘Bete Grise’, 41. 53 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 295; Hart, ‘Laurence Housman’, 15–36. 54 Housman, The Unexpected Years, 281. 55 The Women’s Social and Political Union refused to endorse the Election Fighting Fund until the Labour party uniformly agreed to support ‘Votes for Women’ rather than couching it in terms of gaining universal suffrage along with men. See, for instance, Krista Cowman, ‘“Incipient Toryism?” The Women’s Social and Political Union and the Independent Labour Party, 1903–14’, History Workshop Journal, 53:1 (2002): 128–148. 56 Subsequently, Housman’s letters in his own words, ‘ceased to be answered’ and he was ‘no longer allowed to speak at WSPU meetings’. Housman, The Unexpected Years, 282. 57 Clemence diligently laid flowers at the foot of Emmeline Pankhurst’s statue in Victoria Gardens for many years. Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 294. 58 Housman’s letter to Sarah Clark, 5 March 1912 (HP). Sarah and her husband Roger Clark were members of the Clarks shoemaking family. Laurence and Clemence became their very close friends, most likely through shared interests in women’s suffrage and social reform. They moved to join the couple in Street, Somerset in 1920, living in a house in the Clarks’ orchard. Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 293–295; Oakley, Inseparable Siblings, 110–114. 59 See June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women, Britain, 1880s to 1920s (London: Routledge, 2002); Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism (London: Merlin Press, 1980). 60 Sheila Rowbotham and Jeffrey Weeks, Socialism and the New Life: The Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (London: Pluto Press, 1977), 20; Isabella Ford and Margaret McMillan, quoted in Carolyn Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860–1931 (London: Virago Press, 1990), 137. Many organizations such as the National Federation of Women Workers and The Women’s Labour League also embodied this new spirit of cooperation as did those that supported them. See Cathy Hunt, The National Federation of Women Workers, 1906–1921 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); June Hannam, Isabella Ford (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 61 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 694; Krista Cowman, ‘A Party Between Revolution and Peaceful Persuasion: A Fresh Look at the United Suffragists’, in The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives, eds., Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 77–89. 62 Cowman, ‘A Party’, 80; Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 694.

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63 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 182–185. For general reading on the East London Federation, see Rosemary Taylor, In Letters of Gold: The Story of Sylvia Pankhurst and the East London Federation of the Suffragettes in Bow (London: Stepney Books, 1993). 64 Precisely when in 1912 Gatty became the Suffrage Atelier’s secretary is not clear, but she held the position by the end of that year. See ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, Votes for Women, 13 December 1912, 174. Gatty was arrested and imprisoned on numerous occasions for militant acts. See Biographical Press Cuttings (G): single, obituary, 1952 – Gillett Gatty, Katherine (WL); Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 241; Ryland Wallace, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Wales, 1866–1928 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), 80–93. 65 A report of her court appearance is given in ‘The Suffrage Prisoners at Bow Street’, Votes for Women, 1 December 1911, 144–148. 66 The National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks (NAUSAWC) sought to limit working hours to forty-eight a week; improve working conditions; help local members find work and demand local minimum wage rates. Representatives like Gatty were paid 50s. with increments. NAUSAWC later had close links with the Communist Party. See NAUSAWC records, Warwick University MRC, GB 0152 MSS.259/ NAUSAWC. Gatty regularly corresponded with Anna Louise Strong (1885– 1970), a renegade American journalist and communist. The letters suggest she may herself have been a member of the communist party in her later life. See Anna Louise Strong Archive, 1/34b Gillett-Gatty, Katherine (1944). Available online: http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv20539 (accessed 14 September 2017). 67 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Vote, 9 November 1912, 31. See also, Autograph Letter Collection: Suffrage and Women in Industry, ref 9/09 (1902–1916) (WL); Women’s Industrial Council NA817 ref 2lsw/e/13/37 (1894 fl–1917) (WL). Eilian Hughes also won first prize for her short stories at the Welsh National Eisteddfod in 1904. See Morton, ‘Everywhere and Elsewhere’. 68 Sheila Blackburn, ‘“No Necessary Connection with Homework”: Gender and Sweated Labour, 1840–1909’, Social History, 22:3 (1997): 269–285. 69 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 241; Wallace, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Wales, 80–93. For postcard example, see Katherine Gatty on release from prison, c. 1913, Postcard Collection, Postcard Box 01, TWL.2000.102 (WL). 70 On the role of public speaking in women’s labour and suffrage agitation, see Blackburn, ‘No Necessary Connection’ and June Purvis, ‘A Lost Dimension? The Political Education of Women in the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Britain’, Gender and Education, 6:3 (1994): 319–327. 71 For example, in 1911, The Middlesex County Times records Hughes successes as a writer, lecturer and speaker. See Autograph letter collection: Suffrage and women in industry, ALC/2789 ref 9/09/095 (missing newspaper issue date but c. February 1911) (WL). 72 For more on the Women’s Freedom League, see Stella Newsome, Women’s Freedom League, 1907–1957 (London: Women’s Freedom League pamphlet, 1960); Claire Eustance, ‘Meanings of Militancy: The Ideas and Practices of Political Resistance in the Women’s Freedom League, 1907–1914’, in The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 37–51.

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73 The Suffrage Fellowship Collection, Women’s Freedom League Annual Report 1910, subscriptions, reel 13, accession no. 50.82/1525 (WL); ‘The Suffrage Atelier and The Vote’, The Vote, 13 April 1912, 294; ‘The Vote Soiree at The Doré Gallery’, The Vote, 27 April 1911, 30. 74 Anne Cobden Sanderson became a member of the Independent Labour Party in 1902. The Doves Press was a bookbinder in 1893, but transformed into a press by 1899. Anne was a National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society supporter who had defected to the Women’s Social and Political Union in frustration. Like many, she later became disillusioned with the Pankhursts and so helped found the Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League to which Clemence Housman also belonged. Crawford, Women’s Suffrage, 615–617. 75 ‘The Vote Soiree at The Doré Gallery’, The Vote, 27 April 1912, 30. 76 ‘To Our Readers’, The Vote, 28 December 1912, front cover. 77 On socialist imagery generally see Kristina Huneault, Difficult Subjects: Working Women and Visual Culture, Britain 1880–1914 (Hants: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2002); Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Man and Woman in Socialist Iconography’, History Workshop Journal, 6:1 (1978): 121–138. 78 Lucy Delap, The Feminist Avant-Garde: Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 218. 79 Ibid., 227–230; Rebecca West, ‘A Reply to Mr Hubert Wales’, Freewoman, 14 March 1912, 331; Dora Marsden, ‘The Way Out’, Freewoman, 20 June 1912, 83. 80 West, ‘A Reply’, 331; Marsden, ‘The Way Out’, 83. 81 For instance, leather worker, designer and feminist Mary Ware Dennett (1872–1947), a prominent member of the Boston Arts and Crafts movement, argued for arts and crafts as a vehicle for reform (though she doubted it could be aligned with a commercial application). See Robert Winter, ‘The Arts and Crafts as a Social Movement’, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University: Aspects of the Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 34:2 (1975): 38–39; Delap, The Feminist Avant-Garde, 225. Feminist Muriel Ciolkowska, The Freewoman’s Paris correspondent, expected women to act as ‘social reformers through the artistic principle’ of arts and crafts. She was also a contributor to the modernist New Age and Little Review magazines, and wrote two articles for The Freewoman in 1912, ‘On the Utility of Art’. Muriel Ciolkowska, ‘On the Utility of Art: An Appeal to Modern Enthusiasm’, Freewoman, 25 July 1912, 192–193 and ‘On the Utility of Art II: Practical Application of the Foregoing Theories’, Freewoman, 8 August 1912, 225–227. See also Delap, The Feminist Avant-Garde, 234. 82 In the Shadow, Postcard Box 2, 857, item C1SA/007/2002.232 (WL); Waiting for a Living Wage, Postcard Box 2, 840, item C1/SA/027/2002.250 (WL); Comfortable Women, Poster Collection, 1912 (WL) (reproduced in Tickner, 181). An article ‘Sweating: Why Women Want the Vote’, South Bucks Free Press, 20 February 1913, 2, describes how at the Pixmore Institute, ‘Members of the Suffrage Atelier … had a fine exhibition … including lithographic work, designs for posters, post-cards, advertisements etc’. Suffrage Atelier artists in attendance there included Ethel Willis, Agnes Hope Joseph and embroiderer Mildred Statham. For more on Statham see Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 632.

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83 Housman, National Art Training, 12. 84 Ibid., 10. 85 Sylvia Pankhurst, ‘“Artist and Suffragette”: The Former as Important as the Latter’, Boston Evening Transcript, 11 January 1911, 19. 86 Ibid., 19. 87 Ibid., nevertheless, in October 1914, with the financial assistance of Norah Veronica Lyle-Smyth (1874–1963), Sylvia Pankhurst set up the East London Toy Factory in Bow, London. She hoped the public would appreciate the uniqueness of the toys via the handicraft methods used to produce them. Pankhurst hoped that offering a decent wage for skilled craft work of this kind would help raise the national standard of living. The toy factory is the subject of new research by Swedish artist Ingela Johansson. Available online: http://sylviapankhurst.com/ news_&_events/ingela_johansson_toy_factory.php (accessed 25 June 2017). 88 ‘Other Societies, The Suffrage Atelier’, The Common Cause, 1 July 1909, 158–159. 89 Ibid. 90 Its posters for the American campaign were printed on yellow paper as this was the principal colour of American suffrage societies. See Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 267. 91 Myzelev, Craft Revival, 598; Fiona Hackney, ‘Quiet Activism and the New Amateur’, Design and Culture, 5:2 (2013): 169–193. 92 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies Circular, Press Reports on banners, in Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 71. 93 Reproductions of some of Colman Smith’s letters and works of art including her letter to Alfred Stieglitz, 19 November 1909, are available online: https:// marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/the-art-of-pamela-colman-smith/ (accessed 15 April 2017). 94 Walker, ‘The Arts and Crafts Alternative’. 95 On defining amateur and professional see Patricia Zakreski, ‘Creative Industry: Design, Art Education and the Women Professional’, in Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century: Artistry and Industry in Britain, eds., Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski (London: Routledge, 2013), 145–165. More generally, see Patricia Zakreski, Representing Female Artistic Labour, 1848–1890: Refining Work for the Middle-Class Woman (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006); Elliot and Helland, Women Artists and the Decorative Arts. 96 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 243. 97 (SAP) constitution, 1909 (WL). 98 There is nothing in the suffrage press or other surviving documentation to suggest any change to fees. 99 (SAP) constitution, 1909 (WL). 100 (SAP) constitution 1909 (WL); ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, Women’s Franchise, 8 July 1909, 670. 101 For instance, ‘Forthcoming Meetings’, The Common Cause, 9 September 1909, 283; Morton, ‘Everywhere and Elsewhere’. 102 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 242; Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 629. 103 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 71; Morton, ‘Changing spaces’, 628. 104 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, Votes for Women, 1 April 1910, 430; ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Suffragette, 8 November 1912, 59.

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105 ‘Suffrage Fair’, The Common Cause, 27 October 1910, 467. 106 (SAP), constitution, 1909, WL. 107 ‘The Suffrage Atelier and The Vote’, The Vote, 13 April 1912, 294; ‘The Poster Campaign: What the Atelier Does’, The Vote, 15 June 1912, 145. 108 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Vote, 23 December 1911, 108. 109 Suffrage Atelier exhibitions were frequently held by friends of the society such as Louise Jopling Rowe in Kensington and Mary Esther Greenhill in Shepherd’s Bush. They also took place at Women’s Freedom League offices and other local suffrage society branches. Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 628–630. 110 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’s Poster Campaign’, The Vote, 29 June 1912, 177. For example, small black-and-white posters were charged at one pence each; ‘The Poster Campaign: What the Atelier Does’, The Vote, 15 June 1912, 145. 111 ‘Procession’, The Common Cause, 1 June 1911, 136. 112 One of the failings of the main Arts and Crafts movement was the expense of its products which, contrary to its socialist ethos, limited its market to middle-class and upper-class consumers. For a brief overview of this conundrum, see Michael S. Kimmel, ‘The Arts and Crafts Movement: Handmade Socialism or Elite Consumerism?’, Contemporary Sociology, 16:3 (1987): 388–390. 113 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Common Cause, 26 October 1912, 450. 114 Unsigned Suffrage Atelier letter to Maud Arncliffe-Sennett (1862–1936), 26 January 1914. Bound into the Maud Arncliffe-Sennett Album in the British Library and reprinted (in part) in Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 45. 115 ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, The Common Cause, 24 June 1909, 144. 116 (SAP), constitution 1909 (WL). 117 Callen, Angel in the Studio, 180; Felicity Hunt, ‘The London Trade in the Printing and Binding of Books: An Experience in Exclusion, Dilution and De-Skilling for Women Workers’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 6:5 (1983): 517–524; Michelle Tusan, ‘Reforming Work: Gender, Class, and the Printing Trade in Victorian Britain’, Journal of Women’s History, 16:1 (2004): 103–126. 118 Zakreski, ‘Creative Industry’, 145–165; ibid. 119 ‘The Suffrage Atelier and The Vote’, The Vote, 12 April 1912, 294. 120 ‘Women Compositors and the Right to Work’, The Common Cause, 16 June 1910, 154; Sandra Stanley Holton, Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 23. 121 ‘The Suffrage Atelier and The Vote’, The Vote, 12 April 1912, 294. 122 ‘Suffrage Fair’, The Common Cause, 27 October 1910, 467. 123 The Artists’ Suffrage League and the Women’s Social and Political Union sent artwork out to external printers with the associated time delays and costs. 124 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 30. 125 Ibid., 32. 126 The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was formed in 1893 under the leadership of Keir Hardie (1856–1915). It was decided that the main objective of the party would be ‘to secure the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’. For more on the relationship between the ILP, socialism and the women’s movement see

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Rowbotham, Segal, and Wainwright, Beyond the Fragments; Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women. 127 ‘The Poster Campaign: What the Atelier Does’, The Vote, 15 June 1912, 145. 128 ‘Women to the Fore’, The Leicester Chronicle & Leicestershire Mercury, 16 November 1912, 2; ‘The Suffrage Atelier’, Votes for Women, 18 February 1910, 329; Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 21. 129 Feminists have long seen dominant and exploitative forms of capitalism as male-gendered. See J. K. Gibson-Graham, ‘An Ethics of the Local’, Rethinking Marxism, 15 (2003): 49–74; Jenny Cameron and J. K. GibsonGraham, ‘Feminizing the Economy: Metaphors, Strategies, Politics’, Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 10:2 (2003): 145–157. 130 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 26; Morton, ‘Changing Spaces’, 627. 131 ‘The Suffrage Atelier and The Vote’, The Vote, 13 April 1912, 294. 132 In 1913–1914, the Suffrage Atelier relocated to share offices with the Minerva Publishing Co. (that produced the Women’s Freedom League newspaper, The Vote) in 2 Robert Street, Adelphi Terrace. This office closed at some point in late spring/early summer in 1914. Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 242. There are no listings for the Suffrage Atelier afterwards. 133 Pankhurst, ‘Artist and Suffragette’, 19.

PART TWO

Enterprise and Marketing

CHAPTER FOUR

Window smashing and window draping: Suffrage and interior design Miranda Garrett

Both Agnes Garrett (1845–1935) and Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) were active campaigners for women’s suffrage. Both women also established themselves, in the final decades of the nineteenth century, as professionals in the field of interior decoration. Although today their substantial contribution to the history of British interior design is largely forgotten, they were part of a growing network of women, including Caroline Crommelin (1854– 1910) and Charlotte Robinson (1859–1901), who forged new roles in the field.1 This chapter’s comparative analysis will reclaim the importance of Pankhurst and Garrett’s respective careers which, taken together, exemplify the increasing variety of paths open to women during this era. It will demonstrate that, as Pankhurst and Garrett’s political and professional lives were heavily intertwined, to fully understand their contribution to the arts and to politics, these two aspects of their lives should not be discussed in isolation. For both Garrett and Pankhurst, the experience of running a business added considerable weight to their arguments for women’s suffrage; likewise, their commitment to political activism was formative in motivating and sustaining them as they forged professional artistic lives. Emmeline Pankhurst campaigned for women’s suffrage throughout her life, founding the militant Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. She was a prolific and inspirational orator who acted as the Union’s

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figurehead throughout the suffrage campaign. Pankhurst, who was arrested on numerous occasions, was infamous for her advocacy of militant, lawdefying tactics. Like Pankhurst, Agnes Garrett was involved with the suffrage campaign throughout her life. Yet, although Garrett participated in organizing a banquet to celebrate the release from prison of members of the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1906, she did not ally herself with the militant movement. Instead, Garrett was a member of the executive committee of the constitutional Central Committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage from its formation in 1872. The Society ruptured in 1888, dividing into the National Central Society for Women’s Suffrage and the Central Committee, the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. Garrett’s allegiance was to the Central Committee, the faction lead by her sister Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929). In 1897, the two societies rejoined, becoming the non-violent National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Again, Garrett was an active supporter, for example, subscribing in 1912 to its Election Fighting Fund, set up to raise money for the Labour Party after they declared their support for women’s suffrage.2 Agnes Garrett, who never married, launched her business, A. & R. Garrett: House Decorators, in conjunction with her cousin and fellow suffragist Rhoda Garrett (1841–1882) in London c. 1872. After Rhoda’s death, Agnes Garrett continued to practise as an interior decorator in London until her retirement in 1905, working for a variety of private clients as well as maintaining a retail trade. The artistic career of Emmeline Pankhurst, née Goulden, who married the barrister and political activist Richard Pankhurst (1835/1836–1898), was more fragmented as her focus fluctuated between family life, political activism and financial worries. Like Garrett, Pankhurst set up in business with a female relative and opened her first shop, Emerson & Co., selling a variety of home décor and ‘fancy goods’, in partnership with her sister, Mary Clarke (c. 1863–1910), in London in 1886.3 This closed in 1888, reopened in 1889 in a new location in London, and with a new specialism, as an ‘art furnisher’, moved yet again in 1890, before closing in 1892.4 In c. 1898, Emmeline Pankhurst reopened Emerson & Co., this time in Manchester, until c. 1907 when the shop was closed for good as Pankhurst devoted herself to the militant suffrage campaign.5 Emmeline Pankhurst’s political career is well documented both archivally and in the secondary literature on the militant suffrage movement.6 Yet, despite hints in the contemporary press about her extensive activist activity, Agnes Garrett’s political career has received considerably less attention. Archival sources on the professional lives of both women are scant, and details must be pieced together through the examination of trade directories, newspapers and periodicals and, when they exist, family biographies. For Garrett, who never had children, we cannot rely on family biographies. For Pankhurst, biographical sources are prolific. Pankhurst published her autobiography in 1914 and, subsequently, two of her daughters wrote biographies of their mother: in 1935 and in 1959.7 All are coloured by memory, and the latter by

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the often-difficult relationships both daughters had with their mother. As to secondary sources, while Elizabeth Crawford gives an excellent overview of Garrett’s career, Pankhurst’s artistic endeavours are frequently underplayed: even June Purvis’s richly detailed biography devotes little attention to her pursuit of a professional career in interior decoration.8 Attention has occasionally been given to Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst in relation to the connection between suffrage and interior decoration. Annmarie Adams discusses the pro-suffrage meetings held in Pankhurst’s home, arguing that her performed domesticity ‘served as subtle evidence of the compatibility of women’s political duties and domestic duties; house decoration was of service to the women’s movement, rather than forcing suffragists to neglect their homes and families’.9 More recently, both Deborah Cohen and Judith Neiswander have drawn similar conclusions. Cohen positions Garrett and Pankhurst as purveyors of a ‘new and more militant brand of domesticity’.10 Neiswander goes further, claiming that flexible hours attracted women committed to social change to careers in professional interior decoration and that, through art writing, these women could reach wider audiences to whom they could promote their progressive views.11 While Adams, Cohen and Neiswander all make the connection between suffrage and interior decoration, they do so briefly and as part of a much wider narrative. This chapter provides a more detailed comparison of how the political beliefs of Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst affected their respective careers, and vice versa. It sheds new light on how these two women – who certainly knew each other and who both lived to see the Representation of the People Act granted in 1918 – navigated their professional lives as entrepreneurs, as employers, as artists and as activists. The chapter scrutinizes Garrett and Pankhurst’s professional motivations, their education and training, their status as employers, their retail premises and stock and their private clients. It explores how the two women marketed their businesses – and themselves – and, finally, how they juggled their personal, professional and political commitments. Emphasizing the interplay between these aspects of Pankhurst and Garrett’s lives will foreground the importance of examining the wider lives of political women and remind us that, for the middle-class women involved in the suffrage movement, campaigning formed only part of a much wider sphere of public activity.

Motivation What prompted Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst to forge careers in interior design? Social reformer Moncure Conway (1832–1907) provides the most contemporary account of Agnes and Rhoda Garrett’s inspiration in Harper’s Magazine. Conway rejects financial motivation, claiming ‘these young ladies, it may be premised, have by no means been driven to their undertaking by the necessity of earning a livelihood’.12 The extent to which this

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is true is difficult to ascertain. Agnes Garrett came from a prosperous Suffolk family, but one whose fortunes fluctuated. As one of ten surviving children, she could well have needed to earn. Like many professional women, Garrett may have denied financial motivation herself to preserve her respectability; alternatively, Conway’s statement was perhaps an attempt to placate the magazine’s middle-class readership. In contrast, for Emmeline Pankhurst, money was undoubtedly a factor. Politics was not generally remunerative, and association with contentious causes, such as universal suffrage, could negatively affect existing business interests. Richard Pankhurst, for example, frequently felt ‘the conflict between purse and politics’.13 Emmeline’s daughter, political activist, writer and artist Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) claimed, some years later, that her mother wanted to use the profits from her shop to ‘emancipate her husband from professional work to concentrate on politics’.14 The idea that Emmeline Pankhurst sought employment solely for the benefit of her husband is contentious in respect of her views regarding women’s rights and the fact that, by this stage, she was already an active campaigner for suffrage. Emmeline’s eldest daughter, suffragette Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958), gave a slightly different emphasis: she claimed that her mother’s plan was, with her shop, to ‘lay the financial foundation of a great movement of social and industrial reform and, of course, the enfranchisement of women’.15 Christabel’s suggestion that women’s rights were central to the foundation of Emerson & Co. aligns with Emmeline Pankhurst’s own claims regarding her motivation for starting a business. When asked, in an 1891 interview to the Woman’s Herald, whether she began her present work after leaving school, Pankhurst replied: No. I was always anxious to have outside work; as a girl I felt strongly the necessity of women being trained to some profession or business which should enable them to be self-supporting. It is important that they should avoid the degradation of forced dependence on husbands and male relatives, not only for subsistence, but for every private call. Women are the better and the happier for occupation; it raises them socially and intellectually.16 With Emerson & Co., Emmeline Pankhurst could stand as an example to other women. Moncure Conway ascribed a similar motivation to the Garrett cousins, writing that they ‘are thinkers, and they have arrived at conclusions concerning the duties and rights of their sex which forbid them to emulate the butterflies’.17 Conway’s implication was that the Garretts’ views on women’s rights were a significant factor in their decision to reject the expected trajectory, of fashionable courtship followed by marriage and children for middle-class women. Demonstrating that women were capable of success in the professional world was vital to both Emmeline Pankhurst and Agnes Garrett’s belief in social reform. More specifically, both women

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recognized that there was a dearth of professional opportunities open to women. Christabel Pankhurst wrote that her mother believed Emerson & Co. would be ‘propitious, for women were not trained to careers in those days, and if they had been, there were so few careers to be trained for!’18 The Penny Illustrated Paper commented that ‘the success of the Misses Garrett should act as encouragement to the hundreds of women now seeking employment’.19 Not content merely to bemoan the lack of occupational opportunities for women, Pankhurst and Garrett strove to position their own professional standing as demonstrative of the potential of their peers: for both women, commitment to social reform was a key motivation for starting a business, and the inequality they perceived in the lack of professional opportunities for women must have bolstered their dedication to the suffrage cause. During an 1872 pro-suffrage lecture, delivered in Cheltenham, Rhoda Garrett made the connection clear asking ‘is it necessary to explain what an advantage it would be to many women, now forced to work with [male] competitors, who, at every turn receive privileges and encouragement which are denied to them, to be placed in this respect, at least, on an equal footing with men?’20

Education and training Emmeline Pankhurst, like many women of this era, did not benefit from the advantage of professional training at an art school or through an apprenticeship. Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that ‘whilst their brothers were being prepared for the family business, or some other, the girls were expected to stay at home, dusting the drawing-room and arranging flowers’.21 In contrast, Agnes Garrett, whose sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917) was to become Britain’s first legally qualified woman doctor, was supported in her desire to gain professional training by her Liberal family. Still, it was not easy for middle-class women to acquire professional training. Lady Maude Parry (1851–1933), a friend of the Garretts and wife of the composer Hubert Parry (1848–1914), commented on the ‘weary and fruitless’ searching the cousins undertook before finding an architect willing to article them.22 Eventually, the Garretts did embark on a two-year apprenticeship, begun in c. 1871, with designer and glass-painter Daniel Cottier (1837–1891). The apprenticeship was completed with architect J. M. Brydon (1840–1901) with whom Moncure Conway claimed the pair ‘were formally articled for eighteen months, during which they punctually fulfilled their engagement, working from ten to five each day’.23 Pankhurst and Garrett’s experiences are demonstrative of the fact that the campaign for universal suffrage was only a part of the wider struggle for women’s rights that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. In her 1872 lecture in Cheltenham, Rhoda Garrett set out the gender inequalities inherent in education and argued that achieving reform in the

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existing system would be impossible until women can ‘make their voices heard in the legislature of the country’.24 Access to education and training were, for many, as central to the campaign for women’s rights as the lack of established professional opportunities for women. Both Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst were to speak out on these issues later in life. Pankhurst directly connected women’s professional training with their right to vote, claiming, ‘Every woman ought, in my opinion, to be trained to some definite kind of work in which to engage as to her contribution to the world. To secure and maintain this duty and right in full sense, Women Suffrage would be a great help’.25 Likewise, despite opposing women’s suffrage herself, journalist Mary Billington (1862–1925) was one of many who commented that ‘Miss Garrett holds that unless women go thoroughly through a course of technical training they merely touch the fringe of the question of women’s labour, and do nothing towards real advance’.26 Both Pankhurst and Garrett perceived that the inequalities in women’s professional education and training were inherently connected to their exclusion from the franchise. As well as campaigning for increased access to education for women in general, Emmeline Pankhurst encouraged her three daughters to continue their education. Christabel graduated with a first-class honours degree in law from Manchester University. Sylvia attended Manchester Art School, the Academia in Venice and the Royal School of Art in Kensington. Adela (1885– 1861) worked as a pupil-teacher in a working-class suburb of Manchester before taking a course at Studley Horticultural College, Warwickshire. By encouraging her daughters to undertake professional training, Pankhurst put into practice her belief in the importance of further education for women. Despite this, Pankhurst does not seem to have used Emerson & Co. as an opportunity to provide apprenticeships to other women. It may be that her own untrained status meant she did not feel qualified to undertake this. In contrast, Agnes Garrett, who never married and had no children, ensured that other women could benefit from her hard-won training with Cottier and Brydon by offering her own apprenticeships. An article entitled ‘What Shall I Be?’ in the Young Folks Paper advertised: Miss Agnes Garrett, of 2 Gower Street W.C., house decorator, cabinetmaker, and designer of household furniture and upholstery trains pupils for the business in which she herself has been very successful. The training extends over a period of three years and the premium is three hundred pounds. The hours of work are from ten until four.27 One of Garrett’s pupils was Millicent Vince (b. 1868), who dedicated her 1923 manual Decoration and Care of the Home to Agnes and to whom Garrett allowed the use of her designs after her retirement.28 Crucially, by offering a formal apprenticeship scheme, Agnes Garrett was actively participating in the reform of artistic education for women and making a practical contribution to widening their professional opportunities.

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Employees As we have seen, although only Garrett ran an apprenticeship scheme, for both women the desire to further educational opportunities for women was central to their professional motivation. Were they able to follow through on this by employing other women? Admittedly, both already worked in partnership with women. Agnes Garrett started her business in conjunction with her cousin Rhoda Garrett, and the pair continued to work together until the latter’s death in 1882. Likewise, Emmeline Pankhurst founded her business with her sister, Mary Clarke. Clarke did not, however, follow the Pankhurst family to Manchester; so, her involvement with Emerson & Co. must have ended in c. 1892. Still, Emmeline had other female family members to utilize, and Christabel Pankhurst wrote ‘I began my work as Mother’s right hand. Morning after morning, saw me in the tram, reading the newspaper on the way to business, one of the very few girls travelling at that hour in those pre-war days’.29 After Christabel withdrew from work at Emerson’s to concentrate on her law degree, her younger sister Sylvia took over: ‘Mother now called her home to take a turn of business duty … She did part-time at business, part-time at the School of Art. After a while she returned wholly to the School of Art and continued her success there’.30 Like many professional women of this era, Emmeline Pankhurst drew on her familial network to ensure the continuation of her business. That Pankhurst and Garrett employed other women, aside from family members and apprentices, is difficult to prove. Trade directories reveal Emerson & Co. was listed in Manchester between 1900 and 1905, occupying two separate premises: an ‘art furnisher’ at 33 South King Street and a ‘fancy repository’ at 42 King Street (this was to move, in 1904, to 30 King Street, after which it was also listed as ‘art furnisher’).31 Although an enterprise of this scale would have required staff, there is no archival record of the identities of ‘the large number of women workers’ or the ‘staff of competent designers’ described by the contemporary press as being employed by Pankhurst.32 Garrett, like Pankhurst, maintained two premises, an office in her home at 2 Gower Street and a warehouse in Morwell Street. However, aside from apprentices, the only employee that can be named is, surprisingly, a man: Charles Essam (c. 1859– 1896), who lived at 2 Gower Street and worked as an ‘assistant decorator’ for the firm. The difficulty of tracing the employees of the Garrett and Pankhurst firms is reflective of the methodological problems involved in researching women’s business history: the lives of these women are, simply, lost. Certainly, both Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst were keen to promote the fact that they employed women in the press. Journalist Mary Billington wrote that Emmeline Pankhurst ‘has for several years directed a considerable business in art furniture and decoration, which not only affords scope for her own ideas and gifts, but enables her to find congenial and remunerative employment for women’.33 Agnes Garrett also employed women to carry out decorative work: at the 1885 Bristol Exhibition of Women’s

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Industries, she showed a ‘ladies’ model boudoir – ‘the contents of the room, excepting, of course, the carpentering, are shown as women’s work’. Crucially, all proceeds from the exhibition were donated to the National Society for the Promotion of the Franchise of Women.34 That both Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst promoted their firms, whether in the press or through exhibitions, as employing women is indicative of the importance they placed on the issue. For both Garrett and Pankhurst, support for the wider women’s movement, and belief in the necessity of widening professional opportunities for women, heavily influenced their support for the suffrage campaign. Again, this demonstrates the impact Garrett and Pankhurst’s professional artistic experiences had on their commitment to the suffrage movement and emphasizes the importance of examining the wider lives of political women, to understanding what motivated and informed their perspectives.

Retail Agnes Garrett stocked a range of goods for beautifying interiors in her retail premises, including self-designed wallpaper, textiles and upholstery fabrics and furniture. Moncure Conway claimed that the Garrett cousins ‘believe that with care they are able to make beautiful interiors which shall not be too costly for persons of moderate means’.35 Apparently, the Garretts sought to align their belief in social reform with their professional lives by ensuring the work they stocked in their premises was reasonably priced. The extent to which this is true is questionable. In 1899, the lease on Agnes Garrett’s Morwell Street warehouse expired and the contents were sold at auction. There is no evidence to suggest that the business was struggling, and it may be that, at this late stage in her career, Garrett, who was to retire in 1905, was happy to downsize her enterprise. An annotated catalogue from the sale, entitled ‘A Catalogue of Valuable Old English and Artistic Furniture’, reveals a snapshot of the firm’s stock during this year. Though lots sold ranged from ‘Fifty-six ribbed glass globes’ at three shillings to ‘A gentleman’s 4 ft. 3 ditto [mahogany] wardrobe’ at sixteen pounds, five shillings and sixpence, most lots went for well over a pound.36 While it cannot be discounted that the Garretts also stocked more affordable products, those sold at this sale were far beyond the means of the average householder. Emmeline Pankhurst’s shop does not seem to have carried wallpaper, instead concentrating on furniture, textiles and smaller decorative items, again designed in-house. A sketchbook belonging to Sylvia Pankhurst, contemporary to the time she spent working for her mother, includes designs for decorative bellows, plates, folding screens, vases (Figure 4.1) and, oddly, Christmas crackers.37 Like Agnes Garrett, Emmeline Pankhurst was keen to combine her belief in social reform with her business strategy by ensuring her stock was priced democratically. In Woman’s World, Pankhurst is credited with producing ‘at a cost within the means of the narrowest purses the fanciful tables and chairs,

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the corner cupboards, the fireside nooks, and the other quaint prettinesses demanded for tasteful rooms’.38 The Woman’s Herald similarly claimed that ‘she has placed cheap artistic furniture within the reach of the large number of those English people who, possessed only of a small means, have hitherto been unable to beautify their houses’.39 It is hard to make a direct comparison with the Garrett firm because similar information about the value of the stock of Emerson & Co. does not exist. Still, evidence taken from periodicals suggests it was more reasonably priced. For example, a decorating advice column in The Women’s Penny Paper advised a correspondent that Emerson & Co. stocked mantle surrounds at a ‘very moderate’ price.40 By keeping her prices low, Emmeline Pankhurst was also ensuring that her stock appealed to the new feminine market for interior decoration. As Deborah Cohen demonstrates, this market was a relatively new development. For most of the nineteenth century, the decoration of the home, whether as producer/ professional or consumer/client, was a male privilege; by the 1890s, the consumer landscape had begun to shift and women were increasingly making decisions about home decoration.41 By positioning themselves as professionals in a male-dominated field, Agnes and Rhoda Garrett had been among the first to contribute to the destabilization of male control of interior decoration. Emma Ferry has discussed how the Garretts emphasized their subversion of the prevailing domestic ideology in their 1876 advice manual Suggestions for House Decoration. While the amateur decorator they addressed within

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FIGURE 4.1  Sylvia Pankhurst, design for the decoration of a vase © Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

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the text was male, the authors, though women, were trained professionals.42 Established fourteen years earlier, the Garretts acted as the vanguard for both Emerson & Co. itself and the company’s clientele: the politically active woman keen to mark her stamp on her domestic environment. Pankhurst seems to have been very careful to ensure that her shop, and its stock, targeted women. She advertised extensively in women’s magazines, particularly in the pro-suffrage The Women’s Penny Paper. This paper, which later became the Woman’s Herald, was founded in 1888 by women’s rights activist and theosophist Henrietta Müller (1845/1846–1906). Covering a range of issues of interest to women, it claimed to be the only paper in the world, conducted, printed and published entirely by women.43 The low cost of the paper, which must have appealed to Pankhurst’s Liberal ideals, and perhaps also to practical necessity, was an appropriate place to advertise her relatively cheap goods. An 1890 advert for Emerson’s (Figure 4.2) depicts

FIGURE 4.2  Advertisement for Emerson & Co. in The Women’s Penny Paper, 15 March 1890 © 1890 General Reference Collection LOU.LON 417A [1890], The British Library Board.

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a stylishly dressed woman reading in one of the firm’s ‘cosy corners’ and claims that ‘art furniture for enamelling’ was a speciality.44 An advertorialstyle article from the same year is particularly revealing: the author notes that tea was provided at Emerson’s recent season show and comments ‘I fancy ladies will be inclined to linger over their shopping in the pleasant abode if able to attain a cup of tea out of the dainty blue Japanese china which adorns Mrs. Pankhurst’s tea table’.45 By advertising in women’s magazines and depicting women within these adverts, by catering to the feminine craze for amateur furniture decoration and by providing a space where women could socialize and drink tea, Emmeline Pankhurst was pointedly targeting a female market.

Clients Neither Garrett nor Pankhurst’s businesses were exclusively centred around retail trade: both also accepted decorative commissions. Agnes Garrett seems to have been particularly active in this area, undertaking decorative schemes for numerous clients during her career. Many of these clients were family members: like other professional women, the Garretts used their private domestic network to gain a foothold in the public world. Many of their other clients were sourced from suffrage networks, demonstrating the significance of such Liberal middle-class networks for professional women. Agnes Garrett designed a chimneypiece for the Portman Square home of artist Gerald Wellesley (1846–1915) and his wife Ada (1847– 1933). Garrett’s furniture survives at Standen, the Surrey home of lawyer James Beale (1840–1912) and his wife Margaret (1847–1936), now a National Trust property. The Garretts worked for Hubert Parry and were involved with the decoration of his Suffolk home, Knights Croft, and his London residence, Lincoln House. Agnes Garrett is also recorded as having decorated the London house of promoter of household science teaching Catherine Buckton (1826/1827–1904). As Adams and Crawford highlight, these clients are all recorded as having supported the campaign for women’s suffrage.46 In addition, Agnes Garrett also undertook decorative work in the London home of horticulturalist and suffrage supporter Lady Dorothy Nevill (1826–1913).47 A lifelong supporter of the Conservative party, Lady Nevill was a founder member of the Primrose League, an organization dedicated to promoting Conservative principles. That Agnes Garrett, who came from a family of committed Liberals, undertook work for Lady Nevill again demonstrates the significance of suffrage networks for professional women. It also emphasizes that, at times, Garrett’s commercial venture took priority over her political allegiances. There are no corresponding records for the private clients of Emerson & Co. although, as their advertising stated, their services included ‘homes artistically decorated and furnished throughout’, they may well have

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undertaken similar commissions.48 Evidence for one commission which can be associated with the firm does survive. In 1903, Sylvia Pankhurst undertook the decoration of the new Pankhurst Hall, which the Independent Labour Party was building in St James Road in Salford in memory of Richard Pankhurst. Christabel Pankhurst wrote that, at this time, twenty-one-yearold Sylvia’s role within her mother’s business was ‘mainly to design and paint in a studio’.49 This studio was hired for Sylvia above her mother’s premises in King Street and, as such, it is not unreasonable to assume the commission was accepted under the aegis of Emerson & Co. It may be this commission Sylvia Pankhurst had in mind when, in an account of her younger years, she commented on her desire for an artistic career: ‘I would be a decorative painter; I would portray the world that is to be when poverty is no more. I would decorate halls where people would foregather in the movement to win the new world’.50 A draft for the hall, decorated by Sylvia Pankhurst with striking Arts and Crafts floral embellishment, demonstrated that it would have been a fitting place to undertake such activities (Figures 4.3 and 4.4). In it, Sylvia Pankhurst declares: As this hall bears the name of a pioneer whose life was given for the ideal and for the future, emblems of the future and the ideal have been chosen with which to decorate it. The Entrance Hall. The symbols are the peacock’s feather, lily & rose, emblems of beauty, purity and love; with the motto: ‘England arise!’ and the name of the hall. The Large Hall. Symbols: Roses, love, apple trees, knowledge, doves, peace, corn, plenty, lilies, purity, honesty, honesty [sic], bees, industry, sunflower and butterflies, hope. The panels illustrate Shelley’s line: ‘Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth are children of one mother, even Love.’51 Clearly, Sylvia Pankhurst felt strongly about the importance of art in inspiring the populace to engender and embrace political reform. Unfortunately, the decorations in the hall survived for only eight years. Despite this, the commission still had a significant impact on the history of the women’s movement. Shortly before it was due to open in October, the Pankhurst family were outraged to hear that the hall, built in memory of Richard Pankhurst, who had tirelessly campaigned for women’s rights, was not to admit women. It was this affront that inspired Emmeline Pankhurst to call for a meeting of local socialist suffragists: ‘Women, we must do the work ourselves. We must have an independent women’s movement. Come to my house tomorrow and we will arrange it.’52 Crucially, the meeting was to be the first of the Women’s Social and Political Union.

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FIGURE 4.3  Sylvia Pankhurst, design for the decoration of Pankhurst Hall © Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

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FIGURE 4.4 Sylvia Pankhurst, design for the decoration of Pankhurst Hall © Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

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Marketing Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst were both, in contemporary circles, well-known for their connection to the suffrage campaign. Were they able to use their political celebrity status to their advantage professionally? Or was the opposite the case? What was the correlation between promoting the suffrage movement and marketing a commercial business? Certainly, Agnes Garrett had no qualms about using her own name professionally: the door of No. 2 Gower Street was adorned with a brass plaque asserting the address as the business premises of ‘A. and R. Garrett’.53 In contrast, Emmeline Pankhurst, who had witnessed the negative effect of public notoriety on her husband Richard’s legal career, professed caution. Christabel Pankhurst commented that Emmeline ‘had come to feel a distinct prejudice against professional careers and to regard an anonymous business as more compatible with freedom of opinion’.54 By choosing the trade name Emerson & Co., perhaps in homage to American essayist, poet and vocal supporter of women’s rights Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), Pankhurst gave herself the option to maintain anonymity. This anonymity was occasionally honoured by the press: Mary Billington did not mention Pankhurst by name, stating only that ‘Emerson & Co. is the trade name of a lady who has opened a shop for the sale of cheap articles of wood’.55 The hosting of feminist meetings in private houses (which themselves were exhibitions of their owners’ interest in decoration) caused the line between women’s public and private lives to be irreparably blurred.56 By using their publicly visible homes as showrooms, Pankhurst and Garrett could promote their good taste and effectively display their merchandise in a domestic setting. Sylvia Pankhurst records that their London home was decorated by their mother in ‘brilliant hues’ and ‘equipped from the stock of Emerson’s’.57 Despite protesting her desire to remain anonymous in business, considering the family’s financial difficulties, it must have occurred to Emmeline Pankhurst that displaying her stock to advantage in her tastefully decorated home would not have hurt sales at Emerson’s. As already established, Agnes Garrett drew many of her clients from suffrage circles and, presumably, many of them would have been inspired to hire her after seeing her work at 2 Gower Street. For example, Crawford has drawn on the diaries of Hubert Parry to discuss how the Garretts must have been conscious that their home was their best showroom.58 Lynne Walker also comments on how many women artists/designers had studios based in their homes and claims that, by doing so, they were ‘redefining the home to advance social, political and artistic projects and to promote cultural change’.59 It seems that, for Garrett and Pankhurst, this was certainly true: for both women, the home was a site in which their professional, political and personal lives entwined. Again, this demonstrates the importance of taking a holistic approach over cherry-picking the more overtly political aspects of their experiences.

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This is also evident in the press response to Garrett and Pankhurst prior to their respective retirements from interior design (Garrett in 1905 and Pankhurst in c. 1907). Both women were frequently mentioned in the women’s periodical press, both in respect to their activism and their interior design enterprises. Articles on their activism generally record attendance at political events, activity within societies and campaigning groups and the signing of petitions. In 1889, the Englishwoman’s Review reported on Emmeline Pankhurst’s proposed position on the Executive Committee of a new league in support of women’s suffrage.60 In 1890, the same journal recorded Agnes Garrett’s support for the campaign to reform Indian marriage customs.61 While not directly related to their enterprises, these mentions in the women’s press must have served to increase awareness of Garrett and Pankhurst in the public imagination and presumably, by result, they had an impact on the women’s professional concerns, despite Pankhurst’s apparent desire to keep the two neatly separated. Journalism discussing Garrett and Pankhurst’s activism also ran alongside articles on their enterprises, typically advertorial-style articles and recommendations in the ‘Answers to Correspondence’ section of the home decoration pages. Agnes Garrett does not seem to have advertised her business in periodicals, as previously mentioned, but Emmeline Pankhurst did, placing advertisements in The Woman’s Penny Paper/Woman’s Herald extensively during 1890 and 1891. The press, and by extension the public, likely connected both Garrett and Pankhurst with their professional and political concerns, reminding us again that these aspects of their life cannot be considered in isolation. Notably, both women, Agnes Garrett in 1890 and Emmeline Pankhurst in 1891, were interviewed by The Women’s Penny Paper/Woman’s Herald (Figures 4.5 and 4.6). Interviews of this type were used to demonstrate to a largely female readership the sorts of lives middle-class women could aspire to. They would also have introduced Garrett and Pankhurst’s businesses to this readership and, as such, can be understood as promotional material. Signifiers of femininity and domesticity abound in both interviews. Garrett’s resounds with references to ‘good old fashioned servants’, ‘homely comfort’, ‘a cosy chat by the fire’; Pankhurst’s begins with the interviewer ‘chatting cosily over the delicious cup of tea which my hostess has provided’ and ends when interrupted by ‘three charming little girls’ and a baby.62 Such references are clearly intended to demonstrate that, despite their involvement in business and support for the women’s movement, Garrett and Pankhurst were not transgressing societal codes for middle-class women. By emphasizing the women’s domesticity, these articles also promote the two women’s fitness for a business so inherently connected to home-making. However, to focus exclusively on these domestic signifiers would be reductive. Both interviews are predominantly concerned with the political and professional career, rather than the personal life. The first paragraph of Garrett’s interview asserts the ‘indomitable energy, perseverance and thoroughness’ she dedicated to her career. The remainder expounds Garrett’s

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FIGURE 4.5  Illustration of ‘Miss Agnes Garrett’ from The Women’s Penny Paper, 18 January 1890 © 1890 General Reference Collection LOU.LON 417A [1890], The British Library Board. extensive training, practical knowledge and professional methodology and ends by referencing her ‘business-like habits and business-like determination’.63 Likewise, Pankhurst’s interview is filled with references to her as an ‘authority’ on decoration, as an employer and as a business owner. In The Women’s Penny Paper, Agnes Garrett’s interviewer writes of Garrett that: In politics she is a firm Liberal, having inherited her father’s views, she is of the firm opinion that all women should be admitted to the Suffrage, provided they have any property. ‘In these days,’ she [Garrett] added, ‘when women are doing good work everywhere, they should certainly be allowed a voice in the question of their representatives’.64

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FIGURE 4.6  Illustration of ‘Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst’ from the Woman’s Herald, 7 February 1891 © 1891 General Reference Collection LOU.LON 374 [1891], The British Library Board.

While in the Woman’s Herald, Emmeline Pankhurst is quoted as stating: It is a crying injustice that women cannot exercise their right to vote. Here I am a householder, an employer of labour, and heavily taxed, yet I am refused the vote which my porter may enjoy. I often feel inclined to refuse to pay these unjust taxations, and let the bailiffs seize every stick and stiver of my furniture until I get my vote.65

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That both Pankhurst and Garrett make a stark connection between taxation and representation is particularly revealing. Clearly, for both women, their status as professionals, as business owners and as employers added considerable further weight to their arguments about women’s suffrage.

Juggling commitments How did Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst juggle the competing demands of their political and professional lives? Judith Neiswander has suggested that flexible hours attracted women committed to social change to careers in professional interior decoration.66 Evidence suggests that, for the Garretts, this was true. During their apprenticeship, the cousins combined a tour of England ‘studying the interior fittings of old houses both in the country and in the town’ with a series of lectures advocating suffrage.67 In 1872, Agnes Garrett served as the joint Honorary Secretary of the Central Committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, while Rhoda spoke for the organization at meetings across the country until her death in 1882. It seems that the cousins divided their responsibilities: in April 1872, the Penny Illustrated Paper reported that Rhoda Garrett ‘has, during the past month, addressed meetings in favour of granting the suffrage to women at Cheltenham, Worcester, Hereford, Tewkesbury, Leominster, Market Lavington, (Wilts), Glastonbury, and Taunton’, while Agnes Garrett ‘is devoting herself to the practical purpose of perfecting a new source of female industry from which good results are anticipated’.68 After her cousin’s death, Agnes Garrett’s name continued to be associated with both her professional career and the women’s suffrage campaign, although, crucially, suffrage and decoration were not the limits of her reported concerns. Agnes was involved, throughout her professional life, in a wide range of activities connected to the women’s movement. She also stood as a Poor Law Guardian for Holborn, acted as a Director of the Ladies Residential Chambers Company and, among other causes, campaigned for the amendment of the marriage laws in India. Like Agnes Garrett, Emmeline Pankhurst was involved, during her professional career, in a variety of causes other than suffrage. She campaigned on behalf of her husband when, in both 1883 and 1885, he stood for parliament; was a member of the Fabian Society; was elected as a candidate for the Chorlton Board of Guardians and, before her resignation in 1907, was a member of the Independent Labour Party. In the early years of the twentieth century, the two women’s experiences began to move further apart. Garrett continued to campaign for equal citizenship throughout her life and remained a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, when in 1919, after the 1918 Representation of the People Act granted the vote to women over the age

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of thirty who met a property requirement, it was rechristened the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. However, there is no suggestion that Garrett’s 1905 retirement, at the age of sixty, was the result of an increase in her political activities, and she remained involved in a variety of different interests, serving as United Kingdom delegate for the International Congress of Women in Geneva in 1908, donating to a variety of charitable causes and, in the 1920s, travelling to Palestine and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with her sister Millicent Garrett Fawcett.69 In contrast, Emmeline Pankhurst became increasingly convinced that extending the franchise to women was of primary importance. Christabel Pankhurst wrote about her mother’s London venture: ‘Politics at the same time held much of her attention – perhaps too much for the good of the business.’70 It seems that, after the formation of the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903, the problems of balancing her family life, political activities and professional career became too much. As Emmeline Pankhurst became preoccupied with the Union and the ‘Votes for Women’ campaign escalated towards militancy, her business was sidelined. Christabel commented that, at this time, Emmeline Pankhurst yielded ‘to the competing claims of politics. She gave up her business and concentrated upon her official duties and upon the campaign for women’s enfranchisement’.71 By 1912, when Emmeline Pankhurst famously claimed that ‘The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics’, she was no longer the proprietor of any window panes of her own.72 *** This chapter has demonstrated that Emerson & Co., despite its absence in the recent scholarship on Emmeline Pankhurst, should not be brushed off as an unimportant aspect of her life. Though it has been subsequently dismissed by both Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst as a commercial failure, the business was active for around a decade. It gained considerable attention in the press and developed a canny specialism in the production of artistic furniture for at-home amateur painting. In addition, the enterprise occupied a prime retail space in Regent Street, London and in King Street, Manchester and, to justify the rent in these locations, it must have been reasonably profitable during these years. However, successful or not, Christabel Pankhurst’s comment that ‘Mother’s business efforts were all part of the experience that prepared her for the historic campaign of later years’ holds considerable weight.73 The business acumen and marketing skills that Emmeline Pankhurst gained as a business-owner must have held in good stead for her years as the figurehead of the Women’s Social and Political Union. Likewise, Agnes Garrett’s professional work surely provided useful experience for the numerous administrative posts she held for prominent constitutional suffrage societies. The chapter has also shown that the careers in house decoration of both Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst were significantly shaped by their

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political beliefs. Both Garrett and Pankhurst were inspired by politics to act as pioneers, opening a new avenue of artistic employment for women. Agnes Garrett gained professional training and, subsequently, offered apprenticeships and sustained training to other women. Both women endeavoured to employ women when possible and professed a desire to ensure their stock was priced in line with their egalitarian beliefs. Garrett relied on her suffrage connections to gain clients and Pankhurst marketed her business to women through the suffrage press. This interchange between their professional and their political careers worked both ways and, for both Agnes Garrett and Emmeline Pankhurst, the experience of running a business significantly influenced the way they viewed their rights as unfranchised women and added substantial weight to their arguments for women’s enfranchisement. Agnes Garrett’s experience as a businesswoman cemented her commitment not only to suffrage, but also to the wider women’s movement. In contrast, the years Emmeline Pankhurst spent establishing Emerson & Co. provided a springboard for her absolute commitment and focus on the ‘Votes for Women’ campaign in later years. Finally, emphasizing the links between the lives of these two, very different, women has demonstrated the importance of examining the wider lives of political women. It reminds us that, for the middle-class women active within the suffrage movement, politics and campaigning formed only part of a much broader fight for increased public and professional opportunities.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7

Miranda Garrett, ‘Professional Women Interior Decorators, 1871–1899’ (PhD dissertation, Central Saint Martins, London, 2018). Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: Routledge, 2000), 237–239. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst: The Suffragette Struggle for Women’s Citizenship (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1935), 22. Kelly’s Post Office London Business Directory (London: Frederick Kelly, 1889–1892). Slater’s Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory (Manchester: Isaac Slater, 1898–1907). For archives, see: the suffrage collection of the Women’s Library, London School of Economics; Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam, letters and papers; Museum of London, Suffragette Fellowship collection, MSS; Women’s Library, London, autograph letter collection. For secondary literature, see: June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2002); Martin Pugh, The Pankhursts (London: Allen Lane, 2001). Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1914); Pankhurst, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst; Christabel Pankhurst,

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Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (London: Hutchinson, 1959). 8 Elizabeth Crawford, Enterprising Women: The Garretts and Their Circle (London: Francis Boutle, 2002); Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst. 9 Annemarie Adams, Architecture in the Family Way (Montreal and Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 149. 10 Deborah Cohen, Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 108. 11 Judith Neiswander, The Cosmopolitan Interior: Liberalism and the British Home (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 95–96. 12 Moncure Conway, ‘Women as Decorative Artists’, Harper’s Magazine, 31 October 1874, 2. 13 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 25–26. 14 Pankhurst, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst, 22. 15 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 25–6. 16 ‘Mrs Pankhurst’, Woman’s Herald, 7 February 1891, 241. 17 Conway, ‘Women as Decorative Artists’. 18 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 26. 19 ‘The Ladies’ Column’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 27 April 1872, 271. 20 Rhoda Garrett, The Electoral Disabilities of Women: A Lecture (Cheltenham: Telegraph Office, 1872), 16. 21 Pankhurst, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst, 15. 22 Maude Parry, ‘Pen and Ink Sketches: Rhoda Garrett’, 302–306, in Alice A. Leith, ed., Routledge’s Every Girl’s Annual (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1882), 302. 23 Conway, ‘Women as Decorative Artists’, 2. 24 Garrett, The Electoral Disabilities of Women, 8. 25 ‘Mrs Pankhurst’, Woman’s Herald, 241 (italics in original). 26 Mary Billington, ‘Some Practical Women’, Women’s World, 1890, 193–197. 27 Alfred Harmsworth, ‘What Shall I Be?’, Young Folks Paper, 24 September 1887, 203. 28 Millicent Vince, Decoration and Care of the Home (London: W. Collins, 1923); ‘Art in the Home’, The Expert, May 1909, 176. 29 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 40. 30 Ibid., 43. 31 Slater’s Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory (Manchester: Isaac Slater). See volumes for 1900–1905. 32 ‘Mrs Pankhurst’, Woman’s Herald, 2; Billington, ‘Some Practical Women’, 196. 33 ‘Mrs Pankhurst’, Woman’s Herald, 2. 34 ‘Exhibition of Women’s Industries’, Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 26 February 1885, 3. See Emma Ferry, ‘“A Novelty Among Exhibitions”: The Loan Exhibition of Women’s Industries, Bristol, 1885’, in Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870–1950, eds., Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 51–66. 35 Conway, ‘Women as Decorative Artists’, 2. 36 Unknown, A Catalogue of Valuable Old English and Artistic Furniture (London: Dryden Press, 1899). For more information on the auction and its contents, see Miranda Garrett, ‘Professional Women Interior Decorators’.

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37 Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. 38 Billington, ‘Some Practical Women’, 196. 39 ‘Mrs Pankhurst’, Woman’s Herald, 2. 40 ‘Answers to Correspondents’, The Women’s Penny Paper, 12 April 1890, 12. 41 Cohen, Household Gods, 99–121. 42 Agnes Garrett and Rhoda Garrett, Suggestions for House Decoration in Painting, Woodwork, and Furniture (London: Macmillan, 1876); Emma Ferry, ‘“Decorators May Be Compared to Doctors”: An Analysis of Rhoda and Agnes Garrett’s Suggestions for House Decoration in Painting, Woodwork, and Furniture (1976)’, Journal of Design History, 16:1 (2003): 15–33. 43 The Women’s Penny Paper (1881–1891) later became the Woman’s Herald (1891–1893). 44 ‘Emerson & Co.’, The Women’s Penny Paper, 22 March 1890, 263. 45 ‘At Messrs Emerson’s Season Show’, The Women’s Penny Paper, 15 November 1890, 61. 46 Adams, Architecture in the Family Way, 150; Crawford, Enterprising Women, 249; Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (London: Routledge, 2006), 42. 47 ‘Lady Dorothy Nevill at Home’, Newcastle Weekly Courant, 31 August 1888, 1. 48 ‘Multiple Classified Advertisements’, The Women’s Penny Paper, 24 May 1890, 371. 49 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 43. 50 Sylvia Pankhurst, ‘Sylvia Pankhurst’, in Myself When Young, by Famous Women of To-day, ed., E. A. M. Asquith (London: Frederick Muller, 1938), 259–312. 51 Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Collection, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam. 52 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 43. 53 ‘Miss Agnes Garrett’, The Women’s Penny Paper, 18 January 1890, 145. 54 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 38. 55 Billington, ‘Some Practical Women’, 196. 56 Adams, Architecture in the Family Way, 148. 57 Pankhurst, ‘Myself When Young’, 263; Pankhurst, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst, 23. 58 Crawford, Enterprising Women, 176. 59 Lynne Walker, ‘Women Patron Builders in Britain’, in Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century, eds., Deborah Cherry and Janice Helland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 121–136, 131. 60 Warner Snoad, ‘Record of Events’, Englishwoman’s Review, 15 June 1889, 259. 61 ‘Art. III.–Women’s Questions in India’, Englishwoman’s Review, 15 October 1890, 344. 62 ‘Miss Agnes Garrett’, The Women’s Penny Paper, 1; ‘Mrs Pankhurst’, the Woman’s Herald, 2. 63 ‘Miss Agnes Garrett’, The Women’s Penny Paper, 1–2. 64 Ibid., 3. 65 ‘Mrs Pankhurst’, Woman’s Herald, 2.

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66 Neiswander, The Cosmopolitan Interior, 95–96. 67 Conway, ‘Women as Decorative Artists’, 2. 68 ‘The Ladies’ Column’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 271. 69 ‘The International Congress of Women’, The Times, 7 September 1908, 6; ‘The St. Paul’s Fund’, The Times, 31 January 1925, 25; ‘Statue of Queen Elizabeth’, The Times, 1 August 1928, 11; ‘The Fram’, The Times, 6 November 1930, 5; Millicent Fawcett, Easter in Palestine (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926); ‘The World of Women’, Illustrated London News, 29 January 1927, 29. 70 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 28. 71 Ibid., 43. 72 Emmeline Pankhurst, ‘The Argument of the Broken Pane’, Votes for Women, 23 February 1912, 142. 73 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 28.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Our readers are careful buyers’: Creating goods for the suffrage market Elizabeth Crawford

Supporters of the early twentieth-century suffrage campaign came from all walks of life and, beyond their pursuit of votes for women, had myriad different interests. Thus, to encourage the spirit of camaraderie among their members as well as to disseminate information, during the first decade of the twentieth century, the main suffrage societies each launched a newspaper. Purchasers could read editorials, reviews of relevant books, letters from fellow members and could keep abreast with not only national developments and local activities but also, to a lesser extent, with women’s movements in other countries. All in all, the papers aimed to shape the thinking and influence the actions of their readers, satisfying the needs of those already committed to the suffrage cause and winning over new adherents. But, to exist, the papers also needed to be financially self-supporting, by both selling copies and attracting paid advertising. It is this latter element, the papers’ advertising content, or, at least, a section of it, that is the subject of this chapter. This is not an area that has yet been interrogated by historians. In her informative analysis of the main suffrage periodicals, Maria DiCenzo studied the editorial content but not the advertisements on which the papers depended for financial support.1 Yet, there is a wealth of information to be derived from investigating the businesses that chose to advertise in the suffrage press. Advertisers were clearly not dismayed by editorial rhetoric or the fact that readers of the suffrage press were self-defining ‘political women’. Although most advertisements in suffrage papers are ‘suffrage-neutral’,

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that is, neither the goods advertised nor the advertising copy refers directly to the suffrage movement, the very fact that such businesses chose these papers as an advertising medium suggests an implicit support for the suffrage cause. However, there were some small businesses whose support was explicit, in that they either placed advertisements directly linking themselves to the cause or were known to produce goods aimed at the suffrage market. From a distance of over one hundred years it is difficult now to recover information about these businesses and their proprietors. While it would be unusual for records of such small businesses to survive, a further hindrance lies in the fact that many were run by single women with no direct descendants to ensure their preservation. However, despite the lack of archival sources, this chapter will give a hint of the lives of a few who took up a pen or printing block and sent off an advertisement to ‘The Advertising Manager’ of the suffrage paper, or papers, of their choice.

The papers Votes for Women was first issued in October 1907, published by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954) and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence (1871– 1961), who had recently joined Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) as leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union. They were prepared to finance a campaigning paper for the Women’s Social and Political Union and had both money and Fleet Street experience; from 1901, Frederick had been the editor of The Echo, a London evening newspaper. A one-page supplement that accompanied the 1 October 1909 issue of Votes for Women described the first two years of ‘The Story of Votes for Women’ and revealed that initially the Pethick-Lawrences had meant their new paper to be published monthly, aiming for a circulation of 2,000 copies. The intention was ‘that the paper should serve to reinforce the agitation which is going on all over the country, and be a mouthpiece of the advance guard’. The paper, which cost 3d., was, indeed, published monthly, but from December 1907 began to issue weekly supplements (priced a halfpenny) to ‘give the current news of the movement to those most particularly interested’. This system continued until 30 April 1908, by which time the circulation had reached 5,000 copies. The paper now became a weekly and, from 21 May, the price was reduced to 1d. By June 1908, a month that included the Union’s first major London demonstration, ‘Women’s Sunday’ in Hyde Park, the circulation had doubled to 10,000 copies a week. It was now that the paper really began to attract advertisers. By the spring of 1909, ‘the circulation had leapt up to 20,000 copies and the advertisements had increased from two pages a week to seven’. By July, the circulation had passed 30,000 copies. At this time, the paper employed two women in its advertising department, and the PethickLawrences emphasized that they hoped to develop the ‘advertisement side of

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the paper’.2 They also asked readers ‘to encourage firms that advertise in our paper by paying a visit to their emporia’ and ‘to urge other firms with which they have dealt to advertise in Votes for Women, which is rapidly being recognized as the very best medium for introducing articles to the attention of women’.3 Thus, as it entered its third year of publication (October 1909 to October 1910), Votes for Women was well established, with display advertisements appearing throughout, often with an occasional full page taken by a large firm, such as Derry and Toms, the fashion store, and ending with a whole page of classified advertisements. Similarly, the National Union for Women’s Suffrage Societies began publishing its paper, The Common Cause, on 15 April 1909. Issues mainly ran to sixteen pages but carried few advertisements. Those that did appear were largely from small businesses, such as printers and food suppliers in Manchester. These businesses did not advertise in the London suffrage papers, although some large London firms, such as London department stores Debenham & Freebody and William Owen, and, indeed, smaller London enterprises, such as the Tea Cup Inn in Kingsway, took advertising space in The Common Cause. The first effective copy of The Vote, the paper of the Women’s Freedom League, the third of the major suffrage organizations, was published on 30 October 1909. It comprised eight pages, was initially under the aegis of Marie Lawson (1881–1975), a canny young businesswoman, and from the first carried an array of advertisements, including those from some of the businesses, both large, such as Derry and Toms, and small, such as Alan’s Tea Rooms, a popular Oxford Street haunt for suffrage sympathizers, that were already advertising in Votes for Women. So, by October 1909, each of the suffrage societies had its own paper. Votes for Women, now using a larger format, had set the standard for a well-designed weekly newspaper, its type well-leaded for clarity, with news items well spaced and its pages varying between three and four columns with the text enlivened throughout with advertisements. Over the previous two years, the Pethick-Lawrences had laid the groundwork and attracted a range of advertisers to the suffrage press. The major advertisers appear to have been sufficiently happy with the circulation of Votes for Women and with the feedback they had received to be prepared to repeat the experiment, albeit in a more muted way, with the newer papers. As for those running small businesses of particular appeal to the suffrage reader, they now had a choice of three papers in which to advertise. Three years later, after the Pankhursts had ousted the Pethick-Lawrences from the Women’s Social and Political Union in October 1912, they had four. The Pethick-Lawrences took back control of Votes for Women, building around it a new organization, ‘The Votes for Women Fellowship’, while the Pankhursts launched a new Women’s Social and Political Union paper, The Suffragette. It is notable that, although large London department stores, such as Derry and Toms, were early advertisers,

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their displays incongruous amongst the increasingly dramatic accounts of militancy, it took nearly a year for small businesses that advertised in Votes for Women to take space in The Suffragette.4 It may have been that their proprietors felt a certain loyalty to the Pethick-Lawrences, concerned about the direction the suffragette campaign was taking, or they may simply have exhausted their advertising budgets. Most advertisements were for goods likely to appeal to middle-class women in general, whatever their attitude to ‘the vote’. There were very few goods advertised, other than the suffrage societies’ own badges, which were affordable for working-class women; although the papers were inexpensive, the goods advertised were not for necessities but were aimed at those with money to spare. Hence, the pages were scattered with advertisements for clothes, accessories, jewellery, toiletries, house furnishings, foods, laundries and cafés. Of these, the makers and sellers of clothes were most evident. They varied from the big London stores, such as Derry and Toms and Peter Robinson, to individual dressmakers. In the latter group, one of the earliest advertisers in Votes for Women was a ‘Miss Folkard’. She placed small display advertisements reading: ‘Miss Folkard, Artistic Dress and Mantle Maker: 3 Hill’s Place, Oxford Circus. Ladies’ materials made up in January & September’ (Figure 5.1). Not only was Miss Folkard an assiduous advertiser, an indication that she found the suffrage market rewarding, but she was sufficiently astute as to concoct costumes specifically with suffragettes in mind. In a 1909 advertorial, ‘Where Dresses in the Colours Can be Bought’, ‘Nita’ tells her Women’s Social and Political Union readers that ‘A good idea for Suffragette costume is offered by Miss Folkard: a dress of white serge completed with a white toque trimmed with purple flowers and green foliage’.5 Who was Miss Folkard, what kind of business did she run and how successful was she?6

FIGURE 5.1  Advertisement for ‘Miss Folkard’ from Votes for Women. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson.

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Louisa Amelia Folkard (1854–1921) was one of at least nine surviving children of Richard Folkard (1805–1888), a printer, and his wife Frances (1814–1892). In her early years, the family lived in Bloomsbury, where her father’s printing works was situated, but by 1881 the family had moved to 4 Rockhall Terrace, Cricklewood, in North West London. Louisa’s two brothers were printers like their father, who died leaving only £462. In 1891, Louisa was living, still in the same house, with her widowed mother, her older brother Richard, and an older and a younger sister. None of the women worked. The house was run with two servants; presumably, Richard Folkard helped maintain the establishment. However, the idea of a woman running a business was not foreign to the Folkard family because another sister had moved to Brighton where she ran a boarding house. Louisa’s mother died in 1892, leaving £530, and in 1896 Richard Folkard, aged sixty, married and moved out of the Cricklewood home. Just before then, in 1895, when she appeared in the Westminster Rate Book as the occupier of the premises at 3 Hill’s Place, Louisa had turned herself into a dressmaker. She was probably driven by necessity; the money left by her mother, even if their brother took no share, could hardly have supported her and her sisters indefinitely. It is not known whether she underwent some training or already had the skill, but it is notable that she was prepared to set up a business in the heart of London’s shopping district rather than in her London suburb.7 When the 1901 census was taken, Louisa Folkard was still living at the Rockhall Terrace address, together with her younger sister, and was described as a dressmaker and an ‘employer’. Also living in the house was Alice Northcott (1857–1922), who was described as ‘dressmaker’s assistant’, presumably working with Louisa Folkard at Hill’s Place. In 1907, the household moved a short distance away to 1 Hoveden Road, and it was there that, in 1911, they were enumerated in the census, the form showing that Alice Northcott had been deaf since childhood. Whatever her views on the suffrage question, Louisa Folkard was not one of those who followed the call of the militant societies to boycott the census.8 Louisa Folkard did not include a telephone number in her advertisement, suggesting that she relied on customers to call in person. Hill’s Place is a narrow turning off the south side of Oxford Street, to the east of Oxford Circus. Among the eclectic range of businesses, cheek by jowl with Louisa Folkard’s establishment were an importer of Japanese fancy goods, agents for lace, silk, ribbons and trimmings, a corset maker, a briar pipe manufacturer, a watchmaker, a motor car repairer, a litho printer and two doctors. Number three was very close to the junction with Oxford Street and, although the building has long gone, we can recognize that, even though a sole trader in a very competitive market, Louisa Folkard had positioned her business as close as she could to a major shopping area. Her showroom may well have been on an upper floor, with passing trade unlikely, hence the need to advertise. Her first advertisement appeared in Votes for Women in February 1908 (p. 71), at a stage when the paper was still a ‘monthly’ and its circulation

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was below 5,000 copies. Its pages contained few other such advertisements, and one is tempted to think that Louisa Folkard had discovered Votes for Women for herself, or had been introduced to it by a friend or customer, rather than canvassed by anyone from the paper. After a break, Louisa Folkard advertised again in Votes for Women in June 1908.9 The only other costumiers advertising were ‘Thelma, Modiste’ of Southampton Row, ‘Mrs Oliver’ of Bond Street and ‘Elizabeth’ of South Molton Street. It was common for costumiers to adopt a trade name, with the idea of lending a certain cachet to their business, with the result that it is virtually impossible to discover anything about the principals of such businesses. Louisa Folkard is the only one of this cohort of advertisers whose life can, to a degree, be reconstructed. However, unlike Elspeth Phelps (c. 1877–1968), another Votes for Women advertiser and a very successful Mayfair ‘Court’ as well as ‘Artistic’ dressmaker, Louisa Folkard never found herself or her business cited in a newspaper, so it is difficult to paint more than a superficial view of her life.10 Still, she must have found the Votes for Women audience remunerative, as she continued to advertise both there and in The Common Cause.11 Louisa Folkard ran the same typographical display advertisement in both Votes for Women and The Common Cause, making no attempt to showcase her wares and giving no indication as to the manner in which her outfits were ‘artistic’. The term generally relates to loose-flowing garments and hardly accords with the one outfit we know her to have produced, the ‘dress in white serge’ singled out by ‘Nita’, which suggests something more tailored. The ‘white toque’ that topped the outfit was then a relatively new style, indicating that Louisa Folkard was keeping abreast with fashion.12 It may have been that the application of embroidery rendered Louisa Folkard’s costumes ‘artistic’. Her outfits were also not outrageously expensive, but neither were they exactly cheap. ‘Nita’ mentioned that ‘Miss Folkard makes costumes from four guineas’; to put this into perspective, the weekly pay of a Women’s Social and Political Union organizer was £2. Louisa Folkard appears to have stopped advertising in Votes for Women after the end of 1910, although she was still in business in Hill’s Place in 1914, after then disappearing from the electoral register at that address. She would have been sixty years old and may have been unable to deal with the slump in work that the First World War forced on dressmakers, although when she died in 1921, at Flat 2, 128 Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, she left over £4,000, suggesting that her working life as an ‘artistic dressmaker’ had been not unsuccessful.13 Amy Kotzé, an ‘artistic dressmaker’ of a younger generation, first advertised in Votes for Women in February 1910, but was already aware of the Women’s Social and Political Union.14 The previous May, when she had not been long in the dressmaking business, she had taken a stall at the extravagant fundraising exhibition organized by the Women’s Social and Political Union at the Prince’s Skating Rink in Knightsbridge, presumably

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considering the occasion a useful shop window for her wares. Born Amy Charlotta Wilhelmina Heynes Kotzé (1884–1976) at the Cape of Good Hope, she was the daughter of a South African-born lawyer and an English mother. In 1898, the family returned to England, living near to her mother’s family home in South London. Amy was educated at a convent school and then studied at Sydenham School of Art. Her father, Frederick Kotzé, appears to have left the family in June 1901, returning for good to South Africa. Kotzé continued living with her mother and sisters at 83 Croxted Road, Dulwich.15 It is possible that after she had completed her art education she was for a time a pupil with the metalworker John Pearson (1859–1930), who a decade before had worked with C. R. Ashbee (1863– 1942) and his Guild of Handicraft.16 However, whether or not this was so, in 1907 she opted for a career working with textiles rather than metal, and walked into Liberty on London’s Regent Street and asked for a job. She was employed to draw designs for embroidery and to start work for embroiderers to follow, earning 15s. a week and working from 8.30 am to 6.00 pm. When interviewed in 1976, Amy Kotzé described how, influenced by artistic, reformed dress, she made herself a loose tunic which was much admired by her friends.17 She mentioned that she had then made a dress for Emmeline Pankhurst and set up on her own as a dressmaker. That she was able to make a dress for Emmeline Pankhurst presumably indicates that she already had some connection with the Women’s Social and Political Union. Did she visit Emmeline Pankhurst at the Union’s headquarters at Clement’s Inn? Did she take measurements? Organize a fitting? Did she see an association with Mrs Pankhurst as a means of furthering her business? Alas, no further information is forthcoming. Amy Kotzé worked for a short time at home and then nearby, in Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill, before moving into central London where from 1910 she had a workshop and showroom just along the street from Liberty, first at 3 and then at 8 Great Marlborough Street.18 A photograph taken by the photographer Christina Broom (1862–1969) of a dress stall at the May 1909 Prince’s Exhibition shows the kind of ‘artistic’ garments, loose robes with embroidered collars or inset embroidery, that one imagines Amy Kotzé making.19 In the early years of the campaign, leading suffragettes such as Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958) and Annie Kenney (1879–1953) were on occasion photographed wearing this style. At the time of the 1909 exhibition, Votes for Women praised her garments for striking ‘a new note in artistic dressmaking’ and remarked that ‘her work is very picturesque and highly characteristic, and the colouring alone specially calls for more than a cursory glance. In addition to robes, coats etc are lovely “workers’ dresses” and children’s frocks, both for boys and girls’.20 Amy Kotzé had probably waited until she had central London premises before taking out her first advertisement. She was now ensconced at 3 Great Marlborough Street, not far from Liberty, in a street packed with an eclectic mix of small businesses supplying lace and trimmings to the garment trade,

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as well as the offices of solicitors, music publishers and motor traders. She used her display advertisement to mention her ‘Worker’s Dress in cloth or linen, 2½ guineas, Hand Embroidered. Specially designed to suit all classes of workers and should appeal to non-corseted figures’.21 This, a loose-fitting descendant of the ‘socialist gown’ proposed by William Morris (1834–1896) and Walter Crane (1845–1915), does seem a garment to appeal to many young suffragettes.22 For her advertisement in the 25 February 1910 issue, she used a pictorial block to advertise a girl’s outfit, ‘The School Dress’, in green or blue Liberty serge that could be embroidered in the colours of the school (Figure 5.2). She repeated the pictorial advertisement over several issues, earning a mention in Nita’s ‘The World We Live In’.23 However, Amy Kotzé then dropped Votes for Women as an advertising medium for a couple of years before reappearing in a few issues in the summer of 1912.24 She now used a dashingly romantic pictorial block to illustrate the message that, in this summer season, she sold ‘Artistic hats specially designed for embroidered dresses. Fine Italian chip hats daintily swathed with Liberty gauze’. There is every reason to believe that Amy Kotzé was a member of either the Women’s Social and Political Union or the Women’s Freedom League, because on census night, 2 April 1911, while her mother and sister were recorded by the enumerator at the family’s Dulwich home, she was absent. Nor is there a trace of her anywhere else in the country. Apparently, she had successfully joined the boycott of the census. Amy Kotzé paid rates on the Great Marlborough Street premises until 1923. When interviewed, she remarked that after the First World War her trade was killed by ‘off-the-peg’ dresses, and she then founded the ‘Little Gallery’ in the same premises, citing Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891–1915) as artists she had championed. After 1923, she was in business running a ‘fancy repository’ with her sister, Louie (1873–1975), at 5 Avery Row, a bohemian Mayfair byway. She was now quite comfortably off, living from 1935 until 1948 at Brick House, Great Hormead in Hertfordshire before moving to Greenfields, Henley, near Dorchester in Dorset. She died in Weymouth, leaving nearly £38,000.25 To complement costumes acquired from these dressmakers, the suffrage reader might have been tempted by the regular advertisements placed in Votes for Women by Clara Strong, who described herself as a ‘Suffragette Milliner’ and offered ‘Hats and toques (ready to wear) trimmed in the Colours of the Union. 4/11ʹ.26 In 1910, ‘Motor Bonnets, with Veil’ were, she mentioned, a speciality. Clara Strong (1858–1938) had no telephone, but could deal with postal orders. This was just as well because, unlike Louisa Folkard and Amy Kotzé, she had no West End premises but worked from home. She had been born Clara Georgina Parnall in Exeter, married William Strong (1851–1919) in 1878, had five children, the family moving to London in the late 1880s. William worked in drapery, in later life in a woollen warehouse. By 1901, both Clara and

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FIGURE 5.2  Advertisement for Amy Kotzé from Votes for Women, 4 March 1910. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson.

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one of her daughters (Edith, aged eighteen) were working as milliners, another daughter, Bertha (aged twenty-one), was a pupil teacher, and a son, Sydney (aged sixteen), was a draper’s clerk. However, by 1908, both Bertha and Sydney were dead, and the family had moved to 84 Elspeth Road, a terraced house in Battersea, the address that appeared in her regular Votes for Women advertisements. Clara Strong advertised in Votes for Women from early 1909 until at least the end of 1912, and by May 1913 began placing small classified advertisements in The Suffragette.27 Unlike most advertisers, she is known to have been actively involved in the militant campaign and was, from November 1910, the Honorary Secretary of the Clapham branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union. In fact, she was one of the longest serving secretaries in any district, holding the post until August 1914 when the outbreak of war brought an end to the Women’s Social and Political Union campaign. The women managing Union branches, at least in the London area, tended to be drawn from the more leisurely middle class, and it was unusual for an Honorary Secretary also to run a business, but it is clear from the local reports in Votes for Women and then The Suffragette that Clara Strong was most diligent. For instance, she organized numerous meetings on Clapham Common and put her heart into ensuring that Clapham produced a worthy contingent to take part, with their banner, in the 1911 ‘Coronation Procession’.28 On the evening before, a decorated van advertising the event was sent out from her house to tour the local streets.29 However, although Clara Strong was so actively involved with the Clapham Women’s Social and Political Union, she did not boycott the 1911 census and was at home on census night with her husband, now retired, her daughter Edith, who had been a milliner but was now an elementary school teacher, and her youngest daughter, Mabel. It is possible that Clara Strong may have considered that, with a daughter employed by the local authority and with her business reputation to protect, she had too much to lose if prosecuted. Clara Strong continued working during the war, the wording of her advertisement in The Suffragette now: ‘Have a new hat. Hand made from 6s 11d. Help other women to keep their employment’.30 This suggests that, like others in the clothing trade, she was finding it difficult to obtain work. She was widowed in 1919 (her husband left £200) and had moved out to Orpington in Kent by the time she died in 1938, leaving £300.31 ‘Suffragette’ accessories in the form of, for example, bags and belts, were advertised extensively in the suffrage press by [Minnie] Roberta Mills (1870–1928) who had been born in Cheltenham. She was the eldest of the four children of Robert Mills, a wine merchant, and his wife Ada. By 1891, her father had died, and with her mother and her two sisters Roberta had moved to London, to Brixton, where she worked as an assistant in a photographic works. Ten years later, the census enumerator described her as an ‘artist’, a ‘retoucher’, presumably still in the photographic works, but

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by 1908 she had become a ‘leather craft worker’ and it is in this capacity that she advertised.32 For instance, an advertisement in Votes for Women, reads: ‘Nothing Like Leather for Suffragettes’ Wear’ and offers ‘bags, belts, neck and muff chains, “Guest Books”, cushions, card and music cases, albums etc. Original designs. Union and all Art Colours’ (Figure 5.3).33 She was clearly on the lookout for new ideas to offer to suffrage activists, for instance, advertising ‘safety money bags for sellers of the paper’.34 Other items aimed at Women’s Social and Political Union loyalists were ‘Emmeline’ bags (‘a large and a small one in one’) and ‘Christabel’ shopping bags. In 1909, Roberta Mills advertised that she was supplying leather items in the colours of the Union (‘artistic and useful’) to stalls at the Women’s Social and Political Union Prince’s Skating Rink exhibition.35 She was still advertising in Votes for Women in 1912, but does not appear to have done so in The Suffragette.36 Roberta Mills was also prepared to make up her designs in the colours of the National Union for Women’s Suffrage Societies and of the Women’s Freedom League. For instance, for the Women’s Freedom League’s ‘Green, White and Gold Fair’ in April 1909, she offered ‘Handwrought leather, Special designs in green, white, and gold’ and advertised in the first effective issue of The Vote, offering goods in ‘League colours’.37 However, although her sympathy was doubtless with the cause, Roberta Mills did not boycott the 1911 census and was enumerated, living at home with her mother at 7 Stansfield Road, Brixton. Like Clara Strong and Louisa Folkard, Roberta Mills had no telephone and must have dealt with customers at home or by post. A selection of her Women’s Social and Political Union related goods was held in the Union’s Clement’s Inn office, to whom she presumably paid a commission and,

FIGURE 5.3  Advertisement for Roberta Mills from Votes for Women, 4 March 1910. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson.

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on occasion, she joined with others to display her goods. For instance, in 1909, she had items for sale in The Studio, 31 York Place, Baker Street, along with two other regular advertisers in Votes for Women, Mora Puckle (1875–1962), a maker of ‘modern artistic dress’, and Marie Rochford (1878–1963), a milliner. Later the same year, she even advertised that she was holding a one-day exhibition at The Art Gallery, Newman Street with Mora Puckle and Clare Reynolds (an artist).38 Once Roberta Mills ceased her advertisements in the suffrage press, she drops out of sight. All that is known further is that she married Edward H. Lane in 1916 and died, relatively young, in 1928, leaving no will. Once costumed, behatted and accessorized in leather, the dedicated suffragette might next have looked for items of jewellery in order to display her attachment to the cause. If so, her eye might have been caught by Annie Steen’s advertisements. Annie (1877–?) had been born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, one of the eight children of John Steen (1838–1918), an engine driver at an iron works, and his wife Naomi (c. 1839–1893), and by 1888 was a student at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art. In 1891, she won a silver medal in the National Competition for Schools of Art for a design for pillow lace, by 1906 was a member of the Birmingham Art Circle, and in 1910, 1912 and 1916 exhibited jewellery at the Arts and Crafts Exhibitions.39 In 1909, Annie Steen was advertising in Votes for Women, offering jewellery ‘hand wrought in gold and silver, set with stones in the colours’.40 In advance of the Union’s Prince’s Skating Rink Exhibition, the Midland Women’s Social and Political Union headquarters reported that ‘Miss Steen has some beautiful specimens of art metal work that she has offered to do in the colours. She is willing to show them to members, so that they may order brooches, buckles, pendants etc from the stall’.41 No indication, however, is given of Annie Steen’s prices, although the pieces she exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society ranged from £2 5s. to £8, depending on the materials.42 One would imagine that the ‘Christmas Presents for Suffragettes! Handwrought Jewellery in Gold and Silver Set with Stones in the Colours’ that she advertised in Votes for Women might have been rather cheaper.43 Now that something of a mythology has gathered around ‘suffragette jewellery’ and so many pieces comprising stones that can vaguely be categorized as purple, white and green are offered at auction with the ‘suffragette’ label, it is frustrating to know that pieces made by a craftswoman such as Annie Steen may still be in existence and yet be impossible to identify. On the night of the 1911 census, Annie Steen demonstrated that her interest in the suffrage cause was more than entrepreneurial. Her census form was completed by the local registrar and records the head of the household as being ‘Fanny Steen’, a misrendering of her name from information probably gathered from a neighbour. Moreover, Annie had clearly held a ‘census party’ at her house because the registrar noted that ‘about 9 other females’ had spent the night there and, like Annie, had refused all information. She

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does not appear to have advertised in The Common Cause or The Vote, and we must imagine that her loyalty was to the Women’s Social and Political Union. She lived for most of her life in this same house, 61 Woodfield Road, King’s Heath, Birmingham. Although a steady stream of so-called ‘suffragette jewellery’ now passes through auction houses, both internet and terrestrial, only two commercial firms advertised ‘suffragette jewellery’ in the early twentieth-century suffrage press. Of these, the most important is Mappin & Webb, jeweller and silversmith to royalty, which from 24 December 1909 ran a series of advertisements in Votes for Women for ‘Suffragette Jewellery in Enamels and Gems’, illustrating five designs of brooches and pendants, made in gold and set with pearls, emeralds and amethysts (Figure 5.4). The prices for these ran from £2 to £6 and were clearly aimed at more wealthy suffragettes. Tantalizingly, the advertisement mentions an ‘Illustrated Catalogue’ but the firm does not now hold this in its archive, making it impossible to know what other ‘Suffragette’ designs may have been offered. The firm continued advertising regularly in Votes for Women until March 1910.44 It was not by chance that this firm chose to produce a ‘suffragette’ range; there was a direct link between the firm and the suffrage movement through one of the directors, Stanley Mappin (1872–1924), son of John Mappin (c. 1837–1925) and his wife Ellen (née Webb) (1836–1913). It is clear that Stanley Mappin was a supporter because, a year after the firm’s spate of Votes for Women advertising, he boycotted the 1911 census, refusing information on himself, his wife, daughter and five servants. He wrote across his census form ‘As a protest against the attitude of the government in denying women the rights of citizenship I refuse to fill in or sign the paper’. It is likely that, as a director of the family firm, it was he who suggested that there was a marketing opportunity in making jewellery with a purple, white and green motif. The other commercial firm advertising suffragette jewellery was the Wholesale Service Company in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, which advertised fleetingly in The Suffragette and Votes for Women.45 It is not clear what kind of business this was. It may have been acting as a wholesaler for a smaller local firm, in which case the idea for the pendant and brooch in Women’s Social and Political Union colours may have emanated from any one of the numerous Birmingham jewellery businesses. It was not only goods to adorn the body of the suffragette that advertisers were keen to promote. Grace Jones (1878–1963) advertised in Votes for Women that she ‘Inexpensively and Artistically Furnishes Rooms for Suffragettes in their Colours’ and offered ‘Special Terms to members of the NWSPU’.46 The following month she advertised herself as a dealer in furniture and antiques and as an ‘Art Adviser’, carefully noting that she was a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union.47 She worked from home, 11 Parkhurst Road, Camden Road, North London, which was also the premises of her family’s piano dealership, the Dimoline Piano Co., one of the most assiduous advertisers in Votes for Women (Figure 5.5). She had

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FIGURE 5.4  Advertisement for Mappin & Webb from Votes for Women, 24 December 1909. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson.

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been born Grace Mary Jones, the daughter of Alfred (c. 1839–1912), a piano dealer, and his wife Mary (née Dimoline) (1841–1929). Her maternal grandfather, Abraham Dimoline (1810–1888), had been a piano maker in Bristol. By 1911, her mother and elder sister had taken over the business. The Dimoline piano was known as ‘the silencing stop piano’, a special feature of which was that noise could be reduced when practising, a welcome feature, one imagines, in a London terraced house.48 In the autumn of 1909, Grace married Alfred Willis (1883–after 1963), a stockbroker, but, under her maiden name, continued to advertise that she would undertake ‘Furniture Decorations’ offering ‘Special Terms to members of the Women’s Social and Political Union’. It would seem likely that her mother was also a Women’s Social and Political Union member, although when the census was taken in 1911, the household, which included Grace, her husband and baby son, complied. Perhaps, she felt the business would suffer if she fell foul of the law. Although in 1909 they had taken separate advertisements, by early 1910, Grace Jones’ advertisement of her furniture-decorating business, offering special terms to Women’s Social and Political Union members, was combined with that for Dimoline pianos.49 Even after she had given birth to her son, Peter (1910–1995), in July 1910, Grace continued to advertise herself as a dealer in furniture within an advertisement that offered special terms to Women’s Social and Political Union members on the Dimoline pianos. Both mother and daughter continued to advertise in Votes for Women long after

FIGURE 5.5  Advertisement for Dimoline Piano Co. Image courtesy of Robert J. E. Simpson.

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the Pethick-Lawrences had broken from the Pankhursts, but did not do so in The Suffragette.50 However, by now ‘Grace Jones’s’ furniture dealing and decorating business must have been in abeyance. The block used for printing the advertisement had not been changed for some time, and Grace was no longer living in Parkhurst Road but had moved to Warwickshire, where her daughter was born in the early summer of 1913. Alfred Willis appears to have prospered, in 1934, buying Grafton Manor, a sixteenth-century house and estate near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire. He and Grace and their married daughter were living there when the 1939 census was taken, but sold it in the mid-1940s. Grace was living in Kent when she died in 1963.51 *** This brief survey gives a glimpse of the lives of a number of those advertising their businesses in the suffrage press. A similar, more expansive exercise might be conducted on other establishments, particularly those where local knowledge could be employed. Because of the survival of the associated iconography, it is still possible to identify items, such as badges, brooches and china, made and sold by the suffrage societies themselves, but without a visual record it is all but impossible to identify goods produced by small businesses such as those described in this chapter. At present, all we have to inform us of their association with the suffrage movement is the advertisements placed in the suffrage press. By uncovering something of their proprietors’ lives, we can attempt to identify points at which their personal commitment to the cause coincided with their commercial enterprise. Whether it was a hatpin, or a leather bag or belt, a summer outfit or a complete room, all could be rendered in suffrage colours. Tokens of support, proudly worn, were important in making the suffrage movement visible both to the converted and unconverted. It took a brave woman to proclaim her allegiance to the Women’s Social and Political Union by wearing in the street a purple, white and green outfit, such as that devised by Louisa Folkard. The wearer would run the risk of censure from passers-by ill-disposed to the suffragettes, but gain comfort in inspiring fellow supporters. Less defiantly, she might wear one of Annie Steen’s purple, white and green pendants, Clara Strong’s suffragette toque, or carry Roberta Mills’ ‘Christabel’ shopping bag and still know she was making visible her support for the cause. As we have discussed, an advertisement in the suffrage press was the principal medium for marketing such goods, allowing the proprietors of some small businesses to make the personal political and to combine pressure-group politics with commerce.

Notes 1

See Maria DiCenzo, ‘Unity and Dissent: Official Organs of the Suffrage Campaign’, in Feminist Media History: Suffrage, Periodicals and the Public Sphere, eds., Maria DiCenzo, Lucy Delap and Leila Ryan (Basingstoke:

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3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

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Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 76–119. For a discussion of the shops operated by the suffrage societies, in which some goods that were advertised in the suffrage press were sold, see John Mercer, ‘Shopping for Suffrage: The Campaign Shops of the Women’s Social and Political Union’, Women’s History Review, 18:2 (2009): 293–309. All previous quotations from Votes for Women supplement, 1 October 1909. In her autobiography, Christabel Pankhurst mentions that in March 1912, Kitty Marshall, wife of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s solicitor, was Votes for Women’s Honorary Canvasser for advertisements. See Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled (London: Hutchinson, 1959), 205. This was a message The Suffragette was to echo even more vehemently, for example, The Suffragette, 26 September 1913, 858. For a discussion of the suffrage press, see DiCenzo and others, Feminist Media History. Votes for Women, 23 April 1909, 588. For a discussion of the ‘suffragette look’, see Katrina Rolley, ‘Fashion, Femininity and the Fight for the Vote’, Art History, 13:1 (March 1990): 47–71. For a study of independent dressmakers, see Stana Nenadic, ‘The Social Shaping of Business Behaviour in the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Garment Trades’, Journal of Social History, 31:3 (1998): 625–645. For details of birth and death dates of the Folkard family, see Civil Registration Birth Index, Civil Registration Marriage Index and Civil Registration Death Index; for details of census returns, see 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses; for probate records, see National Probate Calendar, all via Ancestry.co.uk. Westminster Rate Book and London Electoral Register also via Ancestry.co.uk. For a study of the census boycott, see Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 18 June 1908, 248. Elspeth Phelps, a self-confessed suffragist, was prosecuted for flouting the Factory Act that limited employees’ overtime; see, ‘A “Keen Advocate” Fined’, Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 30 July 1910, 5. ‘Display Advertisement’, The Common Cause, 10 February 1910, 619. A toque was a round, brimless hat with no strings or fastening ribbons. However, photographs of suffragettes in 1909/1910 show the majority still wearing wide-brimmed, luxuriantly decorated hats. For probate details of Louisa Folkard’s will, see National Probate Calendar via Ancestry.co.uk. ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 11 February 1910, 316. For details of the Kotzé family’s London address, see the London Electoral Registers via Ancestry.co.uk. For details of Amy Kotzé’s birth and death dates, see 1901 census and Civil Registration Death Index, via Ancestry.co.uk. See entry in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s catalogue describing a copper dish by Pearson, M.20–1976. Quoted in Barbara Morris, Liberty Design, 1874–1914 (London: Pyramid, 1989), 54–55. For details of Amy Kotzé’s workplaces, see the London Electoral Register, 1910, via Ancestry.co.uk. Photograph IN1284, Museum of London Collection.

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20 ‘Amy Kotzé Stall’, Votes for Women, 14 May 1909, 658. 21 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 11 February 1910, 316. 22 For a discussion of the ‘socialist gown’, see Stella Newton, Health, Art and Reason: Dress Reformers of the 19th century (London: John Murray, 1974). 23 Nita, ‘The World We Live In’, Votes for Women, 29 April 1910, 497. 24 For example, ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 7 June 1912, 589. 25 For the address of Amy Kotzé’s ‘fancy repository’, see the London Electoral Register; for her addresses in Hertfordshire and Dorset, see GPO Telephone Directories; for probate information, see National Probate Calendar, all via Ancestry.co.uk. 26 For example, ‘Small Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 4 February 1909, 319. Like Miss Folkard, Clara Strong was an early promoter of the toque. 27 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 6 December 1912, 152, and ‘Classified Advertisement’, The Suffragette, 9 May 1913, 512. 28 For example, see ‘Campaign Throughout the Country: Clapham’, Votes for Women, 5 May 1911, 515, and ‘The Campaign Throughout the Country: Clapham’, 3 May 1912, 493. 29 ‘Clapham’, Votes for Women, 16 June 1911, 616. 30 ‘Classified Advertisement’, The Suffragette, 30 April 1915, 34. 31 For details of the deaths of William and Clara Strong, see Civil Registration Death Index; for details of probate of their wills, see National Probate Calendar, all via Ancestry.co.uk. 32 For details of births and deaths, see Civil Registration Birth Index and Civil Registration Death Index; for details of the Mills family in 1891, see 1891 Census; for details of Roberta Mills’ employment as a ‘retoucher’, see 1901 Census, all via Ancestry.co.uk. 33 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 28 January 1909, 304. 34 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 6 August 1909, 1027. 35 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 26 March 1909, 488. 36 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 13 September 1912, 807. 37 ‘Display Advertisement’, The Vote, 30 October 1909, iii. 38 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 25 February 1910, 339, and ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 5 November 1909, 93. 39 For details of the Steen family’s births and deaths, see Civil Registration of Births and Civil Registration of Deaths, via Ancestry.co.uk. For Annie Steen’s attendance at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art, see The Birmingham Daily Post, 3 September 1888, 5. For information on Annie Steen’s silver medal, see The Birmingham Daily Post, 25 July 1891, 5. For her membership of the Birmingham Art Circle, see entry in ‘Arts and Architecture Profiles’ in Arts: Search database, accessed through the London Library. For her contribution to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, see exhibition catalogues. 40 For example, ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 14 May 1909, 679. 41 ‘Midlands. Exhibition’, Votes for Women, 2 April 1909, 510. 42 For example, see the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’s 1910 exhibition catalogue, 69–70. 43 For example, ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 8 October 1909, 24. 44 ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 11 March 1910, 371.

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45 ‘Display Advertisement’, The Suffragette, 13 December 1912, 140 and ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 3 January 1913, 211. 46 For example, ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 4 February 1909, 304. 47 Votes for Women, 19 March 1909, 462. 48 See, for instance, ‘Dimolene advertisement’ in Votes for Women, 1 December 1911, 147. 49 For example, ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 7 January 1910, 230. 50 For example, ‘Display Advertisement’, Votes for Women, 3 October 1913, 8. 51 Information from National Probate Calendar via Ancestry.co.uk.

CHAPTER SIX

English suffrage badges and the marketing of the campaign Kenneth Florey

The period in which suffrage badges, buttons and brooches achieved the height of popularity in the English campaign extended from approximately 1908 to 1914. For the most part, their manufacture was discontinued during the First World War as many suffrage activists, including the militant Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958), either changed or modified their priorities to aid with the war effort. In such an atmosphere of national emergency and cooperation, the promotion of colourful suffrage badges to obtain voting rights for women must have seemed frivolous, if not a shade disloyal. But during the previous six years, badges, buttons and brooches had become standard features of the campaign. Their introduction and popularity were the result of a confluence of several merchandising and marketing factors, including the appearance of the inexpensively produced celluloid button or pin, which consisted of a plastic-covered paper label and which supplemented the traditional enamel badge; the influence of suffrage stores with bright window displays to sell and distribute memorabilia and regalia; and the recognition by suffragists of how important wearing campaign material was to the cause.1 Another major impetus to the development of the badge or button as a popular form of ‘visual rhetoric’ was the introduction in 1908 by Emmeline PethickLawrence (1867–1954) of an official set of colours for the campaign, that of purple, green and white, along with accompanying symbolic values.2 ‘Purple’, Pethick-Lawrence argued, ‘is the royal colour … It stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom

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and dignity … white stands for purity in private and public life … green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring’.3 This concept of official suffrage colours was not new. American suffragists had adopted yellow as early as 1867 from the Kansas sunflower when they were campaigning in that state.4 The English National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies had utilized red and white as early as 1906, adding green in 1909. Writing in November of 1909 in the association’s official journal The Common Cause, women’s activist Helen Fraser (1881–1979) had seen the value of the revised National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ colours as a merchandising tactic, particularly when applied to buttons: ‘Every member can help to ensure that 20,000 red, white, and green badges and ribbons all over the country are being stared at, being talked about, are bringing in more and more supporters every day.’5 It was the colour scheme of purple, green and white rather than red, white and green, however, that was to serve as metonymy for the English movement and for part of the American as well. While perhaps the colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union might have been more distinctive than those of its National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ nonmilitant counterpart, their popularity and omnipresence were more likely due to the notoriety of the Women’s Social and Political Union and to the aggressive sales campaign that their leaders orchestrated to embody them into the very essence of the struggle. The coming-out party of the Union was its demonstration at Hyde Park on Sunday 21 June 1908 where supporters beforehand were urged to ‘wear the colours’, to dress in a purple, green and white scheme to show the widespread support for the movement, and to demonstrate the strength of the suffragists’ commitment to the cause.6 Following the Hyde Park Demonstration, many merchants advertising in Votes for Women recognized the commercial possibilities of the colour scheme and offered such products trimmed in purple, green and white as jewellery, hats, corsets, home-made cakes, Christmas gifts, leather bags, scarves, soap, dresses and, of course, a full array of lapel material, including buttons, badges and ribbons. The American suffragist Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919), returning from England, noted: ‘The colors of Mrs. Pankhurst’s party, purple, white and green, are so popular in London that enterprising shopkeepers are adopting them for their advertisements. You see a purple, white and green placard, and you see [a display of] “Father’s Rolled Barley”, or of the newest thing in soap.’7 The spread of the popularity of the colours was greatly aided and abetted by the publishing and commercial genius of politician Frederick PethickLawrence (1871–1961), who, along with his wife, Emmeline, founded the journal Votes for Women, the official organ of the Women’s Social and Political Union. From its inception, the journal included a few advertisements, but its commercial possibilities were not fully realized until the Hyde Park Demonstration when merchants and manufacturers began turning to it, seeing in the suffrage movement an attractive market for their goods. To

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increase advertising revenue, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence periodically posted lists of recommended merchants in the journal, those who had taken out ads, thereby supporting the movement. He also advertised books, pamphlets and leaflets that the Union had for sale, and, in May of 1908, suffrage ribbons and badges in the colours as well. Originally, Women’s Social and Political Union material was produced by its small literature department, but, in 1907, Pethick-Lawrence expanded that department, calling it ‘The Woman’s Press’, and began marketing suffrage material so extensively that by 1910 sales were averaging £1,000 a month.8 Outgrowing its room at the Union’s headquarters at Clement’s Inn, the Press moved in May 1910 to its new home at 156 Charing Cross Road, where the premises were comprised of twelve rooms, including a shop designed to attract passers-by with its display of various products mostly in the colours, including motor scarves, ‘Emmeline’ and ‘Christabel’ bags, a ‘Pethick’ tobacco pouch, tea, chocolate, summer blouses, postcards, belts and, of course, buttons and badges.9 So successful were the Women’s Social and Political Union shops to become that from 1907 to 1914 there were at least nineteen operating in the Greater London area alone (Figure 6.1).10 The Union was not the only suffrage organization to operate retail outlets. The Women’s Freedom League founded a limited network of shops in such areas as Battersea, Croydon, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Haringey and Anerley.11 In 1910, Portuguese actor Sime Seruya (1876–1920) opened up her International Suffrage Shop on Bedford Street, having announced her intentions to do so in October 1909 in Votes for Women.12 These shops were often more than shops, containing a room or rooms for lectures and for women to meet and converse in a setting that often involved a display of colourful memorabilia, thereby bonding women, organization and regalia together. The main producer of celluloid buttons for English suffragists was the Merchants’ Portrait Company of Kentish Town, in North West London.13 The firm’s imprint appears on several Women’s Social and Political Union items, including a ‘Votes for Women’ pin with a linked chain design done in red and white, probably manufactured in 1907 prior to the introduction of the Pethick-Lawrence’s colour scheme.14 Merchants’, attempting to solidify its bond with the Women’s Social and Political Union, began taking out a weekly display ad in their journal Votes for Women, highlighting the fact that they were ‘makers of the W. S. P. U. Badge’.15 Although these ads were to continue for several years, Merchants’ loyalty to the Union was not so steadfast as to keep them from producing buttons for other organizations, such as the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society, the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, the Actresses’ Franchise League and the Church League for Women’s Suffrage. They also juggled ideological alliances, manufacturing a small celluloid pin for the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage.16 While Merchants’ probably produced more celluloid buttons for the suffragists than any other firm, they were

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FIGURE 6.1  One of many Women’s Social and Political Union shops throughout London where badges, movement literature and postcards were sold. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

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not without competition. The famous image drawn by Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) of a woman breaking free from her cell bears the imprint of Pellett Ltd. 62, High Holborn, London. Several other celluloid buttons come without the manufacturer’s identification and were probably produced by other firms. It is not known when the earliest English suffrage button, celluloid or enamel, first appeared, but 1907 appears to be a plausible date. In March of 1908, Votes for Women began to contain advertisements of ‘ribbons and badges’ in the colours, the badges consisting of a ‘narrow ribbon in two-inch sections with the words Votes for Women woven in’. They sold for 1d. each. But the numerous references to ‘Votes for Women’ buttons that appear in the paper soon after probably refer instead to a celluloid badge that came in at least four different colour variations.17 It measured approximately 3.5 centimetres in diameter and consisted of several concentric circles. The outer circle contained the words ‘Votes for Women’ and the inner circle the initials of the organization, ‘WSPU’, along with a ‘linked chain’ pattern. The design of this button proved to be so popular that it was borrowed in England by the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, in Ireland by the Irish Women’s Franchise League and in America by both the Just Government League of Maryland and the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (Plate 5). Inspiration for the concept of a suffrage button or badge may have come partially from an unlikely source, the conservative Primrose League, which had been formed in 1883 by the admirers of Prime Minister and novelist Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), who had died two years earlier. The League’s aim was to promote Conservative Party principles, and it took for its emblem the primrose, Disraeli’s favourite flower. Diplomat and politician Sir Henry Drummond Wolff (1830–1908), one of the League’s founders, saw in the badge an important tool in spreading its message. The League, accordingly, issued a variety of badges, many designed in military styles that reflected the League’s complex hierarchy. Women were allowed into the League and to hold office, generally through a separate Ladies’ Branch and Grand Council, although it was possible for a Lodge to be overseen by a ‘Dame President’. Men and women both wore badges of similar types; the male version generally included a stud-back for fastening to a buttonhole and the women’s a pin-brooch clasp. A writer in the 1902 The Lady’s Realm argued for the merchandizing role that the medals played: ‘The sight of the Primrose League badge has in some cases done as much to win recruits as the ablest of addresses and most eloquent of appeals.’18 Thus, the suffragists had a model for an organization that, at least in a limited way, empowered women and one that promoted itself by issuing many badges. There were several attractive features to celluloid pins. They were inexpensive to manufacture, and their typical retail price, of one penny each, was something that even a shop girl could afford. Moreover, the ability to print out an illustration on paper instead of moulding it onto an enamel

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base allowed for the possibility of more complex designs and intricate colouring. The problem with celluloids, though, was that they were subject to foxing or staining whenever they were in the presence of moisture, an unfortunate prospect for the suffragist marching in a demonstration when rain would suddenly appear. Americans, who otherwise often followed the lead of the English when it came to merchandizing the movement, generally made better quality buttons that were less affected by the vagaries of environmental mischance. Despite the popularity of the celluloid button, there were probably an equal, if not greater, number of enamel badges issued for the movement during the period from 1908 to 1914.19 Enamel pins were far more durable than celluloids, suffering only occasional chipping and cracking. They had a jewellery-like appearance that many women, particularly those of the middle and upper classes, probably found more attractive than a plastic lapel piece. But they were more expensive and, when the enamel was attached to a silver or gold mount, the price differential could be considerable. In an early advertisement from the Woman’s Press that appeared in Votes for Women, brooches ‘in the colours’ were priced far beyond that of a penny for the simple celluloid, including ‘Boadicea’ pins at 3s. 6d., ‘Broad Arrow’ pieces in silver at 1s. 6d. and ‘Shamrocks’ at 6d.20 The two primary sources for suffragists for enamel brooches and badges, as opposed to those made of celluloid, were the Toye and Company of 57 Theobald’s Road, London, and W. O. Lewis of Howard Street in Birmingham, both of which sold to the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and to the Women’s Social and Political Union. On 10 June 1910, Toye began advertising weekly in Votes for Women, about six months after the initial notices for Merchants’ Portrait Company had first appeared. As was the case with its competitor, Toye identified itself as ‘Makers to the N. W. S. P. U’.21 They also produced green, white and gold enamel pins for the Women’s Freedom League, which had been organized in 1907 after feminist and social reformer Charlotte Despard (1844–1939), suffragist and advocate of birth control Edith How-Martyn (1875–1954) and suffragette and political theorist Teresa Billington-Greig (1877–1964) split with the Pankhursts because they felt that the Women’s Social and Political Union was not being democratically run. The firm of W. O. Lewis Badges was established in 1832 and is still in operation having been owned by the same family for five generations.22 Birmingham, where they are located, was known for the quality of its silverwork, and several of its craftspeople, such as metalworker and enameller Ernestine Mills (1871–1959), were actively involved in the suffrage movement.23 Two other manufacturers, Partridge of 72 Dean Street, Soho and W. Mark of Campden, Gloucestershire, produced at least one enamel badge each for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.24 A small firm, SIMONS, of 100 Houndsditch, London, took out a classified ad in The Suffragette in 1913 promoting ‘Buttons, Badges,

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FIGURE 6.2  Enamel badges issued by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. From the collection of Kenneth Florey. Emblems, Brooches in Enamel, Metal, and Celluloid for Associations, Clubs’ (Figure 6.2).25 Part of the reason for the appeal of enamel badges over their celluloid cousins, apart from their durability, was that they could, on occasion, bridge the gap between decorative jewellery and ideological statement. Crafted in precious stones ‘in the colours’ and set into a frame of silver or gold, decorative jewellery could be quite fashionable, but it was limited in its ability to convey a discernible message or statement. One correspondent to Votes for Women was concerned that even dressing in the colours was ‘not yet sufficiently distinctive, as one frequently happens on wearers of the correct Union colours who are totally unaware of their significance’. For this reason, she urged all suffragists to wear a ‘Votes for Women’ badge, one that clearly announced its purpose and gave meaning and validation to a suffragist’s dress.26 Given its expense, it is unclear as to how popular decorative jewellery was among suffrage supporters. There was but one firm that advertised commercial jewellery in English suffrage journals, that of Mappin & Webb, whose first offering of suffrage designs appeared in Votes for Women on 17 December 1909, just in time for Christmas. The items that they crafted were intended for the carriage trade and not for working women. They included a gold brooch set with emeralds, pearls and amethysts for £2 10s., a gold pendant set with emeralds, pearls and amethysts for £3 12s. 6d. and a gold brooch for £6. Apart from the colours of the stones, there was nothing on these pieces to connect them directly to the Women’s Social and Political Union. The firm did advertise a gold brooch that was in the shape of a ‘V’, possibly for ‘Votes’, but such a resemblance could have been coincidental.27 One other firm, that of Annie Steen of Birmingham, also advertised in Votes for Women. Their pieces were not mass-produced but rather ‘Hand Wrought Jewellery in Gold and Silver Set With Stones in the Colours’.28 Any guess as to the amount of decorative jewellery made on behalf of suffrage has always been problematic. Without the guidance of some form of period substantiation such as a newspaper advertisement, as discussed in Chapter 5 of this book, it is difficult to conclude today that any jewellery

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item, even one in the colours, was or was not produced for the movement. Elizabeth Goring, in her path-breaking article on suffrage jewellery, notes that ‘Many items presumably languish in jewellery boxes across Britain, their original meaning no longer recognized’.29 She adds, however, that a huge quantity of jewellery ‘survives from the period from 1908 to the First World War that incorporates stones or other inlays in purple, green and white’. Furthermore, ‘much of this jewellery, of course, was not specifically destined for members of the WSPU’, and it is important to recognize that ‘Not all jewellery in purple, white and green was intended for suffragettes and that not all suffragette jewellery was purple, white and green’.30 There is no doubt that decorative jewellery was crafted specifically for suffrage advocates; however, the impact of such items was far less than that of celluloid buttons or enamelled badges with their easily discernible verbal messages.31 The difficulty today in determining whether a piece of jewellery was originally manufactured to support the suffrage movement is a strong indication of what was probably ambiguity even during the suffrage period. Women wore suffrage celluloids and enamel pins at suffrage meetings, demonstrations and even as part of their daily dress. They also wore them at rallies for parliamentary candidates.32 The act of wearing a button or badge was a commitment to the cause. It specifically identified the wearer as a suffragist to those around her, but it also provided her with a sense of identity and a bond with her sisters in the movement. At a by-election in North East Yorkshire, a ‘special correspondent’ to Votes for Women reported that, in addition to papers and literature, a ‘mass’ of badges had gone out daily from the headquarters: ‘As for the Votes for Women buttons, one sees them everywhere – on men, women, and children’ (Plate 6). Early in the campaign, organizers were surrounded by a group of youths, who ‘armed with pennies … wanted to buy what they called our “medals”’.33 During a campaign in Cornwall, there was a similar enthusiasm for buttons. According to Mary Phillips, a worker at the headquarters at Penzance, each town in the area ‘vies with the others in the warmth and cordiality of its reception and in the eagerness of the demand for VOTES FOR WOMEN [the journal] and badges … the amount we sell being limited to our carrying capacities’.34 Although the red and white (and later also green) colours of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies did not possess the degree of resonance among the public as did the purple, white and green of the Women’s Social and Political Union, its members still wore their badges with pride at public rallies and demonstrations. At the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ 13 June 1908 procession in London, for instance, women ‘wore red and white badges, and carried red and white bouquets’.35 An American tourist was so impressed in 1908 with the enthusiasm of both men and women sporting suffrage badges that she wrote home and openly wondered: ‘Do you suppose our American men will ever wear such emblems?’36

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At political rallies and suffrage demonstrations, the interaction of suffragists and police could often become confrontational, a situation that was frequently satirized on period postcards. For a woman to wear a suffrage badge, even as an observer and not a participant in a demonstration, required a certain amount of courage. Her pin marked her out and signified to a hostile authority that she was to be observed as a potential threat. Not all police, however, were necessarily hostile. When a correspondent for Votes for Women was approached by a policeman while she was attempting to observe the 1911 Coronation Procession of King George V (1865–1936), she viewed the situation with trepidation. Diminutive in size and standing behind the crowd, she had great difficulty seeing any of the proceedings at all. The policeman, looking directly at her suffrage badge, remarked, ‘Why here’s the button’. In an apologetic tone, he noted that he had not seen her button before and now took it on himself to escort her to the front of the crowd.37 Emmeline Pankhurst, whose confrontations with authority in England were legendary, nevertheless experienced a similar positive reaction to her suffrage button when she visited New York in 1909. Deputy Collector Williams, who had escorted her off the boat, saw her suffrage badge and begged her for it. She gave it to him, and he later opened his coat up to reporters and displayed it. One of Emmeline Pankhurst’s travelling companions remarked, ‘I find that my suffrage badge is always an incentive to courtesy … A man looked at my badge in the car the other day and then gave me a seat’.38 A female traveller to France handed the key to her trunk to a custom’s official as the law required. Once he caught sight of her badge, however, he returned the key to her quickly, exclaiming ‘Mais non! Madame est Suffragette!’39 There were several recorded incidents, though, involving suffrage buttons and badges that were not quite as fortunate. When American activist Elizabeth Freeman (1876–1942) took part in the Downing Street demonstration of 22 November 1910, she found herself manhandled. Seeking both assistance as well as escape, she spotted a man wearing a Men’s League suffrage pin. Assuming that he would be sympathetic, she ran to him for help. He turned out, however, to be a detective who was hired to do ‘dirty, insulting work’ on the women demonstrators. He put his hand on Freeman’s face, shoved her back into the crowd, where she suffered ‘two dislocated toes, a badlysprained wrist and three sprained toes, but not a sprained conscience’.40 Theresa Garnett (1888–1966), a suffragist and repeat prisoner at Holloway, was brought before a magistrate accused of ‘biting’ the wardress who was attempting to remove her street clothing. Garnett denied the charge claiming that her Holloway brooch, which she always wore on the left side of her blouse, must have scratched the wardress when she ripped off her garments. The magistrate was dubious about her claim but dismissed the case anyway, ruling that the wardress was probably wounded accidentally by the defendant’s teeth when she brushed against them in the act of taking off her clothing.41

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Activists in both England and America consistently urged their supporters to wear their badges at all times, not just at political events and rallies. Suffragists argued that such badges helped to initiate conversations and recruit new members. They indicated the courage of women to display openly their support for the movement at a time when many women, whatever their convictions happened to be, were reluctant to come forth and join in public discourse over controversial issues. For some, buttons helped to counteract the impressions that had been created in the media that somehow suffragists were not normal women, but frumps, harridans and man-haters. Writing to Votes for Women in November of 1910, a subscriber called ‘K. Katharine Todd’ also found the act of wearing her Women’s Social and Political Union badge in ‘a conspicuous position’ to be a ‘thorn in the flesh’ to the anti-suffragists, many of whom claimed that women in general did not want the vote.42 The more ubiquitous daily public displays of the colours were to become, the more that myth was seen to be a lie. In general, most suffragists saw the wearing of the badge as a marketing opportunity to initiate conversation and recruit new members to the cause. ‘J. L. East’, recalling Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence’s strong arguments of the importance of always wearing one’s badge, wrote to Votes for Women and told of her month’s holiday in the Lake District with her daughter. Both always wore their badges indoors and out, and through that means ‘we were able to do a great deal of good work for our cause. It opened up conversations in all sorts of places … [we were able to] correct erroneous impressions which people outside our movement have gathered from the Press’.43 A ‘Miss J. G. Guthrie’ also found that her badge was quite helpful in initiating discussion at garden parties that she had attended in Lancashire.44 The treasurer of the Chiswick Women’s Social and Political Union proudly declared that her badge, while ‘opening conversations’, had also been the means by which she had brought in several new members.45 An otherwise unidentified ‘K. N.’ was concerned about the image that the press conveyed about suffragettes. She argued that the ‘more quiet and unassuming the wearer of the badge is, the more will scoffers be forced to admit that the popular idea of the Suffragette is a lamentably false one, and that, rather than being a bunch of hooligans, the Suffragettes are some of the most womanly and also the most patriotic women in the world’.46 The editor of Votes for Women also attempted to refute the image of the suffragist as either a frenetic revolutionary or a hopeless ‘frump’ (perhaps both) by relating the following anecdote that purportedly occurred ‘In the Tube’. Two women were gossiping about the dress of a third, with the first declaring, ‘I think that she must be a Suffragette, or at least she looks like one’. When her companion asked why, she responded ‘Because she was so badly dressed’. Upon hearing these words, a fourth woman, elegantly arrayed, loosened her furs to show her ‘Votes for Women’ button.47

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To many suffragists, buttons and badges were more than personal campaign items, they were also historical records of the movement that needed preservation. Some suffragists such as the American Alice Park (1861–1961) collected them. Park’s collection totalled 178 items, including many rare varieties of English buttons and badges.48 Ella O. Guilford, a subscriber to the American suffrage paper the Woman’s Journal, advertised there for additions to her collection.49 Sime Seruya also advertised in 1911 for ‘spare or disused’ suffrage badges for a collection that she was forming in her International Suffrage Shop on Adams Street in the Strand.50 Wealthy New York socialite and founder of the Political Equality League, Alva Belmont (1853–1933), likewise was fascinated by the beauty and design of English buttons. In 1912, she commissioned her daughter Consuela, who had married the Duke of Marlborough, to send her an assortment of these pins from England. The Duchess’ return package consisted of a collection of approximately twenty-five buttons from various British organizations, which Belmont hung on a ‘Votes for Women’ banner that adorned the League’s New York office.51 One very popular Women’s Social and Political Union pin, judging by the fact that it exists in at least three colour variations, is a 3.5 centimetre enamel whose design consists of three purple, green and white concentric circles. In the centre of the pin are the Women’s Social and Political Union’s initials with no additional lettering, thus promoting the organization more than the cause. Some Union buttons followed the same pattern; others advocated more forcefully for the cause instead by using the popular phrase, ‘Votes for Women’; some promoted both equally. Other common Union badges consisted of two varieties of an enamel shield, a waving flag in enamel and a metal pin formed in the shape of Joan of Arc with a sword in her one hand and the Union’s banner in the other. This last image also appears in advertising for Christabel Pankhurst’s The Suffragette. In addition to propagandizing the cause or promoting an organization, English buttons and badges could also draw attention to a specific issue or advertise an upcoming event; but they were less likely to do so than their American counterparts (Plate 7).52 At times, these buttons were distributed to the public, but often their circulation was restricted to those who were involved in those campaigns or who had exhibited meritorious service in support of the cause. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies issued, for example, a small two 0.75 centimetre red, white and green celluloid that was worded ‘Active Service League – N. U. W. S. S. – Pilgrimage 1913’ to celebrate its march from Land’s End to Hyde Park in July of that year. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies also produced several badges and paper discs for ‘Associates’ and ‘Stewards’, a 100 by 100 centimetre piece with a picture of an elephant advertising its ‘Grand Oriental Bazaar Dec. 5, 6, 7 Empress Rooms’ and another item in its colours ‘Support the Bill – Votes for Women Householders – June 10’.

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The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies probably produced other pins designed specifically for workers, but these, for obvious reasons, remain rare and generally unrecorded. Other event or cause buttons include a white on black celluloid issued for the anti-census campaign: ‘No Vote – No Census – Census Resisted – “A census in G. Britain shall be taken in the year 1911 & the census day shall be Sunday, the 2nd day of April in that year”’. Its lengthy message would have been impossible to read more than a foot away. Still, its text was undoubtedly designed to stimulate conversation, giving the wearer a chance to explain what the protest was all about. It is not clear which group was responsible for the pin, but it may have been produced by The Tax Resistance League, a sister organization to the Women’s Freedom League inaugurated in 1909, whose colours were black, white and grey. The Tax Resistance League also issued a similar size button designed by artist Mary Sargant Florence (1857–1954) in white and black on brown depicting a ship on troubled waters with the slogan ‘No Vote – No Tax’. One piece issued by the Women’s Social and Political Union that was restricted in its distribution was a silver brooch in the form of a toffee hammer upon which the words ‘Votes for Women’ were inscribed.53 This was presented only to those who had taken part in the window-smashing campaign of 1912, where militant activists used toffee hammers to break the windows of shops and government offices. Perhaps the most treasured of all English suffrage badges and medals were those that were distributed to women who had gone to prison for the cause (Figure 6.3). The Women’s Freedom League was responsible for the first such piece, a metal badge with an embossed stylized image of Holloway prison. Each former prisoner in 1908 was given her own individual badge on which her name or initials were inscribed along with the date of her imprisonment. Sylvia Pankhurst designed a comparable brooch for Women’s Social and Political Union prisoners, variously called the ‘Holloway’ or ‘Portcullis Badge’, that adapted the design of the portcullis gate symbol of the House of Lords by superimposing on it an enamelled arrow in the colours. These were initially presented at a meeting at Albert Hall on 29 April 1909 to five activists who had been released from Holloway on September of the preceding year for ‘their bravery and sacrifice’. They also received an illuminated address, likewise designed by Pankhurst.54 The crowning achievement, though, for a suffragist was to earn a ‘Medal for Valour’ or ‘Hunger Strike Medal’, first given out in August of 1909 to those prisoners who had gone on a hunger strike in Holloway, many of whom were force-fed (Plate 8). Each medal came in a box with a silk lining upon which the following words were imprinted: ‘Presented to [name of recipient] by the Women’s Social and Political Union in recognition of gallant action, whereby through endurance to the last extremity of hunger and hardship a great principle of political justice was

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FIGURE 6.3  Postcard photograph of Emmeline Pankhurst wearing her portcullis or Holloway badge. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

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vindicated’. The medal was manufactured by Toye of London and hung from a ribbon in the appropriate colours. The front of the medal was inscribed ‘For Valour’, and its rear contained the name of its recipient. An enamel bar was added to the ribbon each time the suffragist was taken back to prison and engaged in a new hunger strike. These pins and medals represent a separate tier of badges. Given out only to those who had performed meritorious service for suffrage and not available to the public, they were meant in part to inspire women to personal sacrifice and achievement for the cause. For the most part, English suffrage badges and buttons were lacking in detailed imagery, although there were some fortunate exceptions, including those designed by Sylvia Pankhurst (Plate 9). Pankhurst, who had been granted a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, abandoned her studies to work for the cause. Apart from the Holloway brooch, she drew at least three designs for buttons and Cinderella stamps.55 The first, manufactured by the firm of Pellett of London, portrayed an idealized woman emerging from a prison cell, stepping over chains. The second, done in purple, green and white enamel relief, was of the angel of triumph blowing her clarion. It was used for both a brooch as well as a pendant and appeared on banners, a tea set, the covers of bound volumes of Votes for Women and on numerous Union publications. The third design, ‘The Sower of Freedom’, showed a woman planting the seeds of female suffrage. She is encircled by a white on purple band containing both the words ‘Votes for Women’ and the name of the Union. One can see ‘Votes for Women’ inscribed on all the three images, although with the letters so small on two of them that they were not visible to the casual observer. Still, Pankhurst’s designs had such a wide circulation that one of the primary aims of these buttons, the promotion of the movement, came through clearly enough. Many other groups also produced pins, mostly in their official colours and with their names woven into the designs to gain public recognition (Plate 10). The Women’s Freedom League issued four or five pins in its colours of white and gold on green that contained the League’s name or initials, along with the words ‘Votes for Women’. Other suffrage organizations that produced buttons and badges included: 1. The Church League for Women’s Suffrage. The League designed four or five varieties of celluloids in their colours of gold and black on white featuring the League’s initials in the centre surrounding a golden cross. 2. The Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage. It produced at least two pins in its colours of black and yellow. 3. The Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society, founded in 1911 by Gabrielle Jeffrey (1886–1940). Their button, in blue and gold on white, included the Society’s name surrounding a fleur-de-lis.

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4. The Liberal Women’s Suffrage Union. This small group, formed in 1913 after the withdrawal of the Liberal Government’s Reform Bill, issued a correspondingly small button in gold and green with a design featuring only its initials. 5. The Actresses’ Franchise League. Its button included the League’s initials alongside the ubiquitous ‘Votes for Women’ phrase set into a five-sided shield.     6. The Jewish League for Woman Suffrage. In purple and blue colours, the button conveyed its message entirely in Hebrew lettering. Anti-suffrage groups produced little in the way of lapel material (Plate 11). Perhaps, they were working in unconscious concert with their American counterparts who did not want to empower suffragists psychologically by imitating their methods. The National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage did issue at least two items, a small pink and black celluloid containing the League’s name along the rim and, in the centre, an image of a plant with three different flowers, the English rose, the Scottish thistle and the Irish shamrock, perhaps to mock the militants’ appropriation of these national symbols. The pin also came in an enamelled metal disc variety that hung from a chain. One other Anti-Suffrage Society pin, much scarcer than the other two, became the object of ridicule by the militants. Depicting a forlorn-looking woman grasping a ponderous infant, it was so ugly that even many society members refused to wear it. The Society was also satirized by suffragists for choosing black and blue as its official colours, and they observed that these were the tints that anti-suffrage women expected to have when their unliberated husbands beat them.56 There were, obviously, many methods that suffragists used to publicize the movement and to engage potential supporters in dialogue. But buttons and badges had especial appeal. Although small, with their bright colours, slogans and organizational identifications, they were bold, assertive and virtually impossible to ignore. When worn by many women, they helped to foster the message that the movement was large and powerful. A badge could also resonate with the wearer herself, making her feel that she had a special bond with activist women all over the country, and that her button validated her persona as an active supporter of the franchise for women.

Notes 1

The celluloid button or badge was developed originally in America prior to the Presidential campaign of 1896 between William McKinley (1843–1901) and William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), where they saw extensive use. A primary innovator in their manufacture was the New Jersey firm of Whitehead and Hoag. For a more extensive discussion of the history of celluloid buttons,

152

2

3

4

5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

SUFFRAGE AND THE ARTS see Ted Hake, Encyclopaedia of Political Buttons, United States, 1896–1972 (New York: Dafran House, 1974), 5. The term ‘visual rhetoric’, as Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene note, ‘has been recently featured in books, journal articles, and conference papers’. They define it in their study of the suffragist Alice Paul (1885–1977) as: ‘the persuasive impact of visual images in combination with the written and spoken word’. Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), xviii. According to Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 93, there was some uncertainty about the meaning of the colours in the press. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, ‘who was liable to sentimentalize them in later years, allowed a broader and sometimes contradictory symbolism to accrue to them’. Their most extensive iteration, however, can be found in the programme for the Prince’s Skating Rink Suffrage Exhibition that took place in 1909. For discussion of the use of the colour yellow derived from the Kansas state flower, the sunflower, in the campaign of 1867, its appearance in the followup campaign of 1887 and of its eventual adoption by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, see Kenneth Florey, ‘Colors’, in Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 77–78. Helen Fraser, The Common Cause, 25 November 1909, 433. On 18 June 1908, Votes for Women (p. 242) announced that ‘motor scarves with green and purple stripe’ could be obtained from the Women’s Press and that they were ‘extremely pretty and effective … They should be largely worn at the demonstration, and they will help to popularize the cause’. The colours could also ‘be obtained in ribbon lengths and as badges’. In the issue of 25 June, which followed the demonstration of 21 June, the editors, in a column entitled ‘The Colour Scheme’, noted: ‘One of the most remarkable features of the whole demonstration was the unity of the colour scheme, displayed not only in the banners, but in the dresses and decorations of the women who were taking part’. In a column entitled ‘Dress in the Colours’ that appeared on 9 March 1909 (p. 413), the editors asked ‘May we appeal once more to members and friends of the Women’s Social and Political Union to dress in the colours, purple, white, and green, which are now so well-known. By doing so, they will help to make it understood that women are standing together and supporting one another in the great fight in which we are engaged’. ‘Color and Ginger’, Woman’s Journal, 20 August 1910, 138. ‘A “Vote for Women” Clock’, Votes for Women, 6 May 1910, 514. ‘Under the Clock’, Votes for Women, 13 May 1910, 533, and ‘Under the Clock’, Votes for Women, 1 July 1910, 651. Diane Atkinson, Suffragettes in Purple, White, and Green – London, 1906–14 (London: The Museum of London, 1992), 49. John Mercer, ‘Shopping for Suffrage: The Campaign Shops of the Women’s Social and Political Union’, Women’s History Review, 18:2 (2009): 293–309, 297. ‘Suffrage Trading Scheme’, Votes for Women, 29 October 1909, 72. The term ‘badge’ was a generic one and could be applied to a ribbon, an enamel brooch or a celluloid pin. When a distinction was made, and often it

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14 15 16

17

18

19

20

21 22 23

24 25 26 27

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was not, ‘badges’, designated either medals hanging from ribbons or enamel pins. The term ‘button’, when it was employed, referred generally to celluloids. In America, the use of the word ‘button’ was far more frequent and ubiquitous than it was in England. These Women’s Social and Political Union buttons, including the red and white chain link pin, are in the collection of the author. ‘Photo Buttons for Election Purposes’ advertisement, Votes for Women, 31 December 1909, 216. Merchants identified their products by either inserting a paper disc with the firm’s name on it in the back of their celluloid badges or by engraving it on their enamel pins. Examples of Merchants’ badges and pins for these various organizations can be found in the collection of the author. The distinction between ‘ribbon’ badges and non-ribbon celluloid and enamel buttons or badges became clearer in 1909 when Votes for Women came out in a larger format and when ads for products of The Woman’s Press became correspondingly greater in size. In an ad, for example, which appeared on p. 22 of the 8 October 1909 issue of Votes for Women, ‘ribbon badges’ were sold for 1 d. each, and two kinds of Votes for Women buttons were both priced at 1d. Available online: http://primrose-league.leadhoster.com/history.html (accessed 15 September 2017). This site also contains a reprint of the relevant article from the 1902 issue of The Lady’s Realm. Available online: http://primroseleague.leadhoster.com/ladysrealm_files/ladies.html (accessed 15 September 2017). This proportion is an estimate only. It derives from the pins in my own collection, the extensive badge collection of California activist Alice Park that can be viewed in Sara M. Algeo, The Story of a Sub-Pioneer (Providence, RI: Snow and Farnham, 1925), 275, and from various other collections that I have seen. ‘Brooches in the Colours’ advertisement, Votes for Women, 28 May 1909, 739. Boadicea was a queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire around AD 60 or 61. Her persona of assertiveness and militancy dovetailed nicely with the militant image of the Women’s Social and Political Union. ‘Badges & Banners for Demonstrations’, Votes for Women, 10 June 1910, 601. Available online: http://www.lewisbadges.co.uk/ (accessed 15 September 2017). Mills also designed suffrage postcards, at least one of which, showing the ‘New Mrs. Partington of the Anti-Suffrage Society’, trying to sweep away the tide of ‘Votes for Women’ buttons, was sold in America. ‘More Suffrage Postal Cards’, Woman’s Journal, 6 February 1909, 24. The Mark Co. design was one of the more elaborate of the enamel pins, and it featured five scalloped edges that corresponded to the five petals of the flower pictured inside. ‘Classified Advertisements – Miscellaneous’, The Suffragette, 15 August 1913, 776. Mary L. Parr, ‘The Importance of Wearing the Badge’, Votes for Women, 19 March 1909, 450. ‘Mappin and Webb – Suffragette Jewellery’, Votes for Women, 17 December 1909, 183.

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28 ‘Christmas Presents for Suffragettes’, Votes for Women, 1 October 1909, 16. 29 Elizabeth S. Goring, ‘Suffragette Jewellery in Britain’, Omnium Gathgerum – A Collection of Papers – The Decorative Arts Society, 1850 to the Present, 26 (2002): 85. 30 Ibid., 97–98. 31 Elizabeth Crawford cautions that, without authentication, it is very difficult to identify such pieces ‘with any certainty as to “suffragette”; amethysts, pearls and demantoid garnets were very commonly used in Edwardian jewellery’. Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement – A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 308. 32 Parliamentary elections not only drew the public to various suffrage shops, but they also provided an opportunity for workers to sell memorabilia, including buttons and badges. In the general election of 1910, Women’s Social and Political Union offices in Brighton, Exeter and Bradford were particularly active. In Brighton, purple, green and white favours were ‘sold in the streets’, and in Exeter, the Union’s rooms formed ‘an endless attraction to the townspeople and the sale of literature and badges [was] most brisk’. ‘The W. S. P. U. General Election – Campaign in the Country’, Votes for Women, 7 January 1910, 234. 33 Special Correspondent, ‘A Purple, White, and Green Web’, Votes for Women, 9 July 1909, 713. 34 ‘The Campaign Throughout the Country’, Votes for Women, 23 July 1909, 984. 35 ‘The Procession of June 13’, Woman’s Journal, 30 June 1908, 98. 36 Mrs. George Lowell, ‘A Suffrage Festival’, Woman’s Journal, 22 August 1908, 133. 37 ‘Here’s the Button’, Votes for Women, 28 July 1911, 705. 38 ‘Suffrage Cheers for Mrs. Pankhurst’, The New York Times, 21 October 1909, 1. 39 ‘Our Post Box’, Votes for Women, 11 November 1910, 90. 40 Elizabeth Freeman, ‘Letter From an American’, Woman’s Journal, 7 January 1911, 4. 41 ‘A Lie Nailed to the Counter – Biting Charge Against Miss Garnett Dismissed’, Votes for Women, 9 August 1909, 1037. 42 K. Katherine Todd, in a letter that appeared in the column ‘Our Post Box’, Votes for Women, 11 November 1910, 90. 43 J. A. East, ‘Wearing of the Badge’, Votes for Women, 3 September 1908, 422. 44 J. G. Guthrie, ‘“Letter” in “Post Box”’, Votes for Women, 15 October 1909, 43. 45 ‘Wearing the Badge’, Votes for Women, 27 August 1909, 1116. 46 ‘Wearing the Badge’, Votes for Women, 21 April 1911, 479. 47 ‘In the Tube’, Votes for Women, 18 November 1910, 3. 48 Alice Park was a socialist and advocate for children’s rights as well as instrumental in the California suffrage campaign of 1911. She was probably the most dedicated collector of suffrage memorabilia of any activist of her time. Her collection of 178 buttons was, perhaps, the largest ever accumulated by a suffragist. She published her own postcards, and her collection of sixtysix movement posters was donated to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard in 1950 by Mary Windsor, who had purchased them for that purpose. Available

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53 54 55

56

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online: http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00846 (accessed 15 September 2017). Ella O. Guilford, ‘Wanted – Suffrage and Amendment Buttons for a Collection’, advertisement, Woman’s Journal, 1 April 1916, 111. ‘Badges’ classified ad, Votes for Women, 28 July 1911, 715. ‘Rich Variety of Foreign Regalia’, Woman’s Journal, 11 January 1913, 16. The additional focus that American suffragists gave to the cause or event buttons can, perhaps, be attributed to the differences in their campaigns. American suffragists were divided in terms of what overall strategy would be the most effective to achieve the vote. Some wanted to focus on a national constitutional amendment while others thought that a state-bystate approach might be more effective. But even those who believed in the primacy of a national campaign saw, as did American suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947), the need to bring some states, including a few of the larger ones, into the suffrage fold to make their case more effective. Consequently, there were a number of state referenda dealing with a proposed enfranchisement of women, each contest accompanied with its supply of buttons. Some designs pictured with stars the number of states that at the time had granted women full voting rights. If a local campaign was successful and the state moved into the suffrage column, a new button could be issued with an additional star to celebrate the victory. Some buttons incorporated the state name into their slogans: ‘Let Ohio Women Vote’, California Votes for Women – October 10, 1911, ‘Votes for New Jersey Women’, ‘Equal Franchise for New York 1915’, and Votes for Women – Dirigo [“We Lead” – state motto of Maine]. See an example of one of these hammers in the collection of the Museum of London: http://www.museumoflondonprints.com/image.php?imgref=001239 (accessed 15 September 207). ‘The Albert Hall Meeting – Its Significance to Our Members’, Votes for Women, 16 April 1909, 533. A cinderella or poster stamp is a non-philatelic stamp, sometimes issued with gum, that was often posted on envelopes and other printed material. Suffragists in both England and America used them extensively to promote the movement. ‘Ridicule for British “Anti’s”’, Woman’s Journal, 12 December 1908, 197.

PART THREE

Paintings on Display

CHAPTER SEVEN

Painting suffragettes: Portraits and the militant movement Rosie Broadley

In 2011, the National Portrait Gallery acquired a portrait of Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958), one of the leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union, painted by Ethel Wright (1866–1939) and completed in 1909 (Plate 12). It is a rare example of a full-length oil portrait of a leading suffragette that was both made and displayed during the militant era. The subject of this portrait displays qualities and attributes, including the sash in green, white and purple, which have come to be widely ascribed to suffragettes in the popular imagination. Pankhurst is depicted striding forward, her arm outstretched. She is both fashionable and elegant, but her flushed face and fervent expression convey a deep personal conviction that seems to prevail over concern for her own appearance. It is reminiscent of portrayals of historic or theatrical heroines, for whom exceptional circumstances force extraordinary action. When Ethel Wright painted this portrait, she had already enjoyed two decades as a successful artist. Trained at the Academie Julien in Paris, she was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Art.1 The portrait was bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery by Elizabeth Weir (d. 2010), fulfilling the wishes of her mother Una Dugdale Duval (1879–1975), a militant suffragette and the portrait’s first owner. Its re-emergence into the public domain after over a century in a private collection enables this chapter to consider, for the first time, the genre of portraits of women, specifically paintings, as an integral part of the visual culture of the militant suffrage movement during the first decades of the twentieth century.

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The dominance of militant organizations in the early twentieth century changed the character of the campaign for women’s suffrage, which had begun in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Lisa Tickner so vividly demonstrates, the campaign became a spectacle.2 Artists, even those never previously affiliated to a suffrage organization, were drawn to the new subjects and opportunities it presented. With Ethel Wright’s portrait as its focus, this chapter will examine the circumstances of the production and display of suffragette portraits. While there exist examples of portraits made of sitters affiliated to various suffrage organizations, including non-militant groups, Wright was involved with the Women’s Social and Political Union and, as such, this chapter centres on the activities of that organization. I will argue that the advent of militancy deeply affected the visual language used to represent not only individual identities but also collective political sympathies. By the early twentieth century, militant activities dominated coverage of the campaign in local and national newspapers. Leading suffragettes were identified in press photographs and campaigners became increasingly aware of the potential for visual representation to encourage political change. To build on their growing public profile, suffrage organizations produced photographic portrait postcards of key figures in the movement. Often formally posed, these were sold in suffrage district shops and intended to counter the unflattering images that were usually selected by news editors. At the same time, portraits of leading suffragettes were submitted for display at the nation’s major cultural institutions, including the Royal Academy and the National Portrait Gallery, where portraiture shaped the visual identity of the nation’s political and cultural elite. By seeking cultural representation, the militants wished to assert a new identity for political women while securing credibility for the campaign. The narrative pursued here offers a counterpoint to the better-known account of the wilful destruction of works of art, including portraits, enacted in these sites by suffragettes at the height of violent militancy in 1914, as discussed in Krista Cowman’s chapter (Chapter 8) in this collection. Still, the National Portrait Gallery’s decision to decline the opportunity to acquire certain key portraits of suffrage campaigners across the twentieth century is indicative of institutional reticence in recognizing this new type of public woman as integral to the nation’s history.

Towards a suffrage portrait gallery of their own? At the turn of the twentieth century, portraiture in Britain was relatively unaffected by radical movements in modern art and its practice was principally reserved for the middle and upper classes. Indeed, even in the face of developments in photography, society portraiture retained its role as a marker of social participation and power. Artists continued to draw

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on modes of representation that had been established in previous centuries and these portraits, described as ‘sophisticated social constructions’, helped to reinforce rather than challenge existing conventions of appearance and behaviour.3 Tickner observes that Victorian and early twentieth-century audiences expected to see the ‘virtues and vices of femininity written on the body’, and nowhere was this truer than when viewing portraits of women in a public gallery, where prescriptive and idealized definitions of traditional womanhood were enshrined.4 However, as Deborah Cherry demonstrates, an alternative culture of portrait painting for women in public and political life was fostered and facilitated in the close-knit feminist artistic network that emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century.5 One of the most notable suffrage portraits was painted in 1886, when writer and founder of the Manchester Suffrage Society, Lydia Becker (1827–1890), sat for her friend, artist and suffragist Susan Dacre (1844–1933) (Plate 13). Becker is shown seated against a plain background wearing a black dress. The composition echoes the language reserved for masculine portraiture of the period, explicit of men’s assumed public and social responsibilities and exemplified in the work of John Everett Millais (1829–1896). Some feminine attributes are retained by Dacre: Becker wears a necklace and corsage of roses. Still, Cherry highlights the inclusion of the sitter’s spectacles as particularly unusual in the representation of women at this time. Increasingly, spectacles became an important marker of ‘the feminist, the female artist and the learned women’.6 From the moment she became a public figure in the 1870s, Lydia Becker’s physical appearance was lampooned in popular journals, for example in illustrator and political cartoonist John Tenniel’s (1820–1914) cartoons for Punch. Becker’s image was so potent that it continued to define the stereotype of the female campaigner well into the next century, until the militant suffragettes began to forge their own distinct portrayal of female political identity through careful management of dress and appearance.7 The year after Becker’s death in 1890, the campaigner Helen Blackburn (1842–1903) offered the portrait to the National Portrait Gallery on behalf of the National Society of Women’s Suffrage in one of the earliest attempts to have a suffrage activist represented in this pantheon of eminent – and predominantly male – historical figures.8 It was rejected according to the ‘ten year rule’, whereby the Gallery could only consider portraits of sitters who had been deceased for a decade.9 However, when offered in 1901, it was again turned down. While the Trustees ‘did not wish to cast any doubt upon the value of Miss Becker’s services to the cause of her sex, or to express any opinion upon the movement’, they could not convince themselves that ‘these services amounted to a paramount claim for admission to this gallery’.10 In the meantime, Blackburn assembled a parallel portrait gallery ‘of eminent women’ through history. These portraits depicted female pioneers in fields including education, philanthropy, history, science, the arts, and those working generally for the advancement of women – a ‘visual genealogy’

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of the women’s movement.11 The collection, consisting of 190 works, predominantly prints and engravings, was sent to the World’s Colombian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. Those represented included nurse Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), Scottish science writer Mary Somerville (1780–1872), doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917), feminist Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929) and scientist and feminist Lydia Becker, and the portraits were arranged chronologically from medieval to contemporary.12 This approach was later taken up as a key strategy by the suffrage movement: at the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ Procession in June 1908, banners were held aloft glorifying ‘Great Women of the Past’, including Queen Boadicea (c. 30–61 AD), saint Joan of Arc (c. 1412–1431), feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) and the artists Mary Moser (1744–1819) and Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), who were both members of the Royal Academy at its foundation in 1768. While these enterprises were both impressive and effective in the short term, they were ultimately transient. Blackburn sought a permanent home for her gallery of eminent women, giving it to University Hall, Bristol, for its women’s reading room in 1894, but it was not retained and the works are now lost.13 The suffrage movement’s claim for enduring visual representation remained an aspiration as long as key figures in the movement were excluded from national collections of portraits.

Staging identities: The Women’s Exhibition What will the Women’s Exhibition be? It will be more than an ordinary exhibition: it will be a rallying ground for all who are interested in women’s work, women’s aims, women’s hopes, and above all in the great, inspiring movement of women towards a fuller and more spacious life.14 In March 1909, Ethel Wright submitted a full-length portrait of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s chief strategist Christabel Pankhurst to the Royal Academy for consideration for that year’s summer exhibition. A bastion of British society, the Royal Academy was the centre of the elite art world, upholding social hierarchies and gender distinctions. Despite continued pressure from female artists and critics, and the precedent of two female founders, no women had been elected to its membership since 1768. It is perhaps unsurprising that the committee did not welcome for exhibition a portrait of Christabel Pankhurst, a convicted felon, whose recent militant actions had earned her a period in prison and widespread opprobrium. But Wright was not to be put off and, shortly after this rejection, the artist strategically wrote to Votes for Women, the official newspaper of the Women’s Social and Political Union, inviting interested parties to view the portrait at her studio.15

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As an independent project, it is highly probable that Christabel Pankhurst was not aware of the portrait until the painting was brought to the notice of the Women’s Social and Political Union in its completed state. The ‘absence’ of the sitter in the making of this representation sets it apart from suffrage portraits of the previous century. The portrait does not represent a personal transaction between the artist and her subject, but is a response to Pankhurst as a public figure and as an orator. According to the portrait’s first owner, Una Dugdale Duval, Wright sought a likeness by watching Christabel Pankhurst at public meetings ‘to obtain the perfect aspect’.16 Her approach is reflective of the shift towards public spectacle that was a key feature of militancy. The portrait, made by a woman on the periphery of the movement, provides striking evidence of how Christabel Pankhurst was perceived, and even idolized, by the ‘foot-soldiers’ of the movement. The meeting in Wright’s studio was likely a success, as the following week’s edition of Votes for Women noted that the portrait would be going on display at the Women’s Exhibition taking place that May, where it was to be ‘offered for sale at 100 guineas, this amount to go to the funds of the Women’s Social and Political Union’.17 Everything at the Women’s Exhibition was to be sold to raise funds for the Union and Wright’s willingness to donate this considerable sum is indicative of her commitment to the cause. It was also professionally shrewd: Wright was no doubt aware that the Exhibition would be a unique showcase for her work, where the portrait would be seen by a new and overwhelmingly sympathetic audience. Organized as a fundraiser, the Women’s Exhibition at the Prince’s Skating Rink in Knightsbridge was also an exercise in building the ‘brand’ of the Women’s Social and Political Union using the tricolour scheme of green, white and purple. The colours, symbolizing hope, purity and dignity, had been introduced the previous June at the large demonstration in Hyde Park called ‘Women’s Sunday’. At the Women’s Exhibition, the outside of the building was festooned with fabric in the colours and inside the colours were incorporated into a large-scale decorative mural scheme designed and executed by Christabel’s sister Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960). Women wore sashes or accessorized their outfits with green, white and purple. The colours helped unify a diverse membership and to shape a new image for the movement. The Union was working hard to counter anti-suffrage propaganda that depicted militants as doughty ‘frumps’, or as unhinged harridans with hat and clothes awry. For the ‘honour’ of the cause, members were encouraged to comply in their dress and demeanour with a narrow definition of femininity. The actress, writer and suffragette Cicely Hamilton (1872–1952) noted that ‘a curious characteristic of the militant suffragette movement was the importance it attached to dress and appearance … all suggestion of the masculine was carefully avoided’.18 The fashioning of a brand identity fuelled the market for Union-themed merchandize. Dressmakers, florists and milliners targeted female buyers and ‘womanly’ skills and pursuits were celebrated. As one newspaper observed, it was ‘suffrage with its very best frock on’.19

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In addition to stalls, numerous performances were staged by the Actresses’ Franchise League, while the ‘Young Hot Bloods’, the youth branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, mounted a ‘pictorial record’ of the history of the campaign to date through 800 photographs and press cuttings.20 By persistently archiving and exhibiting key aspects of the campaign, the Union sought to situate their sometimes startling militant strategy as part of an historic continuum. The Women’s Exhibition was a forum, albeit temporary, at which the Union could reference the visual language and tactics of display employed by museums. In this respect, the militants were emulating and extending the work begun in the previous decade by Helen Blackburn with her ‘gallery of eminent women’ and, in so doing, were proposing their members as history-makers worthy of commemoration. Portraiture, which was perceived to be particularly suited to the skills of women artists due to a ‘heightened mimetic ability’, was much in evidence at the Exhibition.21 Ethel Wright’s painting was shown at the Art Stall, organized by the Chelsea branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, where other portraits for sale included statuettes representing Christabel Pankhurst and working-class militant leader Annie Kenney (1879–1953), made by the sculptor Edith Downing (1857–1931) (both untraced).22 While portraiture was commoditized, its practice was also promoted as an inclusive activity to attract potential new supporters and members. Artists including Jessie Holliday (1884–1915) produced quick sketches of visitors, advertised as ‘Your Portrait while you wait, by a Lady Artist’.23 These souvenir images ‘framed’ the visitor as present and future suffragette heroines, just as Ethel Wright had immortalized Christabel Pankhurst in paint. The militant movement owed much to the skills and talents of women artists and craftspeople. However, the Women’s Exhibition was one of the few events in which fine art found a place. The dynamics of the production and dissemination of propaganda offered few opportunities for the production or display of painted portraiture. Sitting for a portrait was time-consuming, and an original work of art could not practically be incorporated into the processions or demonstrations that were central to militant activity. The Women’s Social and Political Union and the Artists’ Suffrage League both produced propaganda, and the Suffrage Atelier provided paid employment for numerous women artists, but the output of these groups was primarily in the form of printed material and banners. Currently, only a handful of portraits of leading suffragettes produced during the militant era have been identified, and these tend to be small in scale and made after photographs.24 The paucity of surviving examples of portraits of militant leaders made from life suggests that key figures of the Union did not consider sitting for artists, either within or outside of the organization, to be a priority during the militant campaign. When Canadian artist Richard George Mathews (1870–1955) made a portrait drawing of Christabel Pankhurst for publication in the Bystander magazine in April 1908, he was granted just fifteen minutes while she was ‘preparing for her great meeting

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at Sheffield’.25 However, Christabel Pankhurst did find the time to sit for her waxwork as part of a Women’s Social and Political Union group made for Madame Tussaud’s in the same year.26 Militant organizations including the Union preferred to deploy the benefits of studio photography, where sittings were relatively quick and images could be reproduced in large quantities. The Union in particular commissioned and distributed photographic postcards and badges as a way of inspiring loyalty to its autocratic leadership. Nevertheless, when the opportunity arose to incorporate Ethel Wright’s portrait into their arsenal of propaganda, the Union were quick to embrace a work so thoroughly imbued with the rhetoric of the campaign. Although the audience for a painting was more limited than a mass-produced leaflet or poster, it was no less capable of serving the same ideological interest. Indeed, a painted portrait had the potential to reach and influence those in the upper echelons of society who, it was believed, could encourage societal change most effectively. To be the subject of a portrait by a society artist was to be elevated to the elite of society, and this notion perfectly suited the aspirations of the Union who were concerned with asserting their superiority to non-members, in terms of both appearance and intellect.27 The representation of working-class women was becoming an exception within the visual propaganda of the Women’s Social and Political Union, as it began to distance itself from its socialist roots. Exceptions were, however, made and suffragette Barbara Ayrton-Gould (1886–1950) dressed as the ‘fishergirl’ Grace Darling (1815–1842), one of the suffragettes’ historic heroines, for the opening procession for the Women’s Exhibition. Annie Kenney, one of the most prominent members of the Union with a working-class background, did sit for a portrait by Bristol-based artist Winifred Bourne Medway (1882–1969) during her time as organizer for the south-west region between 1907 and 1911, but there is no record of the portrait being publicly exhibited as part of the campaign. While Kenney is represented as a suffragette – a trace of a striped Women’s Social and Political Union ribbon is evident – her attitude is contemplative and is in contrast to the dynamic pose chosen by Wright for Christabel Pankhurst. Since the portrait appears to be unfinished, it is likely that it remained a private enterprise between sitter and artist (Plate 14). Wright’s portrait transcended the sordid or mundane elements of campaigning, celebrating Pankhurst’s essential and traditional feminine qualities. Indeed, the transformative powers of the portrait painter became a theme in propaganda postcards produced by both pro- and anti-suffrage campaigners. In an undated example by Catherine Courtauld (1878–1972) for the Suffrage Atelier entitled The Anti-Suffrage Society as Portrait Painter, a male artist with a donkey’s head (an A. S. S.) prophesizes that an enfranchised ‘Mrs Britannia’ will become crazed and, critically, ‘unsexed’ (Figure 7.1). Wright’s painting was itself reproduced as a postcard to be sold at the Exhibition, with all proceeds going to the campaign.28 A surviving

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FIGURE 7.1 Catherine Courtauld for the Suffrage Atelier, The Anti-Suffrage Society as Portrait Painter, 1909–1914 © Museum of London.

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example of the card, now in the Museum of London, is signed by Christabel Pankhurst, possibly at the behest of an admirer, an action that can be read as an endorsement of her portrait, despite never having sat for its artist. The portrait was purchased at a reduced sum by the suffragette Una Dugdale Duval whose diary records her personal enthusiasm for the work. She wrote: I so much admired Christabel’s portrait by Ethel Wright that when I heard it was being raffled for 5/- tickets, I arranged with Mother to buy it. We got it for £30 … so the lovely picture is mine. It is a miracle, for I remember saying to Christabel after seeing it ‘If I was a millionaire I should buy it at once’.29 Duval was exactly the sort of upper middle-class woman to whom the Women’s Social and Political Union wished to appeal to through events such as the Women’s Exhibition. She was motivated to join after hearing Christabel Pankhurst speaking in Hyde Park and the reference in her diary to a conversation with Pankhurst is compelling evidence of Pankhurst’s association with the portrait while it was on display at the Exhibition. Christabel Pankhurst and her colleagues were present at the Exhibition, and visitors would have been able to compare the work of art to its subject. In one of an extraordinary set of images of the Exhibition taken by the press photographer Christina Broom (professionally known as Mrs Albert Broom) (1862–1939), Christabel Pankhurst is shown seated composedly, wearing a large floral hat, while two women in the background observe her with interest (Figure 7.2). Indeed, throughout the militant campaign, Christabel Pankhurst and her fellow leaders offered themselves up to scrutiny and to representation as part of the spectacle. Wright was no doubt aware of her subject’s theatrical soubriquet ‘the suffragette Portia’, coined by the press the previous year when Pankhurst used the knowledge she had gained in obtaining a first-class law degree to defend herself, her mother Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) and their colleague Flora Drummond (1878–1949), against a charge of conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace. In a brilliant tactical manoeuvre, she subpoenaed as witnesses two cabinet ministers, Herbert Gladstone (1854–1930) and David Lloyd George (1863–1945), forcing them to defend their position on women’s suffrage, and her cross-examinations were widely reported in the media. For an artist, it was perhaps difficult to resist the romance inherent in this narrative, in which a youthful heroine is pitted against those in power. A description of the event by Sylvia Pankhurst is analogous to Wright’s portrait: In her fresh white muslin dress whose one note of colour was the broad band of purple, white and green stries around her waist … she was as bright and dainty as a newly opened flower … But she was to triumph over her opponent in the witness box, not by her grace and freshness … but by her sparkling wit, her biting sarcasm and by the forces and depth of her arguments.30

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FIGURE 7.2  Mrs Albert Broom (Christina Broom), photograph of Christabel Pankhurst at the Women’s Exhibition, Knightsbridge, 1909, half-plate glass negative © Museum of London. This description is revealing of the multiple identities that suffragettes could deliberately embody in their campaign: here Christabel is at once delicate and feminine, but also a new Portia, forceful and erudite. If not specifically represented as Portia, Wright must certainly have had in mind portraits of great actresses including Sarah Siddons (1755–1831), another of the suffragettes’ historic heroines, who was depicted numerous times by artists including Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830). Even the unusual green tone of her dress is suggestive of the reflection of limelight. The language of the theatrical portrait, which was developed in the eighteenth century, imparts meaning to every gesture while conveying something of a performer’s dynamism on stage. Pankhurst had been developing her own language of gesture that, combined with her oratory, became a performance worthy of record. In a 1908 photograph by Lallie Charles (1869–1919), one of the most commercially successful female photographers of the period, Pankhurst can be seen rehearsing a pose that is strikingly similar to that depicted by Wright (Figure 7.3).31 While Christabel did not contribute directly to the production of the painted

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FIGURE 7.3 Lallie Charles, postcard photograph of Christabel Pankhurst, published by Rotary Photographic Co. Ltd, 1908, NPG135535 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

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portrait, both subject and artist were fashioning a new visual identity for political women. Wright’s recourse to the theatrical portrait sets it apart not only from the ‘white satin duchesses’ of fashionable female portraits but also the ruminative male political portraits of the era by artists such as Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope (1857–1940), whose portrait of Conservative MP Henry Chaplin (1840–1923), in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, enjoyed the approval of the Royal Academy selection committee in 1909.32 After it had been shown at the Women’s Exhibition and acquired by Una Dugdale Duval, Wright’s portrait continued to generate interest. In June 1909, a story appeared in the American publication, Harper’s Weekly Advertiser, under the title ‘England’s Suffragette Martyr’, that stated there had been ‘a storm in London’ over the rejection by the Royal Academy of this portrait: Miss Wright was selected to paint the picture not only on account of her skill with the brush, but because she has been actively associated with the suffrage movement … For years, no other painting by Miss Wright has been barred from the exhibition by the Royal Academicians, and therefore the suffragettes are especially indignant over the exclusion of their leader’s portrait.33 Although the source of the story is unknown, it was probably initiated by the artist, who had contacts in America, and certainly endorsed by the Women’s Social and Political Union. In it, the portrait’s rejection at the hands of the selection committee is not interpreted as a judgement on its merits as a work of art but as a rejection of Christabel Pankhurst herself. The trope of a portrait as a proxy for its sitter extends back to the Renaissance, when it provided comfort in the absence of its subject. For the Royal Academy, a portrait of Christabel Pankhurst was as potentially dangerous as the sitter herself in its capacity to challenge the authority and traditions of the institution. The Royal Academy had faced ‘assaults’ by women before in the form of petitions and protests, over the right to be admitted as students and the right to study from the nude figure.34 The selection committee may have had in mind the recent ‘Trojan horse raid’ in which Christabel Pankhurst and associates had gained entry to the House of Commons by way of a furniture removal van. It is possible that the submission of this portrait could well have been construed by Royal Academicians as another attempt by the Women’s Social and Political Union, under the auspices of the artist Ethel Wright, to gain covert entry for their leader to another significant site of public discourse. However, there is no further evidence of the ‘storm’; no such story appeared in the British press, and it predates the suppression of suffrage stories in earnest.35 It is most likely that the never-ceasing Women’s Social and Political Union propaganda machine saw an opportunity to create a ‘storm’, by citing the Royal Academy as

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another institution that was standing in the way of women’s visual and political representation.36 In so doing, they were establishing a contentious relationship with the Royal Academy that presaged the violent attacks on works of art enacted there by suffragettes and at other sites in London and Manchester in 1914.

Ethel Wright: Identity and opportunity For much of her career, Ethel Wright epitomized the fashionable woman artist (Figure 7.4). After a period of study in Paris, her painting Bonjour, Pierrot! was displayed on the coveted ‘line’ at the Royal Academy in 1892. Described as a ‘daring experiment for the young artist to choose … for her first Academy picture’, it was subsequently sold to the city art gallery in Oldham, and she became known as ‘The Painter of Pierrots’ (Plate 15).37 Another painting, The Path of Roses, was sold from the walls of the Royal Academy in 1889 to the Atkinson Gallery in Southport, courtesy of the patron Charles Scarisbrick (1839–1923). Securing the favour of patrons and public galleries was essential for a professional artist working in the late nineteenth century and a major achievement for a woman.38 According to Hearth and Home, ‘Few women artists have advanced more rapidly during recent years than Miss Ethel Wright, who has made for herself in a very short space of time name and fame’.39 Wright was born in 1866, the year in which the first petition asking for votes for women was presented to parliament, a key moment in the modern suffrage campaign. However, by the 1890s, by which time Wright had begun her professional career, the campaign had lost impetus. Additionally, although considerable connectivity had existed between the suffrage movement in the mid-nineteenth century and the careers of women artists who overcame considerable barriers to training and exhibition, by the end of the century women artists were relatively commonplace and the progress of their careers was no longer so explicitly linked to the suffrage campaign. During her youth, and while enjoying her early success, Wright was perhaps only dimly aware of the debt she owed her pioneering predecessors. Nevertheless, equality with their male contemporaries had not been achieved, evidenced by their continued exclusion from membership of the Royal Academy. Even commentators, who praised Wright’s work, always identified the debt she owed to her male mentors: the artists John Seymour Lucas (1849–1923) and particularly Solomon J. Solomon (1860–1927), who, it was asserted, ‘can certainly claim that he directed the work … to her gain and advancement’.40 Like the artist Louise Jopling (1843–1933), who is far better known today, Wright’s attractive appearance ensured that she was ‘written about, talked about, drawn and painted’, which in turn promoted her career.41 Her private life was the subject of interest to the popular press, where she was described as a ‘society beauty and heiress’.42 Wright’s own identity, in its diverse

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FIGURE 7.4  After Hayman Seleg Mendelssohn, Ethel Wright, c. 1896, halftone reproduction, NPG139620 © National Portrait Gallery, London. forms, has been explored in a number of portraits. The artist Arthur Hacker (1858–1919), for whom she sat over fifty times, does not show Wright as an artist, but as the archetypal elegant woman of the period (Figure 7.5).43 In 1894, she was represented at the Royal Academy both as the artist of a

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FIGURE 7.5  Arthur Hacker, Ethel Wright, The Sketch, February 1893.

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portrait on display, having painted Lady Ada Osborne (untraced), and also as a sitter in Your Health, Solomon J. Solomon’s painting of a society dinner party (untraced). It is clear that her success as an artist was inextricably linked to her social network and appearance. In her own work, Wright incorporated self-portraits, often in the guise of a coquettish Columbina, teasing her forlorn Pierrot lover.44 She was comfortable playing with her own artistic identity through costume and performance, and when she sat for William Maw Egley (1826–1915), she was dressed as the eighteenth-century celebrity and political figure, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (exhibited 1892, untraced).45 Indeed, there was a refocused interest on the eighteenth century during the 1890s that extended to its visual culture, particularly portraits of women. While this could be regarded as an orthodox reaction to the pursuit of equality, for Wright, the ‘grand manner’ portraits by artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) and George Romney (1734–1802), which had been exhibited at the hugely popular ‘Fair Women’ exhibitions since 1894, provided a valuable model when considering how to represent a militant suffragette.46 By tracing her career, it becomes clear that Wright was not wholly dependent on male supporters, but acted with considerable enterprise and autonomy in seeking out new opportunities while attempting a style that would set her apart from popular notions of the ‘lady artist’. As she asserted in The Artist in 1898: ‘I know that the weakness of many lady artists is prettiness. I would sooner paint ugly work than degenerate to that’.47 In doing so, Wright frequented her studio ‘with the regularity of a business man’ and painted subjects often favoured by men, including academic history or mythological paintings that included erotic female nudes.48 As Susan Casteras points out, this ‘conventionality’, in terms of subject matter, was driven by a consistent need to make an income, but also to seek acceptance across the art world, not just within networks of women artists.49 On the strength of this type of work, Wright was one of several women for whom critics demanded representation in the Royal Academy; ‘shall she and all other women painters knock unceasingly without avail at the doors of Burlington House … not to-day or to-morrow perhaps, but the door should not be kept closed for ever’. When Wright’s paintings of Pierrots ceased to attract buyers, her professional reputation ensured that portrait commissions provided an income.50 In 1900, she went as far as New York to secure work as a graphic artist and portrait painter. Travelling with a number of her portraits, Wright organized an exhibition ‘at home’ to generate press interest and new commissions; ‘it is in portraiture that Miss Wright prefers to be known in this country’.51 Her interest in female advancement is demonstrated by a design she produced for the cover of the magazine Success in 1902, depicting three women in academic robes (Plate 16). The composition is adapted from one of her own paintings, Song of Ages (now lost), and anticipates the recurrent theme of the female graduate that can be found in suffrage visual imagery, including the representation of Christabel Pankhurst herself.

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The militant movement coincided with a transitional period in Wright’s life and career, which may have provided dual motivation in making this portrait, both personal and professional. Having just returned from several years in America, she needed to reassert herself in the art world. Wright was apparently separated from her husband, the theatre manager Armiger Barclay (1858–1930), who she married in 1898 and divorced in 1910.52 By 1908, membership to the Royal Academy was still an unfulfilled ambition for all women, and Wright possibly experienced the strain of self-reliance. Painting Christabel Pankhurst was likely to have been a professional and commercial strategy and as such it was natural that her first aspiration was that it would be shown at the Royal Academy, where she had enjoyed her most significant successes. As Louise Jopling asserted, ‘It is a great help to an artist to paint a celebrity … the picture is certain of being talked about’.53 As a new figure in politics, Wright no doubt hoped that a portrait of Pankhurst would attract the notice of critics and visitors if exhibited on the walls of the Royal Academy, but perhaps overestimated the Academy’s tolerance for such a divisive figure. Despite this set-back, she continued to believe in her portrait’s commercial potential, retaining copyright and the right to make half-size copies for a further seven years after it was sold.54 While the advent of militancy offered new subjects and commercial possibilities, it posed several practical and personal challenges for women artists. Ethel Wright continued to negotiate a conventional artistic career, setting her apart from suffragette artists such as Sylvia Pankhurst, who suspended her career early in the campaign to devote herself wholly to militant action. While Wright donated her portrait of Pankhurst to the Women’s Social and Political Union, she did not become a member and neither did she participate in the type of direct action encouraged by her sitter. Her ambivalence is not unusual, reflecting the personal conflict experienced by many women at the time in relation to the ideology and practice of militancy, which fundamentally challenged ingrained beliefs and behaviours. Katrina Rolley observes that the Women’s Social and Political Union’s actions had the potential to involve its members in the most ‘intense personal struggles’ because militancy challenged self-definitions as well as those imposed by society.55 Painting such a controversial figure as Christabel Pankhurst had the potential to alienate Wright from the professional society that had supported and promoted her for decades, and no doubt forced her to question her identity and allegiances, both personal and professional, as she was drawn into her sitter’s orbit. The portrait embodies the ‘suffragette spirit’, a concept gaining currency within the movement at this time, and which helped propel militant action. Writing in the programme, chief propagandist Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954) described the movement as creating ‘an absolute need for the expression of its awakened spirit’.56 In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of ‘conversion’ narratives were published, usually in the form of memoirs, in which former suffragettes described their spiritual and moral transformation

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during the early years of the campaign, often after hearing a militant leader speaking at a rally.57 Based as it was on seeing Pankhurst speaking at rallies, Wright’s portrait may be indicative of her own political awakening and, as such, can be read as a self-portrait into which she has projected for herself a new identity in the hope of emancipation. A comparable example in suffragette portraiture was made by Sylvia Pankhurst at around the same time, in which she presents in the bonnet of a working woman, and depicted in an attitude of quasi-religious fervour (Plate 17). This portrait was described by Sylvia Pankhurst’s son in a letter to the National Portrait Gallery as ‘not fully a self-portrait but a drawing of a suffragette’. Both works depict an individual likeness, but they embody the spirit and conviction associated with all participants in the militant movement. However, when it was hung in Duval’s dining room, the urgency of the portrait’s political message was considerably weakened in a domestic context, but not altogether extinguished. Duval became an important supporter and patron for Wright and their relationship is comparable to those that developed within nineteenth-century suffrage circles, whereby portraits were born out of mutual admiration and shared political aspirations. Duval commissioned Wright to paint a portrait of herself to illustrate her pamphlet ‘Love and Honour but not Obey’, written in justification of her much-publicized decision to omit the word ‘obey’ in her marriage vows (Figure 7.6). Befitting of the ultra-feminine identity of the Women’s Social and Political Union, Wright depicts Duval as a traditional bride wearing a floral wreath, and this approach may have helped render the text’s radical agenda more palatable.58

Suffragette portraits and national representation The foundation of the National Portrait Gallery in 1856 endowed portraiture with ‘national significance’ and created an imperative for suffrage campaigners to seek visual representation as a way of legitimizing their claim to a significant role in British history.59 The way in which the institution responded to the opportunity to acquire suffrage portraits, both during the militant era and after full emancipation had been achieved, is telling of shifting attitudes across the century towards suffragettes and suitable modes of representation. In her analysis of patterns of collecting female portraiture at the Gallery, Lara Perry observes that there was a ‘fine line which divided the acceptable from the unacceptable face of women’s participation in the nation’.60 When considering the process of recording the history of the movement, Hilda Kean describes the militants as ‘the first public historians of their own suffrage history’, evident in the pictorial display at the Women’s

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FIGURE 7.6  Una Dugdale Duval’s Love and Honour but Not Obey pamphlet with cover illustration by Ethel Wright, 1913. RP6921 NPG Archive © National Portrait Gallery, London.

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Exhibition, and portraiture was integral to the process of commemorating and memorializing key participants.61 After full franchise had been achieved in 1928, Una Dugdale Duval became treasurer of the Suffrage Fellowship, a group that undertook to ‘perpetuate the memory of the pioneers’ and to rectify a perceived lack of public recognition for what militancy had achieved. In 1951, she managed the Suffrage Fellowship’s donation of a large collection of artwork and memorabilia to the Museum of London.62 Despite her personal attachment to the portrait of Christabel Pankhurst, Duval felt strongly that the National Portrait Gallery was its rightful home and offered the portrait as a gift in 1966 and 1973. Her view was not shared by the Gallery who turned it down, mirroring its rejection by the Royal Academy decades before. Although possessing no other portrait of Christabel Pankhurst, the work was dismissed as wholly unsuitable and was not presented to Gallery Trustees, as was the practice when considering potential acquisitions: ‘it would be virtually impossible to show it on public exhibition. I wonder whether there would not be some destination for the portrait which would be a more apposite home’.63 It is possible that the Gallery was cautious, just as the Royal Academy had been several decades before, about the disarmingly direct message conveyed in the picture, at once portrait and propaganda, and perhaps felt that it would sit uneasily when displayed alongside more conventional portraits of statesmen and war heroes. It is important to note that the Gallery did not oppose certain other portraits of militant figures, and during the same period as Wright’s portrait was offered, it accepted the self-portrait drawing by Sylvia Pankhurst in 1964 and a portrait of Charlotte Despard by Mary Edis (1881–1976) in 1974.64 In fact, the National Portrait Gallery’s first suffrage portrait was acquired in 1929, when it accepted as a gift a portrait of the Women’s Social and Political Union founder Emmeline Pankhurst, painted from life by her friend Georgina Brackenbury (1865–1949) in 1927 (Plate 18).65 This work had been offered by the Pankhurst Memorial Society shortly after the sitter’s death and the Gallery disregarded its ten-year rule to accept the work. It is likely that the Gallery circumvented protocol to make this exceptional acquisition in the light of women having achieved the full franchise and suggests that any reticence the Trustees may have previously had about suffrage campaigners, expressed to Helen Blackburn in the 1890s, had been overcome by historic events. This representation has been the most regularly displayed suffrage portrait in the National Portrait Gallery until the acquisition of Wright’s portrait of Emmeline’s daughter Christabel in 2011. But why was Brackenbury’s portrait of an elderly Emmeline Pankhurst acceptable in a way that Wright’s portrait, until very recently, was not? Emmeline Pankhurst’s militant history meant that her presence on the walls of a public gallery was no less contentious than that of Christabel: in 1914, when works of art in public collections had been attacked,

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Emmeline Pankhurst’s arrest was cited as the motivating factor by several perpetrators. Brackenbury, who had herself been a notorious suffragette, presents Emmeline Pankhurst as dignified and distinctly unthreatening. By the time artist and sitter were making the portrait, their lifetime ambition had been achieved. Pankhurst was now an elder figure who had been accepted into the political class. The portrait recalls Susan Dacre’s portrait of Lydia Becker, which had eventually been acquired by Manchester City Art Gallery in 1920. Borrowing from models of male portraiture, Brackenbury’s portrait sits comfortably in a public gallery and the ‘suffragette spirit’, so palpable in Wright’s portrait of Christabel Pankhurst, has been safely diffused. Brackenbury’s portrait paved the way for a number of portraits of former militant suffragettes commissioned by various memorial committees, including Millicent Garrett Fawcett by Annie Swynnerton (1847–1929) (1929), Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence (1871–1961), painted by Dame Laura Knight (1877–1970) (1936, now destroyed) (Figure 7.7), and Flora ‘General’ Drummond (1878–1949) by Flora Lion (1878–1958) (Plate 19).66 Wearing their Women’s Social and Political Union medals, the sitters in these portraits, made over a decade after the battle for votes had been won, share a similarly benign demeanour. These portraits put paid to the predictions of the Anti-Suffrage Society portrait painter, as satirized by

FIGURE 7.7 Photograph of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence and Laura Knight, c. 1936. Vintage bromide print, NPG137321, given by Emily Pethick, 2013 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

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the Suffrage Atelier in 1912, that an enfranchised Britannia would become crazed and ‘unsexed’. *** Although little discussed in the historiography, portraiture was historically important as part of the visual culture of the women’s suffrage movement – whether through paintings of contemporaries or those which represented pioneering women from previous centuries. These portraits were a symptom of a wider national interest in representing and immortalizing important individuals during the nineteenth century that culminated in the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery in 1856. Ethel Wright’s portrait of Christabel Pankhurst is as much a product of the militant spectacle, drawing from its visual culture, as it was to become a part of it, and was painted at the cusp of an unprecedented extension of women’s proscribed sphere of public influence. Despite her success, Wright is one of many artists so far overlooked in the feminist project to restore women in the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British art, due in part to the general invisibility of her work to present-day audiences – even works in public collections are rarely displayed – and also her tendency to mirror rather than subvert or challenge the subject matter of her male contemporaries. However, Wright’s involvement in the Women’s Exhibition in 1909 was a moment of personal and professional transition. Afterwards, her style underwent a radical change, influenced by continental modernism and, in 1912, she exhibited with the avant-garde Rhythm Group. The bequest of this portrait to the National Portrait Gallery, and its final acceptance in 2011, has secured for Wright a place in the growing canon of women artists, while ensuring a fuller representation of the suffrage story within popular consciousness.

Notes 1

‘Pictures and Their Painters: Miss Ethel Wright, a Painter of Pierrots’, Pearson’s Magazine, September 1898, 235–240, 236. 2 Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1987). 3 Kenneth McConkey, Edwardian Portraits: Images of an Age of Opulence (Suffolk: Antique Collector’s Club, 1987), 9. 4 Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 151. Italics in original text. 5 Deborah Cherry, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain, 1850–1900 (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). 6 Ibid., 191. 7 Katrina Rolley, ‘Fashion, Femininity and the Fight for the Vote’, Art History, 13:1 (1990): 47–71, 62. 8 Cherry, Beyond the Frame, 195.

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9 Rule revoked in 1969. 10 Press Copy Book Vol. 12, 1900–1901, 400, Heinz Archive and Library, National Portrait Gallery, London. 11 Cherry, Beyond the Frame, 195. 12 Emma Ferry, ‘A Novelty Among Exhibitions’, in Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870–1950, eds., Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth (London: Ashgate, 2007), 51–66, 59. 13 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 62. 14 ‘The Women’s Exhibition’, Votes for Women, 16 April 1909, 550. 15 ‘Portrait of Christabel Pankhurst’, Votes for Women, 12 March 1909, 422. ‘Miss Ethel Wright, who has been painting a portrait of Miss Christabel Pankhurst, writes to say that she will be pleased to see all members and friends of the W.S.P.U. [Women’s Social and Political Union] at her studio, 24 Stratford Studios, Buckingham Palace Gate, on Saturdays, Sundays and Tuesdays, in March from 2 to 5 o’clock, to the private view of her picture on presentation of a visiting card. Miss Wright is well-known in the artistic world, and is an exhibitor at the Royal Academy’. 16 Letter from Una Duval to the National Portrait Gallery, 14 September 1965, RP6921, Heinz Archive and Library, National Portrait Gallery, London. 17 ‘Portrait of Christabel Pankhurst’, Votes for Women, 19 March 1909, 449. 18 Rolley, ‘Fashion, Femininity and the Fight for the Vote’, 50. 19 ‘Comments of the Press: Exhibition at Knightsbridge’, Votes for Women, 21 May 1909, 691. 20 ‘At the Prince’s Skating Rink: A Striking Pictorial Record’, Votes for Women, 30 April 1909, 598. 21 Maria Quirk, ‘Portraiture and Patronage: Women, Reputation and the Business of Selling Art, 1880–1940’, Visual Culture in Britain, 1:2 (2016): 181–199, 184. 22 Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 171. 23 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, The Women’s Exhibition (London: The Women’s Press, 1909), 75. 24 Elizabeth Crawford’s definitive guide The Women’s Suffrage Movement gives notes of over forty references to portraits of which just five date from the militant period. Most of these works are untraced, for many there is no image and the medium is often unknown. 25 Anon., ‘A Boadicea of Politics’, The Bystander, 1 April 1908, 19. 26 Pankhurst sitting for John Tussaud, photograph by unknown photographer, 1909, NN22828, Museum of London. 27 Rolley, ‘Fashion, Femininity and the Fight for the Vote’, 56. 28 ‘Result of the Women’s Exhibition’, Votes for Women, 4 June 1909, 757. 29 I am grateful to Una Dugdale Duval’s descendants Susie Grandfield and Belinda Ellis in granting me access to her diaries. 30 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette: A History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905–10 (London: Gay and Hancock, 1911), 283. 31 Pankhurst is also shown with this pose in a photograph by Lizzie Caswall Smith, dated 1906, NN22665, Museum of London. 32 McConkey, Edwardian Portraits, 36.

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33 ‘England’s Suffragette Martyr’, Harper’s Weekly, 5 June 1909, 28. 34 Amy Bluett, Striving After Excellence: Victorian Women and the Fight for Arts Training, Royal Academy, March 2015. Available online: https://www. royalacademy.org.uk/article/striving-after-excellence-victorian (accessed 18 September 2017). 35 Maria DiCenzo, ‘Militant Distribution: Votes for Women and the Public Sphere’, Media History, 6:2 (2000): 115–128, 117. 36 Neither the portrait nor its artist is mentioned in minutes of meetings at the Royal Academy during 1909. 37 ‘Pictures and their Painters’, 236. 38 Quirk, ‘Portraiture and Patronage’, 182. 39 ‘Women in the World of Art, no. V: Miss Ethel Wright’, Hearth and Home, 22 October 1896, 881. 40 F. M., ‘The Work of Miss Ethel Wright’, The Artist, October 1898, 33–43, 36. 41 Quirk, ‘Portraiture and Patronage’, 188. 42 ‘Literature and Art’, New Zealand Herald, 6 January 1894, supplement. 43 The portrait was shown at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, where Helen Blackburn was exhibiting her gallery of eminent women. 44 F. M., ‘The Work of Miss Ethel Wright’, 36. 45 ‘The People’s Palace Annual Exhibition of Pictures’, The Palace Journal, 19 August 1892, 117. 46 Margaret Maynard, ‘A Dream of Fair Women: Revival Dress and the Formation of Images of Late Victorian Femininity’, Art History, 12:3 (1989): 322–341, 331. 47 F. M., ‘The Work of Miss Ethel Wright’, 33. 48 Ibid., 43. 49 Susan Casteras, A Struggle for Fame: Victorian Women Artists and Authors (New Haven, CT: Yale Centre for British Art, 1994), 26. 50 F. M., ‘The Work of Miss Ethel Wright’, 43. 51 ‘The Week in Art’, The New York Times, 8 December 1900, 72. 52 ‘The Pall Mall Gazette Office’, The Pall Mall Gazette, 19 December 1898, 9. Available online: https://www.british-genealogy.com/archive/index. php/t-68165.html?s=e8373482016220a56044e3421343f674 (accessed 17 September 2017). 53 Quirk, ‘Portraiture and Patronage’, 189. 54 Receipt dated 22 May 1909, Heinz Library and Archive, National Portrait Gallery, London. 55 Rolley, ‘Fashion, Femininity and the Fight for the Vote’, 50. 56 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, The Women’s Exhibition (London: The Women’s Press, 1909), 13. 57 Hilda Kean, ‘Searching for the Past in Present Defeat: The Construction of Historical and Political Identity in British Feminism in the 20s and 30s’, Women’s History Review, 3:1 (1994): 57–80, 69. 58 Duval commissioned a further portrait of herself from Wright (private collection). Submitted to the Royal Academy in 1913 ‘by invitation’ according to a label on the stretcher, it does not appear in the catalogue. 59 Cherry, Beyond the Frame, 195. 60 Lara Perry, History’s Beauties: Women and the National Portrait Gallery, 1856–1900 (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 5.

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61 Hilda Kean, ‘Public History and Popular Memory: Issues in the Commemoration of the British Militant Suffrage Campaign’, Women’s History Review, 14:3/4 (2005): 581–602, 581. 62 Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 178. 63 Letter to Una Dugdale Duval from the National Portrait Gallery, 20 June 1966, RP6921, the Heinz Library and Archive, National Portrait Gallery, London. 64 Acquired in spite of the fact that Gallery Trustees noted that Despard did not feature in the Dictionary of National Biography, one measure by which the Gallery considered an acquisition. See RP5007, Heinz Archive and Library, National Portrait Gallery, London. 65 Before delivering her portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst to the National Portrait Gallery, Brackenbury submitted it to the Royal Academy for the 1929 summer exhibition; however, it was rejected by their selection committee. 66 Rosie Broadley, Laura Knight Portraits (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2013), 20.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Suffragette attacks on art, 1913–1914 Krista Cowman

Just before 9pm on Thursday, 3 April 1913, an attendant on duty at Manchester Art Gallery heard breaking glass in Room 2, the main room of the Gallery’s permanent collection, where works by John Everett Millais (1829–1896), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) and other leading Pre-Raphaelite artists hung several deep along the walls. Hurrying into the room with another attendant, he saw: three women making a rush round the room, cracking the glass of the biggest and most valuable pictures in the collection. They had already completed their work on the right side of the room going in, where pictures by such great artists as Watts, Leighton, Burne-Jones and Rossetti were hung, and were going round the top of the room. The outrage was quickly and neatly carried through and when the attendants came running in the women were within reach of two more large pictures … Thirteen pictures, most of them famous, [were] damaged.1 The three women – 33-year-old Lillian Forrester, a married university graduate of ‘no occupation’; 25-year-old Evelyn Manesta, a governess; and 48-year-old Annie Briggs, a housekeeper – were apprehended on the spot and arrested. All were involved with the original Manchester branch of the militant suffrage organization, the Women’s Social and Political Union, although Briggs denied having prior knowledge of the attack and was acquitted. Forrester and Manesta calmly explained their actions to the Chief Constable. Forrester said that she had ‘brok[en] the glass of the pictures

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as a protest against the shameful sentence passed upon Mrs Pankhurst today’; Manesta concurred it was ‘a protest against the wicked sentence passed upon Mrs Pankhurst’.2 This ‘shameful’ and ‘wicked’ sentence had been handed down at the Old Bailey a day earlier after Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), the founder and leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union, was tried under an obscure law (the ‘Malicious Damages to Property Act 1861’) in connection with an attack on Lloyd George’s (1863–1945) summer house at Walton, Surrey. Although there was no question of Pankhurst having been present at the attack, she was charged with being ‘an accessory before the fact’, the prosecuting council emphasizing the charismatic leader’s ability to exert ‘influence over the emotional members’ of the Union.3 Found guilty by a jury on the judge’s direction, she was sentenced to three years of penal servitude, the second heaviest sentence ever to be passed on a suffragette prisoner.4 Forrester and Manesta’s attack signalled a new departure in suffragette militancy. Iconoclasm now joined an expanding range of militant tactics.5 Between April 1913 and July 1914, suffragettes carried out a further nine attacks on paintings in public and private galleries. Seven were in London (two at the National Gallery, three at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition, one at the Doré Gallery and one at the National Portrait Gallery), one in Scotland (the Royal Scottish Academy) and one in Birmingham (Birmingham City Art Gallery). In total, suffragettes damaged a further fourteen paintings, some beyond repair.6 Some interpretations of suffragette iconoclasm separate the Manchester actions from the attacks of 1914. Rowena Fowler claimed that they ‘had more in common with the window smashing campaign than with the later attacks on works of art’, while Helen Scott noted that Forrester and Manesta ‘acted at night, and did not maximize the impact of their crime by courting publicity’.7 Nonetheless, the women’s decision to pursue an action which guaranteed arrest, and their justification for this, places the Manchester attack firmly within the trajectory of this new form of militancy, allowing us to view it as the starting point for subsequent ‘raids’ on different galleries. In this chapter, I examine these acts, placing them within the wider context of suffragette militancy to explore their significance within the Women’s Social and Political Union’s campaign for the vote (Table 8.1).8 To better understand these art attacks, we must locate them within a dynamic period of suffragette militancy when tactics were changing rapidly. Emmeline Pankhurst had formed the Women’s Social and Political Union in October 1903 with a group of women from the Manchester Independent Labour Party. Originally designed as a ‘ginger group’ of socialist women intent on holding Independent Labour Party MPs to account on their party policy of supporting votes for women, its political heritage was one of vigorous northern street politics, outdoor itinerant propagandizing with rumbustious heckling and frequent legal challenges for obstruction.9 Emmeline Pankhurst was first arrested in June 1896, when she

Work(s) attacked

Watts, Prayer, Paolo and Francesca, The Hon. J. L. Motley Leighton, The Last Watch of Hero, Captive Andromache; Rossetti, Astarte Syriaca; Burne-Jones, Sibylla Delphica; Millais, The Flood, Birnam Woods; Briton Riviere, The Last of the Garrison; Strudwick, The Golden Apples of Spring; Hacker, The Syrinx; Holman Hunt, The Shadow of the Cross

Velázquez, Venus at her Mirror

Sargent, Henry James

Place

Manchester Art Gallery 2 April 1913

National Gallery 10 March 1914

Royal Academy 4 May 1914

Table 8.1:  Suffragette Attacks on Art

Mary Aldham 22/11/11 (arrested as 07/03/12 Mary Wood) 19/03/12 17/11/13

11/3/13 8/7/13 18/7/13 29/7/13 9/8/13 21/10/13

29/1/13 none recorded

Lillian Forrester Evelyn Manesta

Mary Richardson

Previous arrestsa

Perpetrator

Emphasized the difference between authorities’ reactions to Edward Carson and to suffrage militancy, the different values attached to art produced by men and women, warned that no property would be safe until women had votes.

Sentence and treatment of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Sentence of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Justification after arrest

SUFFRAGETTE ATTACKS ON ART, 1913–1914 187

Gertrude Mary Ansell

Herkomer, Duke of Wellington

Five paintings in the Venetian roomb

Clausen, Primavera

Lavery, Portrait study of the King

Bartolozzi, Love Wounded; Shapland, Grand Canal Venice

Royal Academy 12 May 1914

National Gallery 22 May 1914

Royal Academy 22 May 1914

Royal Scottish Academy 23 May 1914

Doré Gallery 3 June 1914

Ivy Bonn

Maude Edwards

Maude Kate Smith (arrested as Mary Spencer)

Grace Marcon (arrested as Freda Graham)

Perpetrator

Work(s) attacked

Place

None recorded

None recorded

07/03/12

11/08/13 29/10/13

14/10/08 02/08/13

Previous arrestsa

Compared actions to ‘war’, noted that women were willing to die before giving in and that other suffragettes would continue to destroy paintings.

Used court appearance to emphasize masculine character of judiciary.

Referred to Edward Carson, noted that other suffragettes would continue to destroy paintings.

Protest against the King’s refusal to receive Women’s Social and Political Union’s deputation.

Claimed to follow example set by Edward Carson; referred to action as her ‘duty’.

Justification after arrest

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b

24/11/11 05/03/12

Margaret Gibb 04/03/13 (arrested as Ann Hunt)

Bertha Ryland

Protest against Reginald McKenna’s refusal to receive Women’s Social and Political Union deputation.

Emphasized difference between treatment of Ulster militants and suffrage militants.

Compiled from The National Archive HO45/24665 Index of Women Arrested, 1906–1914. There is much discrepancy between the names of paintings in various newspaper accounts, and no artists names are given.

Millais, Carlyle

National Portrait Gallery 17 July 1914

a

Romney, Master John Bensley Thornhill

Birmingham City Art Gallery 8 June 1914

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joined other northern socialists holding public Sunday meetings at Boggart Hole Clough, in defiance of the local authorities who wished to restrict this popular Manchester beauty spot for more sedate Sunday activities.10 Vigorous and controversial outdoor public meetings were familiar territory for Independent Labour Party women and the Women’s Social and Political Union imported these tactics into its new campaign for the parliamentary vote. Suffragettes’ first militant actions thus drew on well-established traditions of radical and socialist political behaviours. Indeed, they were so unremarkable that there is no clear consensus about when suffragette militancy began. Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958) placed her own ‘first militant step’ in February 1904, when she attempted to move an amendment to the main motion advanced by Winston Churchill (1874–1965) at a large Liberal public meeting, standing her ground in the face of a hostile audience.11 Emmeline Pankhurst suggested May 1905. She took a small group of women to Westminster, where a Woman’s Suffrage Bill was being debated. When this was deliberately ‘talked out’ by MPs, Pankhurst held a protest meeting on the pavement outside Parliament which was promptly moved on by the police, claiming that this, ‘a demonstration such as no oldfashioned suffragist had attempted’, differentiated her tactics from those of previous suffrage campaigners who preferred to work within the law.12 Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) dated militancy from the better-known events at a Liberal election rally at the Free Trade Hall on 13 October 1905, when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney (1879–1953) were first ejected and then arrested after demanding to know whether a Liberal government would give votes to women.13 When they refused the option of a fine they were jailed for a week, transforming the grounds of suffrage campaigning in Britain. Suffragettes compared their actions with those taken by men involved in nineteenth-century franchise campaigns. The Free Trade Hall arrests were at the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, meaning that suffragettes could claim to be fighting for political rights ‘as their forefathers had done at the same place’.14 Chartist legacies were also invoked.15 The impact of militancy  – especially arrests – on public opinion was summarized by Socialist leader Keir Hardie (1856–1915), who sent a telegram to Emmeline Pankhurst the day after Christabel and Annie were sentenced: ‘The thing is a dastardly outrage, but do not worry, it will do immense good to the cause’.16 Hardie was proved right when the publicity that the act attracted put the Women’s Social and Political Union on the front pages of many early twentieth-century newspapers. These early acts of militancy did not necessarily involve women committing criminal acts, and their imprisonment was a result of the Union’s policy to refuse to pay fines levied for violations of civil law. Arrest and imprisonment became a key aim of the militant campaign. A series of highprofile militant demonstrations, the ‘Women’s Parliaments’, were organized

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in London between 1907 and 1910. These theatrical spectacles captured the imagination of the popular illustrated press. Well-dressed middle- and upper-class women, prepared to ‘shriek and fight … like amazons’ as they battled against police lines before the iconic Palace of Westminster, joined groups of ‘Lancashire Lassies’ in shawls whose ‘clogs clattered’ in the Commons’ yard. Headlines referred to participants’ sex and emphasized the gendered dimension of their transgressions with illustrations portraying them as either ugly, elderly and mannish or young, naïve and apolitical, all underlining the inappropriateness of their actions.17 As the numbers of arrests – and the subsequent publicity for the militant campaign – rose, the Home Office’s response hardened. While suffragettes’ actions remained broadly the same, sentences began to increase. ‘Repeat’ offenders were often refused the option of a fine. Incarceration offered women further platforms for voicing their demands in court and inside prison where militancy was continued through actions designed to subvert the prison routine. Prison authorities were less likely to recognize suffragettes as political prisoners and afford them the privileges of dress and limited recreation that went with this status, and hunger striking (the suffragette’s main protest against the denial of political prisoner status) was now met with forcible feeding.18 Some suffragettes reacted with stronger forms of direct action. In June 1908, Mary Leigh (1885–1978) and Edith New (1877– 1951), two young board school teachers, broke windows in government offices as a protest against police violence during a Women’s Social and Political Union demonstration earlier that month.19 Other suffragettes followed their example the following year when, in tandem with a Women’s Parliament, windows were broken at the Treasury, Privy Council, Admiralty and Home Office.20 Following the notorious ‘Black Friday’ demonstration of November 1910, when women were brutally beaten and severely injured by the police, the Women’s Social and Political Union adopted a policy of mass, collective window-smashing (repeated in 1911 and 1912) arguing that ‘a broken window was a lesser evil than a broken body’.21 Liz Stanley and Ann Morley have characterized the suffragette response as a reactive phenomenon whereby suffragettes augmented their militant tactics in the face of increasing state violence rather than initiating more violent actions themselves.22 Despite increasing levels of suffragette violence, the Union retained the central aim of maximizing publicity through large numbers of arrests for several years. This altered as women became increasingly prone to be sentenced for connections to the Union rather than for any specific actions they may have undertaken. In 1913, several of the Union’s leaders were charged with conspiracy to commit malicious damage in the wake of a sustained campaign of attacking property. Among them was Union office manager Harriet Kerr (1859–1940), who had refused even to take part in large marches and repeatedly stated that she was not prepared to go to prison for the cause; she received a sentence of twelve months in

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jail. Suffragettes now looked to commit acts that would draw publicity and cause maximum disruption but carried less risk of arrest. Iconoclasm seemed an ideal way of achieving this. It also fitted well with the Women’s Social and Political Union’s approach to violence which they wished to be ‘symbolic’ and directed at property rather than at people. This was difficult to sustain during large protests. There were concerns for the safety of individual politicians following events such as a demonstration in Birmingham in 1909, when slates were thrown somewhat indiscriminately from a rooftop by suffragettes and one member, Emily Blathwayt (c. 1852– 1940), hinted darkly at a plot involving Churchill and a motor car.23 Attacks on art or other forms of property retained high levels of symbolic violence while lessening the risk of injury to individuals. What differentiated the former was its organization which appeared to encourage rather than minimize the risk of arrest. In this context, the attacks on art between 1913 and 1914 appear unusual, despite their violence and illegality. They were not clandestine but were highly public, carried out in crowded galleries whose closed confines made arrest almost a certainty. Aside from Forrester and Manesta’s first attempt, art attacks were done by lone women which again minimized their chances of escaping. In anticipation of this, their impact was often enhanced through prepared statements issued from Union headquarters. One woman, Bertha Ryland (1882–1963) from Edgbaston, even left her [real] name and address on a piece of paper that explained why she had damaged a painting at Birmingham City Art Gallery in June 1914.24 Several women gave false names at the point of arrest. This may have been to avoid enhanced sentences as repeat offenders (the majority of the women had previous convictions for militancy) but more likely was part of the Union’s broader strategy to spread confusion about its plans and networks through concealing women’s identities. The tactic was largely successful – only one woman, Margaret Gibb, was recognized by the authorities when she was arrested as Ann Hunt in July 1914. The true identities of many of the women were only revealed decades later and it remains likely that the two arrested as Ivy Bonn and Maude Edwards remain hidden as no one of either name had any previous or subsequent connection to suffragette militancy. What prompted some suffragettes to spurn clandestine militancy for actions where arrest was a certainty? One possible explanation is that these high-profile attacks again offered suffragettes a public platform to justify their actions. In her appraisal of suffragette militancy, Laura E. Nym Mayhall reminds us how campaigners had consistently used the arena of the courtroom as a public space uniquely designed ‘to demonstrate the unequal power of women’ against the state.25 The press representatives who eagerly thronged the police courts to report on suffragettes’ early prosecutions at Women’s Parliaments noted and reproduced women’s speeches in detail, even as magistrates attempted to silence them. In court, suffragettes were thus able to articulate the broader concerns underpinning their protest in

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ways that were impossible during the melee of a militant demonstration and to get their arguments before a wider public through an interested press. Other suffragettes in the public gallery would enhance the theatrical aspects of the court by interrupting proceedings and declaring loudly that disenfranchised women should not be subject to man-made laws when they had no scope to change them.26 Yet despite the spectacular dimensions of suffragettes’ court appearances, growing arrests led to a decline in press interest and coverage diminished (apart from in large-scale trials of leaders). Even when large numbers of women were arrested, such as in the waves of window-smashing raids in 1912, the scale of arrests left little space for anything other than a list of names and sentences in newspapers, and even these were sometimes omitted, offering suffragettes less chance to explain their actions to a wider public than in previous years. The high-profile nature of suffragette attacks on works of art drew much more press discussion to this form of direct action, reviving interest in suffragettes’ courtroom behaviour. All ten attacks were widely reported and the perpetrators’ own explanations were reproduced in detail. Public interest in these new ‘suffragette outrage[s]’ was so great that they featured in national and local newspapers even when there was no local connection. This revived level of coverage affords the opportunity to look in detail at one aspect of the more violent phase of suffragette militancy, considering both women’s choice of picture and their justification offered for the attack at the time, alongside locating these actions within the context of a broader militant campaign. Almost twelve months separated Forrester and Manesta’s actions in April 1913 from what was arguably the most famous attack on an artwork carried out by a suffragette. In the National Gallery in March 1914, Mary Richardson (1882–1961) attacked Diego Velázquez’s painting Venus at her Mirror (also known as the Rokeby Venus), recently purchased through a £45,000 public subscription to the National Collections Fund.27 In court, Richardson echoed Forrester and Manesta who situated their Manchester attack as a response to Emmeline Pankhurst’s severe sentence. By March 1914, much of this sentence remained unserved. Shortly after Pankhurst’s arrest, the government had passed the Temporary Discharge of Prisoners Act, a piece of emergency legislation aimed at destroying prison hunger strikes. Suffragette prisoners who refused food would be released on a temporary license once their health deteriorated, to be rearrested as soon as they were deemed fit. The Act (immediately nicknamed the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ by the Women’s Social and Political Union) reduced the chances of injuring women through forcible feeding but was not risk free and, by 1914, there were several high-profile prisoners including Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst whose health was becoming seriously compromised through repeated hunger strikes, releases and re-arrests. When Emmeline, weakened through successive hunger strikes and re-imprisonments since April 1913, was violently seized in Glasgow in March 1914, this provided the catalyst for Richardson’s protest.

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Several of the subsequent attacks on works of art were explained as protests against recent actions by the government or authorities. Mary Aldham (1828–1914) (arrested and charged under her maiden name of Wood) and Gertrude Mary Ansell (1861–1932) attacked paintings in the Royal Academy during its Summer Exhibition on 4 and 12 May 1914. Aldham, described as an ‘elderly suffragette’ and an ‘old woman with white hair’ (she was in her eighties), attacked John Singer Sargent’s (1856–1925) portrait of Henry James with a ‘hatchet’ concealed in her muff, breaking the glass and cutting the picture, with damage estimated at around 400 pounds.28 Barely a week later, Ansell carried out an almost identical attack on Hubert von Herkomer’s (1849–1914) portrait of the Duke of Wellington, inflicting two or three blows with a hatchet that she took into the gallery inside her muff. This time the damage (around £10) was less than that on the Sargent painting, as Herkomer’s picture was hung quite high on the gallery walls.29 Aldham and Ansell had both served previous prison sentences for militant suffrage activities, including window-smashing and were given sentences of six months for these attacks, the maximum permitted for damaging works of art. In court, both women offered similar justification for their actions, claiming that they were merely following the example of Sir Edward Carson (1854–1935), who ‘went scot free’.30 Ten days later when Maude Kate Smith (1881–1975) was arrested (as Mary Spencer) after attacking a picture in the same gallery, she was reported to have ‘said the usual stuff about Carson’ when taken into custody.31 Bertha Ryland echoed this after damaging a Romney portrait at Birmingham, when she demanded to know ‘why should suffrage militants be arrested when Ulster militants are not?’32 At the time of these attacks, Carson, a prominent Unionist politician, was the focus of much suffragette attention as he continued to strongly oppose votes for women while actively supporting the use of militancy in the Home Rule movement. In May 1914, it was announced that he would not be prosecuted over a gun-running incident when a large cache of arms was uncovered en route to Ulster militants. Flora Drummond (1878–1949) and other suffragettes subsequently spent several days picketing his home because this was now a ‘safe space’ for militant activists. The supposed leniency of the state towards Carson’s involvement with one form of political militancy was presented as a provocation by suffragettes, who demanded equal treatment for their own political tactics. Other suffragettes were motivated by the Women’s Social and Political Union’s unsuccessful attempt to take a deputation to King George V (1865– 1936) in May 1914. This action, later described by Sylvia Pankhurst (who took no part in it), as ‘the last great militant raid’, echoed earlier appeals to historical precedent and ancient constitutional practices.33 From January 1914, the Union repeatedly announced its intention to petition the King, arguing that ‘as voteless women’ its members were, in effect, ‘living in the time when the power of the Monarch was unlimited’ as they had no

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representation in Parliament.34 When the King refused to receive them, suffragettes responded in traditional fashion, calling a large demonstration of women from throughout Britain to march to the Palace on 21 May 1914 and demand an audience. This was met by large numbers of police at the Palace gates and several arrests ensued. Three gallery attacks were carried out in the immediate aftermath. Grace Marcon (b. 1889) (under the name of Freda Graham) damaged at least five paintings at the National Gallery on 22 May 1914. Marcon, previously jailed for throwing pepper at Lloyd George, said that she acted ‘as a protest against the act of King George in refusing to receive a constitutional deputation of women’.35 There was a further attack at the Royal Academy on the same day, and the following day a woman, giving the name of Maude Edwards and the ‘obviously exaggerated age of 75’, carried out an attack at the Royal Scottish Academy.36 Edwards’ target was Sir John Lavery’s (1854–1941) portrait of King George. However, although suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford claimed that ‘the picture was doubtless singled out to draw attention to the fact that Mrs Pankhurst’s attempt … to lead a deputation directly to the King had been repulsed by police’, Edwards did not connect her target directly to the deputation, but used the resulting publicity to draw attention to other dimensions of the suffrage campaign.37 Her trial was one of the most disruptive of those of suffragette iconoclasts. Scottish papers reported that forty supporters packed the public gallery at Edinburgh Sheriff Court where they ‘started to shout and make as much noise as they could with the purpose of obstructing the trial’. Edwards, who spoke with a pronounced English accent, repeatedly interrupted the court by calling its officials ‘men worshippers’ and asking, ‘why there [were] no women’ involved in her trial.38 Edwards’ reference to the lack of women involved in the judicial process was connected to a further explanation for suffragette iconoclasm. Since the 1913 publication of Christabel Pankhurst’s The Great Scourge and How to End It, the Women’s Social and Political Union had been campaigning against venereal disease, the ‘White Slave Trade’ and the sexual double standard, arguing that women’s votes might resolve these issues through giving women an equal voice in devising the laws through which sexual behaviour was policed. Several suffragettes invoked these grievances in court. Grace Marcon suggested the irony of prosecuting her for attacking one painting when ‘Every night pictures by the greatest Artist of all are being defaced in our streets — 80,000 of them every night’.39 Bertha Ryland’s written statement mentioned the Women’s Social and Political Union’s determination to ‘stamp out sexual immorality and its attendant horrors’ and Gertrude Mary Ansell similarly drew attention to the contemporary sexual exploitation of women and girls.40 Suffragettes also spoke of their ‘duty’ to carry out such actions, and Ivy Bonn made oblique reference to the death of Emily Davison (1872–1913) the previous year, saying that she and others were ‘willing to die for our cause’.41

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In a recent discussion of the art attacks, Linda Mulcahy suggested that those suffragettes who attacked paintings ‘argued that the artists and art galleries encouraged the overt sexualization of the female body … and idealized visions of women’.42 Contemporary explanations, however, did not always make these connections. Richardson most carefully selected her target (Figure 8.1). As a former art student, she was familiar with the National Gallery and its collection. The Rokeby Venus, described by The Times after her attack on it as depicting ‘the perfection of Womanhood at the moment when it passes from the bud to the flower’, offered an ideal of femininity on which a protest against male hypocrisy towards women could be built. In a carefully worded statement posted to the Women’s Social and Political Union’s offices just before her attack, Richardson explained how she had sought to ‘destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst who is the most beautiful character in modern history’. Richardson further explained her belief that ‘Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas’. Any ‘outcry’ against her act would be ‘hypocrisy as long as [the government] allow the destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and other

Image not available in this edition

FIGURE 8.1  ‘The Actual Damage Done to the Rokeby “Venus” by the Suffragette with a Chopper’, Illustrated London News, 14 March 1914. NEWS75 © The British Library Board.

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beautiful living women’.43 A hostile public was not easily convinced. Lynda Nead has explored how Richardson’s emphasis on the beauty of Velásquez’s subject was turned against her by a popular press determined to portray suffragettes as unattractive, unfeminine and mannish. Richardson was portrayed as a deviant, determined to destroy beauty that was intended to be available to the nation. Although she inflicted her blows with an axe, she was dubbed ‘Slasher Mary’, a ‘Slasher’ and a ‘Ripper’, phrases more usually associated with sensational reports of knife crime.44 Doubts were also cast on her sanity. In court, the prosecuting counsel expressed his regret that there was no evidence to consider her insane as he could ‘not conceive … any sort of cause’ that would justify her action in the case of a sane person.45 Against this, Richardson was at pains to underline the extent to which her action was considered rather than impetuous, reminding the judge that her act was ‘premeditated. What I did I had thought through very seriously before I undertook it’.46 Other attacks were less easy to link to the paintings’ subjects. Forrester and Manesta went for volume of paintings rather than specific ones. In the final incident at the Royal Academy on 22 May, Birmingham suffragette Maude Kate Smith attacked Primavera, a nude by Sir George Clausen (1852–1944), which depicted a young woman as an allegory of Spring. Rowena Fowler’s analysis of this attack suggested that the subject matter made the painting ‘an obvious target for a feminist attack, even though the terms and vocabulary in which a late twentieth-century feminist critique would be couched had not yet been formulated’.47 Smith felt differently. In her much later interview with scholar Brian Harrison, she made no comment on the painting’s subject matter other than to say that she felt unhappy about damaging it because it was ‘lovely’. She had targeted Primavera, she explained, as she had been ‘told that [it]was the picture of the year and it would be a good protest you see, attract a great deal of attention’.48 No critique of Primavera’s content was intended; the point was to select a picture that would ensure national press coverage and a wide public platform for her courtroom justification. In the event her appearance in court was somewhat muted due to her decision to begin a hunger strike as soon as she was arrested. Although Smith was in her early thirties at the point of the attack, there was no suspicion over her claim to be fifty and she had to be ‘supported’ into the dock where she made a short speech about suffragettes’ respect for human life rendering attacks on property and paintings the only alternative, before being helped from the court to begin her sentence. The selection of other paintings appear to have been even more haphazard. According to Fowler, Mary Aldham ‘had never heard of Henry James’ before attacking his portrait, and while the Women’s Social and Political Union’s newspaper The Suffragette connected the attack on the Duke of Wellington’s portrait with a nineteenth-century raid on his ancestor’s house by men demanding the vote, Gertrude Mary Ansell did not mention this when explaining her own motivation.49 Publicity and the

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opportunity to keep the broader claims of suffragettes in the public eye were the main factors behind this campaign; any painting that would attract press attention was a potential target. The official reaction to the suffragette’s destruction of art was immediate and severe. As Dario Gamboni observed, the campaign ‘corresponded to, and made political use of, the world of museums, tourism and commodification’.50 Many galleries closed in the immediate days after the attacks and those that remained open insisted on women leaving coats, muffs and bags in the cloakrooms. Helen Scott’s investigation of the topic drew attention to its potential for serious economic impact, underlined by the Association of Managers of Hotels who protested to the National Gallery about the ‘injurious effect of closing … on the Hotel trade’.51 The Government’s reaction was to order a series of clandestine ‘mug shots’ of suffragette prisoners. Pictures of eighteen women, taken by Britain’s first police surveillance team in 1914, were circulated to gallery managers.52 Ironically, after the rediscovery of the circumstances surrounding their production in the National Archives in 2003, the National Portrait Gallery placed them on display, transforming the images of women who had attacked art into its subject.53 Suffrage iconoclasm came to an abrupt halt along with the rest of the militant campaign when the First World War broke out in August 1914. The relatively small number of attacks and their timing towards the end of the campaign have obscured them in much suffrage history but they have been appraised by art historians and artists who have sought to reinterpret them in the context of later feminist campaigns. Rowena Fowler has suggested that it is now possible to read into these actions ‘a proto-feminist awareness of the sexual politics of art and connoisseurship which we are only now able to recognize and to articulate’.54 More recently a project by artist Carla Zaccagnini considered how such actions showed the suffragettes using ‘art’s forms and [their] position in society to comment upon social and political conditions’.55 Suffragette attacks have been connected to the actions of the modern-day Guerrilla Girls whose most famous poster Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum featured a classical nude not unlike the Rokeby Venus.56 Nonetheless, with the possible exception of Richardson’s attack, suffragette iconoclasm was not targeted at exposing the portrayal of women in art or the small numbers of women artists featured in British galleries, although Mary Aldham did say that the damage she caused to Sargent’s portrait of Henry James ‘would have been less’ had the picture been painted by a woman.57 Its ultimate aim was to persuade the public and the government of the necessity of votes for women. This aim, however, was always viewed by suffragettes as a means to wider ends rather than an end in itself, as the broader court statements of arrested suffrage iconoclasts suggests. Art attacks by suffragettes thus sit comfortably within accounts of suffragette militancy, and a wider trajectory of twentieth-century women’s militancy, that challenges cultural as well as social and political gender inequalities.

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Notes 1 2 3 4

‘Manchester Art Gallery Outrage’, Manchester Guardian, 4 April 1913, 9. ‘Art Gallery Outrage’, Manchester Guardian, 12 April 1913, 6. ‘The Trial of Mrs Pankhurst Opens’, Daily Mirror, 3 April 1913, 3. ‘Three Years’ Penal Servitude for Mrs Pankhurst’, Daily Mirror, 4 April 1913, 3. The longer sentences were on Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans for setting fire to a theatre in Dublin in October 1912, when Prime Minister Asquith visited the city. 5 Suffragette iconoclasm was showcased in the Tate Gallery’s exhibition Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm from the 2 October 2013 to 5 January 2014. See Lena Mohamed, ‘Suffragettes: The Political Value of Iconoclastic Acts’, in Art Under Attack, eds., Tabitha Barber and Stacy Boldrick (London: Tate, 2013), 114–125. 6 For summary, see Rowena Fowler, ‘Why Did Suffragettes Attack Works of Art?’, Journal of Women’s History, 2:2 (1991): 109–125, 125. 7 Ibid., 125; Helen Scott, ‘Confronting Nightmares: Responding to Iconoclasm in Western Museums and Art Galleries’ (PhD dissertation, University of St. Andrews, 2009), 86. 8 For a longer discussion of the varying forms of suffragette militancy and historical analyses of these, see Krista Cowman, ‘What Was Suffragette Militancy? An Exploration of the British Example’, in Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reforms, eds., Irma Sulkunen, Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi and Pirjo Markkola (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 299–322. 9 Sandra Stanley Holton, Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Routledge, 1996), 108. 10 For details of these events, see Owen Peterson, ‘Boggart Hole Clough: A Nineteenth Century “Speak-In”’, Southern Communication Journal, 35:4 (1970): 287–294. 11 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (London: Hutchinson, 1959), 46. 12 Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1914): 43. 13 E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Virago, 1977), 189–192. 14 E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905–1910 (London: Sturgis & Walton, 1911), 29. 15 See, for example, Emmeline Pankhurst’s comparison of Chartism and suffragette demonstrations at Leeds made at the Albert Hall, 19 March 1908. See also Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 42–44. 16 Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 190. 17 For a discussion of examples, see Krista Cowman, ‘What Was Suffragette Militancy’ and Krista Cowman, ‘“Doing Something Silly?” The Uses of Humour by the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903–14’, International Review of Social History, 52:5 (2007): 259–74, 261–262. 18 For militancy in prison, see June Purvis, ‘The Prison Experiences of Suffragettes in Edwardian Britain’, Women’s History Review, 4:1 (1995): 103–

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133; Alyson Brown, ‘Conflicting Objectives: Suffragette Prisoners and Female Prison Staff in Edwardian England’, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 31:5 (2002): 627–644. 19 See Krista Cowman, Women of the Right Spirit: Paid Organizers in the Women’s Social and Political Union (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 226, 229. 20 Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 387. 21 Pankhurst, Unshackled, 169. 22 For this see Liz Stanley with Ann Morley, The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison (London: The Women’s Press, 1988), 153. For a critique of militancy as reactive, see C. J. Bearman, ‘An Examination of Suffragette Violence’, English Historical Review, 120:48 (2005): 365–397, 374. 23 Emily Blathwayt’s diary, 1 August 1909, Gloucester Record Office. 24 ‘Suffragette Outrage at Art Gallery’, Birmingham Daily Post, 10 June 1914, 14. 25 Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement, 74. 26 See, for example, the protest made by Irene Miller and Teresa Billington Greig at Bow Street Police Court, 14 November 1907. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement, 73. 27 Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 2002), 36. 28 ‘Suffragette Outrage at the Academy’, Birmingham Daily Post, 5 May 1914, 7; ‘Academy Outrage’, Shepton Mallet Journal, 8 May 1914, 8; ‘Suffragette Outrage at the Academy’, Manchester Guardian, 5 May 1914, 11. For biographical details of Mary Aldham, see Lockdales Coins and Collectables Auction Catalogue 127, Lot 693, 12 September 2015. 29 ‘Second Outrage at the Academy’, Manchester Guardian, 13 May 1914, 9. 30 ‘Art and the Axe’, Western Daily Press, 14 May 1914, 11. 31 ‘Suffragette Madness’, Lincolnshire Echo, 22 May 1914, 3. 32 ‘Militant’s Extraordinary Message’, Manchester Evening News, 10 June 1914, 4. 33 Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 551. 34 Pankhurst, My Own Story, 338. 35 ‘National Gallery Picture Case’, Birmingham Mail, 26 May 1914, 3. 36 ‘More Outrages’, Manchester Guardian, 25 May 1914, 10. 37 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (London: Routledge, 2006), 236. 38 ‘Royal Scottish Academy Outrage’, Aberdeen Evening Express, 4 July 1914, 3. 39 ‘Hunger Strikers in Court’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 27 May 1914, 7. 40 ‘Militant’s Extraordinary Message’, Manchester Evening News, 10 June 1914, 4. 41 ‘Gallery Scene’, Western Mail, 4 June 1914. 42 Linda Mulcahy, ‘Docile Suffragettes? Resistance to Police Photography and the Possibility of Object-Subject Transformation’, Feminist Legal Studies, 23:1 (2015): 79–99, 84. 43 Mary Richardson’s statement was widely circulated in the press. This version appeared in ‘Hacked with a Hatchet’, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 10 March 1914, 3. 44 Nead, The Female Nude, 38–40.

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45 ‘The Slashed Venus’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 13 March 1914, 9. 46 Ibid., 13. 47 Fowler, ‘Why Did Suffragettes Attack’, 120. 48 Brian Harrison interview with Maude Kate Smith, 14 January 1975, Tape 9, The Women’s Library, London School of Economics. 49 Fowler, ‘Why Did Suffragettes Attack’, 117. 50 Dario Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism Since the French Revolution (London: Reaktion, 1997), 97. 51 Scott, ‘Confronting Nightmares’, 88. 52 Mulcahy, ‘Docile Suffragettes?’, 81. 53 On this point, see ibid., 97. 54 Fowler, ‘Why Did Suffragettes Attack’, 124. Fowler’s analysis excludes the Manchester attacks on the grounds that these only damaged the glass rather than the paintings, while Forrester and Manseta did not follow up by continuing to damage individual paintings as did, say, Mary Richardson. This was as much to do with their determination to attack as many pictures as possible as to a wish to limit the damage to the actual artwork, hence this attack has also been included here. 55 Emma Hedditch, ‘Gendered Transformations: Carla Zaccagnini’s Elements of Beauty’, Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, 6 (2014): 96–103, 103. 56 See, for example, Gabriela Macedo, ‘To Suffragettes. A Word of Advice … Blast, Gender and “Art Under Attack”’, Caderos de Literature Comparada, 31:12 (2014): 297–316. 57 ‘Suffragette Outrage’, Birmingham Daily Post, 5 May 1914, 7.

PART FOUR

Representing Suffrage

CHAPTER NINE

The spectacle of masculinity: Men and the visual culture of the suffrage campaign Joseph McBrinn

In her memoir of the ‘militant suffrage movement’, Sylvia Pankhurst (1882– 1960) recalled: When Cabinet Ministers, cast as they are in unheroic mould, discarded, to a large extent, the custom of delivering their pronouncements to great public gatherings where all might come, and instead frequently made their weighty utterances at bazaars, private or semi-private banquets and receptions and meetings of a few tried and trusted friends, the Suffragettes were always there even though the world and Mrs. Grundy might be shocked.1 Pankhurst then recounted one incident in which a ‘striking tall and handsome’ suffragette confronted the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith (1852–1928), at a reception in his honour given by Dorothea Benson (1876–1942), the society hostess and wife of Godfrey Benson (1864–1945), the Liberal politician, philanthropist and 1st Baron Charnwood, on 5 November 1908. As she was presented to the Prime Minister, the suffragette asked him, ‘“Can I do anything to persuade you to give votes to women?” Then, still holding his hand in hers, she proceeded to read out to him some clauses of ‘Magna Charta’, explaining that these had been intended to apply to women as well as men’.2 The anecdote, one of many in Pankhurst’s narrativization of

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recent women’s suffrage history, offers an important point-of-departure in this chapter, which examines the presence of men in the suffrage campaign, because it is also recounted in the memoir of one man, who was a supporter of women’s fight for the vote, and who was also present that same evening. Ernest Thesiger (1879–1961), a now largely forgotten actor and artist, who during the interwar years became well-known as an authority on embroidery, recalled: About half way through the evening, whilst I was sitting talking to Mrs. Asquith, we suddenly heard the blowing of the whistle, and I rushed out to find that two advocates of Women’s Suffrage had forced their way into the house, and were shaking their fists in the Prime Minister’s face, shouting, ‘Mr. Asquith, why don’t you give women the vote?’ Thereupon Mrs. Benson put the whistle [a police whistle she wore in case of such an incident] to her lips and blew with all her might, occasionally removing it to scream ‘Suffragettes, Suffragettes!’ whilst with her disengaged hand she endeavoured to push the intruders downstairs.3 What is striking about Thesiger’s recollection of events, aside from its delineation of the physical force used against women protestors, is the subsequent exposition of his personal feelings about the women’s suffrage campaign and the place of men (like himself) in the wider movement. He continued: I was torn between my duty to my hostess and my sympathy for the women and their cause, but was so helpless with laughter that, for the life of me, I couldn’t have rescued either party. I don’t think anyone now could deny the Suffragettes’ determination to make their presence felt, in season and out of season, was, from their point of view, a wise policy. When, quite calmly and naturally, the vote was eventually granted to women, some people pretended that it had been ceded as a reward for the good behaviour of the militants during the war, but no one could doubt it was really the so-called bad behaviour of the ultra-militant Suffragettes which won them the vote … having been a miserable failure as a militant myself, I cannot but admire the courage of the men and women who braved insults and violence in the interests of their cause.4 Thesiger’s testimony, even with its off-hand candour and his characteristic arch-campness, reveals something of the conflict men could feel between ‘sympathy with the women and their cause’ and the unacknowledged privilege of their own sex and class. In early twentieth-century Britain, it would be fair to say, the majority of the male population opposed women’s right to vote in parliamentary elections and those who supported universal suffrage did so for complex reasons. For men, who generally came into contact with the networks of the suffrage campaign through women (their

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mothers, sisters, wives, cousins, colleagues and friends), the issues often coalesced with their own interests in social reform or progressive politics. Thesiger, like other men of his generation who were from similar middle- or upper-class backgrounds, and who mixed in London’s artistic and literary intelligentsia and political circles, was associated with the two principle allmale pro-suffrage societies in Britain, the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage and the militant Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement. He attended their meetings, marched in their processions, wore their badges, carried their banners, sent them money, read their paper, may well have offered his expert needlework skills, and even attempted to engage in militant activities on their behalf. Yet like so many male supporters, the so-called ‘suffragettes in trousers’, relatively little is known about men like Thesiger’s suffrage activities, their personal motivations and, especially for an artist, the impact, if any, of their contribution on the visual culture of the wider suffrage campaign.5 The Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, which had been founded on 2 March 1907 was, in fact, the first all-male society formed in support of women’s suffrage in Britain. It offered a model for the establishment of male-only pro-women’s suffrage societies across the world and was crucial in the formation of the Men’s International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage in 1911.6 In turn-of-the-century Britain it was widely assumed that men were excluded from women’s suffrage societies but some men had been central, in fact, to the founding of key organizations such as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Women’s Social and Political Union. Indeed, both Richard Pankhurst (1835–1898), the husband of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), and Henry Fawcett (1833–1884), the husband of Millicent Fawcett (1847–1929), had supported women’s emancipation before their marriages. The formation of male-only suffrage societies aimed to consolidate men’s support in the movement and prove their willingness to accept ancillary roles in the public sphere. Indeed, the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage’s initial call for members cautiously stated: ‘[a]lthough the cause of Women’s Suffrage has made rapid advance, yet it has been felt that the work of promoting this cause should not be left to women alone, but that men should show their sympathy with the movement by supplementing the efforts of women to obtain their undoubted goals’.7 It was a constitutional society, seeking electoral reform in parliament, confining ‘itself in the main to propaganda work’.8 It was, thus, avowedly non-militant and also not aligned to any political party, but open to men from all persuasions and backgrounds. It remained the major party for pro-suffrage men in Britain until it was disbanded at the start of the First World War. The Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement was founded on 13 January 1910, amidst growing dissatisfaction amongst Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage members as to the wider role of men in the suffrage movement. It adopted an ‘anti-Government Militant policy’ and retained close links with the Women’s Social and Political Union.9 The more activist

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approach the new party sought was outlined in an article, entitled ‘An Appeal to Men’, published in Votes for Women, by Victor Duval (1885– 1945), an aspiring Liberal politician whose mother and sister, Emily (1861– 1924) and Elsie Duval (1892–1919), were suffragettes associated with the Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Social and Political Union.10 Duval recorded that in 1909 alone there had been 294 arrests and 163 imprisonments of women’s suffrage protestors and it was felt that stronger action was needed as a matter of urgency from male supporters. He resigned from his position in the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage to help form the new society. The rhetoric of both the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage and Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, like other men-only societies, however, in their public lectures, pamphlets and other propaganda work, had a certain conciliatory tone in terms of defining men’s place within the campaign. At one public meeting of the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement in 1910, Frank Rutter (1876–1937), the art critic and the society’s Honorary Treasurer, asserted that the members had ‘realized that in this fight for women’s liberty, men could only be an auxiliary force. They did not presume to give advice on the direction of the campaign, or flatter themselves that they knew better than the women how victory might be attained. The Men’s Political Union believed it could best serve the cause by doing those things which at the present moment women were unable’.11 All men could offer, in real terms, though, was the levy of pressure as an electoral body and as actual male bodies they were less conspicuous in terms of proximity to male politicians and in male-only spaces than women protesters and activists. Still, such organizations were clearly ambitious, in terms of what they hoped to contribute, and their popularity amongst men, between the turn of the century and the First World War. This is attested by the numerous branches, of both parties, that were established all over the country. Indeed, outside the capital, emerging from the fragmentary tensions of British regional and national politics, a number of other men-only prosuffrage societies were established, such as the separatist version of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage in Manchester and similar organizations in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.12 In their pioneering edited volume The Men’s Share, on the role of men in the women’s suffrage campaign in early twentieth-century Britain, Angela John and Claire Eustance identified almost one thousand members of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage and other men’s pro-suffrage societies.13 They were comprised largely of middle-class men of professional standing: academics, literary figures as well as doctors, barristers, military men and clergymen, major and minor aristocrats, celebrities, artists and even sportsmen. Male support was, however, conflicted on many levels. Indeed, in her discussion of ‘manliness and militancy’ in John and Eustance’s volume, Sandra Stanley Holton suggests the ‘suffragette identity was one built around a feminine heroic, and a rhetoric of female rebellion which the presence of men continually threatened to undermine’.14 Yet, in the intervening twenty years since John

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and Eustance published their groundbreaking study of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, and their supplementary list of the eleven ‘[k]nown men-only or predominately male societies for women’s suffrage’ operating in Britain between 1890 and 1920 (although most were formed between 1907 and 1913), there appears to have been almost no research conducted on the subject.15 Most studies that touch on it tend to broaden, as opposed to focus, the topic and historicize male suffrage support as part of a longer tradition of ‘male feminism’ stretching from the Englightenment until today.16 The survival of comprehensive, if small archives, and a few key objects of male pro-suffrage societies in Britain makes the absence of any serious and sustained interrogation, especially of its relation to the visual culture of the campaign, all the more perplexing.17 The rediscovery of the visual and material history of the suffrage campaign, their banners, badges, pamphlets, posters and postcards by second-wave feminists in the 1970s and 1980s, was taken as a form of ‘heroic’ and ‘subversive’ feminism that challenged, if not fractured forever, canonical understandings of what mattered as art, and indeed what constituted art itself. Rozsika Parker’s The Subversive Stitch and Lisa Tickner’s The Spectacle of Women, in particular, contended that women’s suffrage propaganda was a triumphant moment that exposed and destabilized the masculinist foundations of modern art history as compromised and complicit in the wider frameworks of patriarchal privilege.18 The masculinist framing of modern art, thus, exposed what one critic called ‘its own mythic point of origin’.19 But what of men like Thesiger, whose career as an artist was very much entangled with his identity as an embroiderer. He carried a banner, did he ever stitch one?20 What about other men, such as Laurence Housman (1865–1959), one of the leading ‘male suffragists’ in Britain, another artist who recalled in his memoirs that of the campaign’s banners, ‘an important feature for the rousing of public enthusiasm’, he had designed at least ‘five or six’, including some for the Women’s Social and Political Union as well as one for the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, and he intimates that he may have been involved in the stitching as well as the designing of some.21 Yet, if we accept men did design, and perhaps physically produced, pro-suffrage agitprop (banners, badges, papers, pamphlets, posters and postcards), what are we to make of them? Only a handful of male artists such as Edmund Hort New (1871–1931) and Alfred Pearse (1855–1933) are known as the named designers of suffrage propaganda from posters to banners (occasionally under pseudonyms), and feminist historians have been quick to suggest that there were limits to such male sympathy. Furthermore, if such work stands outside the heroic semiotics of a femalecentred suffrage visual rhetoric, do we read them as opposite – in terms of failure? Judith Halberstam has recently argued, ‘[w]here feminine success is always measured by male standards, and gender failure often means being relieved of the pressure to measure up to patriarchal ideals, not succeeding at womanhood can offer unexpected pleasures’, but what of perceived

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masculine failure?22 The crude stitching of the words ‘LAW NOT WAR’, by someone with little or no sewing skills, on the one surviving Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage banner (Figure 9.1), the amateurism of which is distinct from the more professional looking banner made by the Suffrage Atelier for the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage (Figure 9.2) should not be mistaken as contributing to the high achievement of the women’s propaganda per se. Perhaps in its low status as an aesthetic and material thing, its own lack of success, across several registers, such an object could be read as a site of liberation of masculinity from itself in its production, or reflection, not of heroism but, rather, ‘the small, the inconsequential, the anti-monumental, the micro, the irrelevant’.23 John and Eustance postulate that most male suffragists ‘might exert themselves for women’s suffrage but, on the whole, they did not examine the basis of their own masculinity’ producing ‘rhetoric [that] tended to lack real substance’, although they suggested that some men, such as Housman, can be seen as an ‘exception’, in that his ‘homosexuality helped him to confront dominant notions of sexuality’.24 Acknowledgement of the needlework interests of men like Thesiger and Housman in suffrage contexts, thus, also needs to be seen in light of their place in London’s turn-of-the-century queer subculture.25 Was this interest in handcrafted textiles, and feminized labour practices, by such men, a coded performance alluding to their homosexuality, what Emmanuel Cooper has termed ‘queer spectacle’?26 Indeed, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has suggested, ‘women’ (for which we can read women’s societies, i.e. suffrage groups and women’s activities, i.e. sewing) could function as ‘conduits of homosocial desire between men’.27 This is not to say that the demographics of ‘male suffragists’ did not reflect the authoritative model of male sexuality. Male supporters, even those drawn from elite literary and intellectual circles, such as the ‘eminent Victorians’ John Galsworthy

FIGURE 9.1  Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage banner, c. 1908–14 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

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FIGURE 9.2  Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage banner, c. 1914 © National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.

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(1867–1933) and Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), or ‘sexual radicals’ such as George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), reinscribed rather than threatened the era’s compulsory heterosexuality. And even though many well-known gay men, such as homosexual law reform campaigners Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) and George Ives (1867–1950), as well as closeted writers, such as E. M. Forster (1879–1970) and A. C. Benson (1862–1925), were members or supporters of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage or the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, historians have generally been cautious of associating first-wave feminism, and women’s fight for the vote, with homosexual subcultures.28 For example, Sandra Stanley Holton suggests that homosexuality and effeminacy were deployed by anti-suffragists as a means to deride, undermine and dismiss male supporters.29 She argues that this was absorbed by the first generation of historians to document the women’s suffrage movement, such as George Dangerfield in his influential The Strange Death of Liberal England, which linked homosexuality with suffrage as a means to equate both with pathology. Yet, there is something undeniable about the visual culture of women’s suffrage, their interest in denigrated craft practices and the abject position of the homosexual in early twentieth-century Britain that warrants serious consideration. As Paul Stigant commented, in his introductory preamble to John and Eustance’s volume, men as subordinate to women in any historical movement may be ‘unfamiliar territory’ as ‘it is not common in most history writing to encounter men in what might be thought of as relatively passive, and certainly secondary, roles’, but, he concludes, the suffrage campaign undoubtedly had some part to play in the ‘transformation of men, concepts of masculinity and male identities between 1890 and 1920’.30 Indeed, Lisa Tickner has further suggested that ‘[t]he proper study of womankind is not always or necessarily woman; masculinity is a problem for feminism (as well as for women and, arguably, for men); and feminism and art history, in focusing on these emergent and provisional masculinities, can illuminate something of modernism’s “myth of its own origins” and interests’.31 In this chapter, I am not concerned so much with mapping, in the footsteps of John and Eustance, the presence of men within the networks of the suffrage campaign and their contribution to the goals and achievements of the movement. Rather, this chapter seeks to open up discussion about the ways in which masculinity was conceptualized and contested in the visual representations of men associated with the campaign. To do this, it is necessary to look more closely at how the interrelated concepts of masculinity and homosexuality were framed by the wider debates stimulated by the campaign and by contemporary discourses of medicine, legislation and sexology that sought to regulate men’s bodies and men’s minds as much as those of women. If women’s fight for the vote challenged prevailing gender and sexual power structures to such an extent that it saw them reduced to a taxonomy of ‘types’ in visual culture, it is not surprising, then, to find that men associated with the campaign, as sympathizers and supporters, were pictured, or understood, in equally reductive ways. Lisa

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Tickner suggests that the emergence of gender ‘types’ in the visual culture surrounding the suffrage campaign became ‘a kind of iconographic shorthand’ that coalesced an ‘apparently scientific nexus of imperial, eugenic and diagnostic’ anxieties.32 If, as Ticker argues, a series of distinct representations of women dominated anti-suffrage propaganda, the stereotyping of men found focus in images of the feminization of male social roles. Images of emasculated men, effeminate men, and men as invalids, convalescents and hysterics, vociferously caricatured and circulated by the anti-suffrage movement, would prevail and generate immense public concern until well after the First World War. Beyond recognizing the challenge to hegemonic notions of Victorian ‘manliness’ posed, however consciously or unconsciously, by pro-suffrage men, I want to look more directly at how the representation of men, in the context of the campaign and its aftermath, in fact masked wider cultural anxieties about masculine degeneracy, a context that has so far been completely overlooked.

‘The bawling brotherhood’: Chivalry, militancy and buggery For the most part, men in early twentieth-century Britain, pro- as much as antisuffrage supporters, were bound by a ‘chivalrous’ code of conduct governing their behaviour towards women. The motivation of men to act in support of women’s suffrage may have been, for some men at least, a masculine response to the shocking violence used against unarmed women protestors. Modern chivalry defined masculinity, that of a true ‘gentleman’, as ‘brave, straightforward and honorable, loyal to his monarch, country and friends’, and superior to women.33 Presenting themselves as gentlemen and perceiving women as ‘the weaker sex’ enabled ‘men to keep intact their sense of worth’.34 As John and Eustance have argued, pro-suffrage men, thus, ‘sought to represent themselves as the progressives, the ones who had left Victorian society behind’, yet they appropriated the ‘chivalrous’ language of anti-suffrage propaganda: a jingoistic rhetoric of female dependence and masculine protection.35 Kevin White has speculated that the militancy of some men ‘satisfied a craving for adventure’ and masked a self-perception ‘as a “Knight Errant of the Purple, White and Gold Shield”’, avenging the treatment of the poor suffragette ‘damsels in distress’.36 Indeed, records show that one supporter sent a donation of £100 to the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, signing it ‘An Admirer of True Chivalry’, clarifying the sum was ‘in gratitude for the chivalrous behaviour of the Union at the City Temple’.37 A series of incidents at London’s City Temple illustrate how the press in particular downplayed women’s ability to instigate violence and overstated men’s ‘chivalrous’ need to protect. For example, in November 1908, Augustine Birrell (1850–1933), the Liberal MP and serving Chief Secretary for Ireland in Herbert Asquith’s Cabinet, was heckled by a group of ‘Women

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Suffragists’, of the Women’s Social and Political Union, as he attempted to deliver a speech on the disestablishment of the Church of England at the City Temple. To diffuse the situation, Sylvia Pankhurst later recalled, the Chairman, Rev. R. J. Campbell (1857–1956), a moderate supporter of women’s suffrage, ‘tried to deter them by stating that Mr. Birrell had promised to give his “influential support to any measure giving a liberal extension of the franchise to women”’.38 The ‘women suffragists’ in the audience seemed unimpressed and continued with their protest: one woman shouted, ‘I do not care! Kill me!’39 There ensued ‘a terrible scene of violence, in which large numbers of women were flung out of the church and dragged down the steps’.40 Such violence, Pankhurst felt, would rouse sympathy ‘for the militants’ in women ‘of all shades of opinion’ and she included an image of a woman being forcibly hauled down the steps of the building by three male stewards in her memoir to further emphasize her point.41 Yet, other surviving images of the protest show ‘a male suffragist’ being physically ejected from the meeting (Figure 9.3). Such men are mentioned only briefly in one of the few newspaper reports to cover the protest in which they were dismissed as over-protective friends.42 Men’s bodies were drawn into the vortex of violence that surrounded the suffrage campaign. Many ‘male suffragists’ willingly supported and participated in militancy. For instance, Hugh Franklin (1889–1962), the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant banker, who had abandoned his Cambridge education to work for the Women’s Social and Political Union and who became a key member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, was sentenced to ‘nine months in prison’ for setting fire to a railway carriage in October 1912. He had already been imprisoned for six weeks in December 1910 for ‘assaulting Mr. Winston Churchill’ and, in March 1912, he was given a further six-week sentence for throwing a stone, also at Churchill. During the last incarceration ‘he was on remand he was forcibly fed three times a day – 18 times in all – and it required six wardens in addition to hold him down … He would have to be released, or else the sentence passed upon him would be equivalent to a sentence of death’.43 Other prominent male suffrage supporters either participated in or publicly supported militancy. Israel Zangwill (1864– 1926), a left-wing intellectual and Zionist writer who was married to Edith Ayrton (1879–1945), a suffragette associated with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Women’s Social and Political Union, voiced his support for militancy as early as 1907, and Victor Duval was imprisoned several times on charges ranging from ‘assault’ to ‘aiding and abetting’ women’s suffragists. The publications, annual reports and monthly papers of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage and Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement carried detailed accounts of ‘Imprisonments’ and ‘Political Prisoners’. Men’s bodies were coming under increasing scrutiny due to the anxieties generated by the interrogation of masculine identity in industrial, imperial and eugenic debates and by new sexological literature that pointed to the national degeneration of the male stock.44

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FIGURE 9.3  Photograph of a male suffragist being ejected from a public meeting © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London. Some historians of the suffrage movement have speculated that men’s ‘chivalric condescension’, in terms of how they understood the wider implications of women’s suffrage and militancy, masked a fear of feminization. This was expressed, in part, as an anxiety about reversal of the prevailing understanding of gender identities as both natural and fixed. Within this context, The Woman’s Press, which was run by the Women’s Social and Political Union, published a satirical pamphlet authored by

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Laurence Housman about a country named ‘Happy Parallel’, where men and women’s political enfranchisement was reversed. Their ‘natural’ gender roles remained the same, yet Housman casts the men who agitate for enfranchisement as ‘the Bawling Brotherhood’: ‘a ridiculous set of unmanly and effeminate creatures who, to the disgrace of their sex, think that man ought to have the vote’.45 The inhabitants of ‘Happy Parallel’ only see the path to true equitable citizenship when a group of women denied the vote in their own country, where they are decried as ‘the Shrieking Sisterhood’, arrive in search of support for their cause. The underlying ‘inversion’ of roles in Housman’s narrative, and his use of language drawn from antisuffrage propaganda, reflects wider debates about deviant masculinity, and about homosexuality, in particular.46 Since the Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) trials of 1895 and the publication of new sexological theories, first promoted in Britain by Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) in his book Sexual Inversion (1897), homosexuality became increasingly aligned with ‘the unmanly and effeminate’.47 Housman was far from innocent of these, he knew both Wilde and Ellis personally in fact, and his characterization of the gender-bending demands of the men of ‘Happy Parallel’, as ‘effeminate’, ‘unmanly’ and ‘betrayers of their own sex’, perhaps further discloses a desire to comment on the wider social disapproval and censorious attitude to homosexuality.48 The presence of many gay men (like Housman and Thesiger) in the networks of the suffrage campaign, although acknowledged, has been largely ignored by historians. Many gay male artists and writers became associated with the emerging networks of women’s suffrage, which were often located in metropolitan spaces where middle-class women could work in a limited professional capacity, such as the social microcosm of London’s art scene and theatrical circles. The writer Lytton Strachey’s (1880–1932) mother, Janet Strachey, had been a pioneering feminist and his sisters, Philippa (‘Pippa’, 1872–1968), Pernel (1876–1951) and Marjorie (1882– 1964), were all involved with suffrage societies. Although in May 1907, he joked privately that ‘suffragism has simmered down now into its normal state of vague agitation’, and that ‘how long will it take these Ladies to grasp the obvious fact that the only way out of all their difficulties is universal buggery’, he still felt compelled to join the ‘men’s league for promotion of female suffrage’, which was more than likely the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, to which Pippa Strachey had close links.49 Strachey made his remark in a letter to his young cousin, the artist Duncan Grant (1885– 1978), who, under the influence of his maternal aunt and her daughters, attempted to join the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. A few years earlier, while living in the Strachey household, Grant had submitted an entry to an Artists’ Suffrage League poster and postcard competition. His image, entitled Handicapped, shows a young woman navigating a small boat with oars in difficult waters, with the Houses of Parliament visible in the far distance, and ‘a young man [who] sails effortlessly past on the top of a wave with the wind in his sails’ (Figure 9.4).50 Grant won the four-

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FIGURE 9.4  Duncan Grant, Handicapped, joint winner of Artist’s Suffrage League Competition, 1909 © Estate of Duncan Grant. All Rights Reserved DCAS, 2017.

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pound prize and remains, like Laurence Housman, perhaps one of the few well-known male artists to have his name publicly associated with suffrage agitprop. Still, the sympathetic visualization of women by gay men, such as Grant or Housman, was countered by anti-suffrage propaganda that sought to represent pro-suffrage men as a series of misogynistic and homophobic types on a spectrum of degeneracy from emasculation to effeminacy.

The emasculated man The militant behaviour of women suffragettes, as Thesiger pointed out in his memoirs, had a seismic effect on the strictures of gender in early twentiethcentury society. Not only did it shatter prevailing notions of the ‘feminine ideal’ as domesticated, supplicant and self-abnegating, but it fuelled anxiety about the implications for men. Initially, concerns were centred on the fear of emasculation. Much anti-suffragist imagery, such as the series of postcards entitled When Women Vote by ‘A. E. & E. W.’ produced in c. 1907, portrayed men in a series of feminized roles as seen through the lens of misogyny: bride-to-be, charwoman, put-upon housewife, shrieking hag (Plate 20). Yet, although anti-suffragist propaganda could present ‘male suffragists’ as compromised or subordinated, they remained unquestionably heterosexual. This was reflected to some extent in pro-suffrage contexts where husbands, for example of female suffrage leaders, were perceived as passive but remained, in many ways, in a position of privilege by virtue of their sex. An example of this is the marriage of the Pethick-Lawrences, the barrister and Labour politician Frederick (1871–1961) and socialist and suffragette Emmeline (1868–1954). Frederick Pethick-Lawrence supported his wife’s activities in the Women’s Social and Political Union, which she joined after meeting Emmeline Pankhurst in 1906, even though he never formally joined the society. The Pethick-Lawrences became the leading suffrage couple, a paradigm of gender equity, quickly becoming intimates of the Pankhursts. Even though Frederick Pethick-Lawrence disagreed with the militant activities of the Women’s Social and Political Union, such as the window-smashing campaigns, his publicly acknowledged place at the heart of the society’s leadership meant he was arrested in 1912 and imprisoned, where he went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. Emasculation could occur here through the passivizing of the male body, forcible feeding was, after all, for female suffragettes considered a form of rape. The brutality, let alone the humiliation, of such an act placed men’s bodies in a public context of submission and a surrendering of power that was rarely visible and certainly not openly acknowledged. Yet, such emasculation did not directly question, or compromise, a man’s sexual identity. For the many male suffrage supporters who were imprisoned, went on hunger strike and were forcibly fed, their heterosexuality may have been both cliché and a joke but it was never directly called into question. The violation of masculinity in these contexts, through psychological

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domination and physical penetration, however, rendered men vulnerable and open to increasing scrutiny. But it was the men who willingly adopted feminine attributes, the men who behaved in Housman’s words as ‘unmanly and effeminate’, who roused the most anxiety. Emasculated men were not entirely divested of recourse to patriarchal authority but the effeminate man was contingent to the ‘masculine woman’ in pro- and anti-suffrage propaganda: ‘a masculine woman is nothing more than a caricature of an effeminate man’, the anti-suffragist novelist Marie Corelli (1855–1924) declared.51 This representation of the ‘masculine woman’ has been widely studied but its obverse, the effeminate man, in the culture of the campaign is barely acknowledged and has never been analysed in any depth.

The effeminate man The emergence of new sexological theories about the formation of gender and sexual identity, which appeared at the time of the suffrage campaign, helped fire public concerns about the meanings of gender non-conformity. One recurring motif in anti-suffragist propaganda was the image of a man performing domestic activities perceived as feminine, such as holding babies, needlework, sometimes both. This is exemplified in a c. 1912 postcard entitled George = A Husbandman (Plate 21). The underlining implication could be read as more than just emasculation, in that sexologists, such as Havelock Ellis in his Sexual Inversion, had pointed out that a man’s interest in feminized activities such as sewing was a sign of his sexual inversion; that is, the adoption of female attributes or activities by a man, the inverting of the norms of gender expectations and behaviour, masked his homosexuality. Ernest Thesiger was perhaps the most well-known ‘male embroiderer’ in Britain before and after the First World War, who tirelessly worked as an advocate for fellow ‘needlemen’. His homosexuality was also an open secret. The performative camp façade of the public persona he adopted tantalizingly equated embroidery with effeminacy, but his distinguished war service, his supreme confidence and his aristocratic hauteur deflected attention away from his embroidery as anything but another facet of his faultless taste attributable to his impeccable pedigree.52 Thesiger’s links to the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage and Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement came through his friend Victor Duval and he may well have offered his expert needle skills to men’s organizations.53 Unlike Thesiger, we do know that Laurence Housman designed both banners and badges for suffrage societies, including the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage. Housman, an artist who illustrated his own books and those of others, as well as being a playwright and writer, had been introduced to suffrage networks through his older sister, the artist and writer Clemence Housman (1861–1955), as she was a member of the Women’s Social and

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Political Union, ‘chief banner maker to the Suffrage between the years 1908 and 1914’, and one of the founders of the Suffrage Atelier.54 Housman’s involvement with banner-making, like all his suffrage activities, is better documented than Thesiger’s, yet his homosexuality is equally obscured.55 His designs for the From Prison to Citizenship banner, to be used at a Women’s Social and Political Union demonstration in June 1908, and the banner for the Women’s Tax Resistance League, were used on several further occasions, including Clemence’s release from Holloway on 6 October 1911 after being arrested for refusing to pay tax (Figure 9.5).56 Both these designs by Laurence were worked by Clemence. These were figurative with imagery that partook of the ‘female heroic’ vocabulary, a trope much used in the suffrage campaign. The banner Laurence designed for the Hampstead

FIGURE 9.5  Press photo of Laurence and Clemence Housman © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

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branch of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage in 1909, of vine leaves and grapes interlaced around a cross, in yellow cotton sateen of beige, and cream silks, with the central imagery picked out in rich purple, green and gold threads, was stitched by Clemence, but clearly Laurence had some sensitivity to, if not knowledge of, embroidery (Plate 22).57 Other designs, such as his one surviving Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage banner with its crude lettering in black cloth on a cream ground, each letter picked out in chain stitch in blue silk thread, is markedly different to other banners in terms of its simple fabrication. Equally simple are the badges of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage (Plate 23 and Plate 24) designed by Laurence which, like the society’s banners, suggest a deliberate avoidance of ‘feminine’ imagery which may proclaim too loudly the effeminacy of several of its male members.58

The hysterical man Aside from his career as an actor, Ernest Thesiger is chiefly remembered today for his role in setting up an embroidery workshop for disabled ex-servicemen returning from the First World War. His scheme did not attract official support and he maintained that government officials perceived needlework as too ‘effeminate [an] occupation for ex-soldiers’.59 He succeeded, however, in finding the necessary backing to establish the Disabled Soldiers’ Embroidery Industry in 1918. Thesiger remained one of the few men to be involved in such craft workshops, which have many parallels with suffrage societies in terms of the types of textiles produced and techniques used, although inverted, as all the sewing at the Disabled Soldiers’ Embroidery Industry was done by men to designs by women.60 Thesiger was partly inspired to set up the Disabled Soldiers’ Embroidery Industry after seeing convalescing soldiers in London hospitals being given needlework to soothe their nerves and help recuperate damaged motor skills. During the war, Dr Flora Murray (1869–1923) and Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson (1873–1943), who had established the Military Hospital in Endell Street, London, were one of the first to introduce such practices to their patients. It is likely that Thesiger was aware of the work of the recovering ex-servicemen in this hospital as both Murray and Anderson had been involved with suffrage groups before the war. Anderson was, in fact, Millicent Fawcett’s niece and had been briefly imprisoned in Holloway for militant activity. Like Anderson, Murray had been associated with the Women’s Social and Political Union and was known to have attended the injuries of militants. They became known as the ‘surgeon suffragettes’.61 They treated returning combatants suffering from both physical and psychological injuries, included new cases of ‘male hysteria’ or shellshock.62 A shoe-bag, depicting either Murray or Anderson walking a dog, with the

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letters ‘WHC’ stitched alongside, is typical of the curative craft produced at the hospital and is one of the few objects to survive (Plate 25). For men who had physical injuries, such craft, with its simple design, imagery and stitching, could occupy and distract, but for men labelled as ‘hysterics’, there was the underlying implication of feminization, in both diagnosis and curative treatment. Hysteria had been widely used to portray suffragettes as pathological and embroidery, as a historic means to suppress and control women, was consciously appropriated and subverted by the suffragettes themselves. Where the embroidery of the suffrage campaign, such as the banners made by women for processions or the commemorative needlework produced by women in prisons, has been undeservedly ignored by art history, the needlework by ‘hysterical’, and disabled, men produced during and after the war has never been studied and all but obliterated from the historical record. Where women’s stitched propaganda had been derided and dismissed before the war, such skills were exploited throughout it and long after the war had ended, in the reinvention and commodification of craft as occupational therapy. *** The representation in word and image of hegemonic notions of masculinity as well as marginal and subordinate identities of homosociality and homosexuality in the visual culture of the suffrage movement have been largely overlooked by historians – perhaps as part of the wider reluctance to see that men are a category worth investigating at all. Indeed, it was not until the advent of second-wave feminism in the 1970s and 1980s that masculinity was considered possible to interrogate in terms of ‘identification, looking and spectacle’.63 Yet, historians of Victorian masculinity, such as James Eli Adams, have long argued that: ‘“Manliness” is exemplary of all gender norms in being always under pressure from the very social dynamics that authorize it, the changing consolidation of social authority through new varieties of suspicion, exclusion, and affirmation’.64 And further that ‘[t]he masculine, in short, is as much a spectacle as the feminine’.65 The visual record left by male participation in the women’s suffrage campaign, by men who were all shaped by Victorian upbringings and backgrounds, offers unexpected insights into the cultural construction of modern gender identities. If, as Rozsika Parker and Lisa Tickner in their pioneering studies of the visual iconography of the early twentieth-century suffrage campaign have shown, ‘femininity’ is a cultural construction which was contested in suffrage ‘propaganda’ and ‘spectacle’, should we permit ‘masculinity’ as a category to continue to operate unexamined? Unquestionably, the suffrage campaign drew attention to men and men’s bodies. Acknowledgement of this extends recent historiographical debates about modern masculinity, especially discussions of men’s place in Victorian and early twentieth-century domestic space as well as the identification of the masculine subject in modern avant-garde art.66 Representation of

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emasculated, effeminate and convalescent masculinities as subordinate positions before, during and after the suffrage campaign were undeniably linked to debates about women’s autonomy and their right to vote. As the pioneering historian of masculinity, John Tosh, has argued: ‘[t]he crisis over women’s suffrage between 1905 and 1914 was the latest and most dramatic stage in a destabilizing of gender boundaries that had been gathering pace since the 1870s’.67 As such, Tosh continues, ‘[n]either masculinity nor femininity is a meaningful construct without the other; each defines, and is in turn defined by, the other’.68 While John and Eustance rightly caution that ‘studies of men and masculinity’ in women’s history may run ‘the risk of subsuming women within a dominant frame of reference’, there remains much to say about the full impact of women’s social and political emancipation upon men. As this brief study has hopefully shown, it is necessary, even urgent, to recognize that the visual and material remnants of men’s contribution to the suffrage campaign can tell us much about masculinity as a cultural construction and a form of political performance and social spectacle.69

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

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E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905–1910 (New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1911), 323. Ibid., 323–324. Ernest Thesiger, Practically True (London: William Heinemann, 1927), 69. Ibid., 69–70. Although obscure as an historical figure, the ‘male suffragist’ is most often visible as a focus of satire; for example, see Tony Hancock’s ‘The Male Suffragettes’, series 5, episode 3 of Hancock’s Half Hour, BBC Radio, first broadcast in February 1958. Available online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b007yntz (accessed 17 January 2017). The Men’s International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage was formed during a meeting of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance through the members of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement and the Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage. The aim of the Men’s International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage was to establish a global network of male suffrage supporters. The Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, in particular, had strong links to several key international male-only suffrage societies, such as the Mannenbond voor Vrouwenkiesrecht in The Netherlands, the Ligue d’Électeurs pour le Suffrage des Femmes in France, the Männens Förbund för Kvinnas Röstratt in Sweden, the Deutsche Männerbünd für Frauenstimmrecht in Germany and the National League for Women’s Suffrage in the United States. See, Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage. Sixth Annual Report, April 1913 (London: Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, 1913), 11. See ‘Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage membership application form, with constitution and rules’, The Women’s Library Collection, London School of Economics [hereafter TWL(LSE)], 7EWD/D/6/1.

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SUFFRAGE AND THE ARTS A. J. R., ed., The Suffrage Annual and Women’s Who’s Who (London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1913), 53. Ibid., 55. Victor Duval, ‘An Appeal to Men’, Votes for Women, 7 January 1910, 230. Quoted in ‘Why Men Protest’, The Vote, 24 December 1910, 99. In the north of England, the Manchester division of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage became independent in 1911, unhappy at its status as a branch of the London Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage. See Fiona A. Montgomery, ‘Gender and Suffrage: The Manchester Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, 1908–1918’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 77:1 (1995): 221–239. For men’s pro-suffrage organizations in Wales, see Angela V. John, ‘Chwarae teg’: Welsh Men’s Support for Women’s Suffrage (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1998). In Scotland, a Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage was formed in 1913; for this, see Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 465–466. In Ireland, the branch of the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement founded in Belfast in 1914 is believed to be ‘the only all-male suffrage society ever operative in Ireland’, see Diane Urquhart, ‘“An Articulate and Definite Cry for Freedom”: The Ulster Suffrage Movement’, Women’s History Review, 11:2 (2002): 273–292, 275. Angela V. John and Claire Eustance, ‘Shared Histories – Differing Identities: Introducing Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage’, in The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920, eds., Angela V. John and Claire Eustance (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 1–37, 11; and see Appendix 2, ‘Men’s Pro-Suffrage Societies, 1890–1920’, 209. Although comprehensive, John and Eustance’s volume does not include discussion of men’s engagement with the visual and material culture of the suffrage campaign. Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Manliness and Militancy: The Political Protest of Male Suffragists and the Gendering of the “Suffragette” Identity’, in The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920, 110–134, 110. The single recent attempt to reconsider the visual culture of men’s prosuffrage groups was the small, but illuminating, Let’s hear it for the boys! exhibition at The Women’s Library in London, which ran from 25 September 2012 to 22 March 2013. Available online: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ thewomenslibrary/whats-on/exhibitions/let’s_hear_it_for_the_boys.cfm (accessed 19 February 2013). The only other dedicated research on the visual and material record of men’s involvement in the pro-suffrage campaign is in Diane Atkinson’s Suffragettes in London, 1906–1914: The Purple, White & Green (London: Museum of London, 1992), which was published in conjunction with the major exhibition, of the same title, at the Museum of London that ran from 1992 to 1993. See the section on ‘Men’s Involvement’, 111–112. See, for instance, Sylvia Strauss, ‘Traitors to the Masculine Cause’: The Men’s Campaigns for Women’s Rights (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982); Chapter Seven in David J. Morgan, Discovering Men (London & New York:

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Routledge, 1992), 141–159; Martine Monacelli and Michel Prum, eds., Ces hommes qui épousèrent la cause des femmes: Dix pionniers britanniques (Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier/Éditions Ouvrières, 2010); Arianne Chernock, Men and the Making of Modern British Feminism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); and Kaevan Gazdar, Feminism’s Founding Fathers: The Men Who Fought for Women’s Rights (Winchester: Zero Books, 2016). The best recent discussions of the topic, that engage directly with the issue of masculinity, are Claire M. Tylee, ‘“A Better World for Both”: Men, Cultural Transformation and the Suffragettes’, in The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives, eds., Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 140–156, which focuses on early twentieth-century theatre; and Ben Griffin, The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture and the Struggle for Women’s Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), which reconsiders the Victorian antecedents of male suffrage support. This is held within the important women’s suffrage collections in The Women’s Library and the Museum of London. See Rozsika Parker, ‘The Word for Embroidery Was Work’, Spare Rib, 3 (July 1975): 41–45; Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The Women’s Press, 1984), 187–201; and Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987), ix–xii. Peter Wollen, ‘Fashion/Orientalism/The Body’, New Formations, 1 (Spring 1987): 5–33, 8. Outside his links to the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage and Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, there is a surviving letter to Thesiger from a ‘Miss Brice’, which suggests he was approached about the making of a banner for a women’s group (Private Collection). Intriguingly, the West Ham Women’s Social and Political Union banner, now in the collection of the Museum of London, is known to have been designed by ‘Misses M. A. and E. Brice’. It depicts a trumpeting angel in a central medallion, after a design by Sylvia Pankhurst, embroidered by the ‘Misses Brice’, with the lettering stitched by ‘Miss V. H. (Violet Helen) Friedlaender’ and ‘her brother’, who were members of the West Ham Women’s Social and Political Union. In her ‘Checklist of Surviving Banners’ (Appendix Four in her book), Tickner lists at least seven banners made for men’s pro-suffrage groups, some of which were known to have been designed by men. These are the ‘MSPU’ (probably the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement) banner in the Museum of London; the Northern Men’s Federation (Berwick-onTweed) banner in the collection of the Museum of London and the Northern Men’s Federation (Edinburgh) banner, in the National Museum of Scotland; the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage (Glasgow) banner, in The People’s Palace Museum, Glasgow; Laurence Housman’s design for the Church League for Women’s Suffrage (Hampstead) banner, in the Museum of London; the West Midlands Federation banner, the design of which is attributed by Tickner to Michael Pippet, is now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; and the Women’s Social and Political Union Holloway banner for the Chelsea Women’s Social and Political Union, designed by Herman Ross, now in the Museum of London (Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 256–260).

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26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36

SUFFRAGE AND THE ARTS Images of banners for men’s societies (now untraced) are contained in the archives of the Manchester Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage (1909–1918) in the University of Manchester Special Collections, the John Rylands Library (Ref. No. GB 133 ML). Banners were as crucial to men’s societies as to women’s. The Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage banners were often used in demonstrations and marches; see the description in ‘The Great Hyde Park Demonstration’, Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage Monthly, 11 (August 1910), 43. Frustratingly little is known of the production of such banners but the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement recorded costs of ‘£3. 11s. 3d.’ in its annual accounts to cover processions and banner making, a sum that suggests they may have employed professional skills; see Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement. Second Annual Report (London: Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, 1911), 13. Laurence Housman, The Unexpected Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), 274. Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 4. Ibid., 21. John and Eustance, ‘Shared Histories – Differing Identities’, 30. For this context, see Matt Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Thesiger knew Housman personally, acting in the first performances of both of Housman’s important suffrage plays, Alice in Ganderland and Pains and Penalties: The Defence of Queen Caroline, in 1911. Emmanuel Cooper, ‘Queer Spectacles’, in Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Culture, eds., Peter Horne and Reina Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 13–27. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 99. Although parallels between second-wave feminism and the gay liberation movement have often been drawn, see, for instance, Michael A. Messner, Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements (London: Sage, 1997). Sandra Stanley Holton, Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Routledge, 1996), 202–203. Paul Stigant, ‘Foreword: Whose History?’, in The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920, eds., Angela V. John and Claire Eustance (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), xiii–xx, xv and xviii. Lisa Tickner, ‘Men’s Work? Masculinity and Modernism’, differences, 4:3 (1992): 1–37, 12. See ‘Why Types?’, in Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 167–174, 169. Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 262. Ibid., 106. John and Eustance, ‘Shared Histories – Differing Identities’, 89. See Kevin F. White, ‘Men Supporting Women: A Study of Men Associated with the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and America, 1909–1930’, Maryland Historian, 18:1 (1987): 45–59, 48.

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37 Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement. First Annual Report (London: Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, 1910), 13. 38 Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 341. 39 ‘Disturbance by Women Suffragists’, The Times, 13 November 1908, 14. 40 Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 341. 41 Ibid., 332–333, the image is captioned ‘Ejection of a woman questioner from Birrell’s meeting in the City Temple November 12th, 1908’. 42 See ‘Disturbance by Women Suffragists’, The Times, 13 November 1908, 14. Men were omitted entirely from Pankhurst’s account of the incident. 43 For an example of Franklin’s militancy as ‘feminine heroic’, see ‘Men in the Fighting Line’, Votes for Women, 20 January 1911, 257, and for the cursory way such activity was reported in the wider press, see ‘Male Suffragist Sent to Prison’, The Times, 10 March 1913, 6. 44 For this context, see Lesley A. Hall, Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality, 1900– 1950 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). 45 Laurence Housman, The Bawling Brotherhood (London: The Women’s Press, n.d.), 19. The term ‘Bawling Brotherhood’ was in fact not Housman’s, it was coined by the writer Sarah Grand in ‘The New Aspect of the Women’s Question’, North American Review, 148:448 (1894): 270–276. For the earlier context of Grand’s formulation, see Galia Ofek, ‘Shrieking Sisters and Bawling Brothers: Sibling Rivalry in Sarah Grand and Mary Cholmondeley’, in Conflict and Difference in Nineteenth-Century Literature, eds., Dinah Birch and Mark Llewellyn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 213–227. Housman may also have been satirizing an anti-suffragist essay by Edmund B. d’Auvergne, ‘The Brawling Brotherhood’, The New Age, 26 November 1908, 91. 46 For this context, see Sean Brady, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861–1913 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 47 See Chris Waters, ‘Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud and the State: Discourses of Homosexual Identity in Interwar Britain’, in Sexology in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires, eds., Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (Cambridge: Polity 1998), 165–179; and Chris Waters, ‘Sexology’, in Palgrave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality, eds., H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 41–63. 48 Ibid., 5. Housman had earlier played with ideas of ‘sexual inversion’, in his book An Englishwoman’s Love-Letters (London: John Murray, 1900), which was originally published anonymously and thought to have been written by a woman. It was only later revealed that it was written by Housman, see Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, ‘Cross-Dressing Confessions: Men Confessing as Women’, in Confessional Politics: Women’s Sexual Self-Representation in Life Writing and Popular Media, ed., Irene Gammel (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 167–184. 49 Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography. Vol. 1. The Unknown Years, 1880–1910 (London: Heinemann, 1967), 303. See correspondence between Pippa Strachey (in her capacity as Women’s Social and Political Union officer) and the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage in ‘Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, General correspondence and circular letters 1907–1913’, TWL/LSE 2LSW/E/15/08. 50 Frances Spalding, Duncan Grant: A Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1997), 19–20, 510–511 (note 6).

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51 Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 198. 52 For Thesiger’s embroidery in the context of pre- and post-war homosexual subcultures, see my ‘“Nothing Is More Terrifying to Me Than to See Ernest Thesiger Sitting Under the Lamplight Doing This Embroidery”: Ernest Thesiger (1879–1961), “Expert Embroiderer”’, TEXT: Journal for the Study of Textile Art, Design and History, 43 (2015/2016): 20–26; and ‘Queer Hobbies: Ernest Thesiger and Interwar Embroidery’, Textile: Cloth and Culture, 15:3 (2017): 292–322. 53 Thesiger had been ‘best man’ at Duval’s wedding to Una Dugdale in January 1912, which had been widely reported in the press on account of the bride’s refusal to use the word ‘obey’ as part of the vows; see ‘Miss Dugdale’s Marriage’, The Derby Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1912, 2. The Duvals’ wedding reception was held at ‘Mrs. Thesiger’s London home’, which was possibly Thesiger’s family home on Sloane Street, although his mother had died by this date and he did not marry himself until 1917; see ‘“Obey” Wedding’, The Globe, 13 January 1912, 9. Thesiger’s name does not appear in the A List of Prominent Men in Favour of Women’s Suffrage (London: Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, 1909) TWL/LSE JF(42)/D28, which is one of the key sources used by John and Eustance to compile their list of prominent Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage members. However, in the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement. Second Annual Report (London: Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, 1911), he is listed as donating ‘£1. 1d. 0s’, see 14. His memoirs contain anecdotes about being asked to engage in militant activity as well as proudly carrying the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage banner during the suffrage coronation procession in 1911; see Thesiger, Practically True, 70. 54 Laurence Housman, The Unexpected Years, 190. 55 The lack of information on the Housmans’ working methods makes it difficult to untangle who did what; see the brief discussion in Elizabeth Oakley’s Inseparable Siblings: A Portrait of Clemence & Laurence Housman (Sudley, Warwickshire: Brewin Books, 2009), 75–77, as well as Stephen Housman, ‘The Housman Banners’, Housman Society Journal, 18 (1992): 39–47, and Henry Stephen Housman, ‘The Housman Banners II’, Housman Society Journal, 19 (1993): 39–50. 56 See Housman, ‘The Housman Banners’. 57 The drawing for this banner survives in the Laurence Housman Collection, Street Library, Somerset. 58 Laurence Housman’s life and work have only really recently started to be considered in light of his context of London’s burgeoning queer subculture; see Kristin Mahoney, Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 194–195, and Mahoney’s ‘The Relation of Fellow-Feeling to Sex: Laurence Housman and Queer Cosmopolitanism’, podcast at University of Oxford. Available online: https:// podcasts.ox.ac.uk/relation-fellow-feeling-sex-laurence-housman-and-queercosmopolitanism (accessed 17 December 2016). 59 Ibid., 122; and Ernest Thesiger, Unpublished Notes for Autobiography, 1955, 3, EFT000065, Ernest Thesiger Archive, Theatre Collection, University of Bristol.

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60 For the history of this organization, see my ‘“The Work of Masculine Fingers”: The Disabled Soldiers’ Embroidery Industry, 1918–1955’, Journal of Design History, 31:1 (2018): 1–23. 61 For the history of Murray and Anderson’s work, see the several important articles by Jennian F. Geddes on the Endell Street Military Hospital; ‘Artistic Integrity and Feminist Spin: A Spat at the Endell Street Military Hospital’, The Burlington Magazine, 148:1230 (2005): 617–618; ‘The Women’s Hospital Corps: Forgotten Surgeons of the First World War’, Journal of Medical Biography, 14 (2006): 109–117; ‘Deeds and Words in the Suffrage Military Hospital in Endell Street’, Medical History, 51 (2007): 79–98; and ‘The Women’s Hospital Corps and the Endell Street Military Hospital’, Camden History Review, 32 (2008): 13–18. 62 For the conceptualization of hysteria in men, see Elaine Showalter, ‘Male Hysteria: W. H. Rivers and the Lessons of Shell Shock’, in The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (New York: Penguin, 1987), 167–194. 63 Steve Neale, ‘Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men in Mainstream Cinema’, Screen, 24 (1983): 2–17. 64 James Eli Adams, Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Manhood (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 19. 65 Ibid., 11. 66 For discussion of men’s place in the ‘feminine’ domestic sphere, see John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1999). And for a case study of men’s bodies, avant-garde art and the suffrage movement, see Ramsay Burt, ‘Le Sacre du printemps in London: The Politics of Embodied Freedom in Early Modernist Dance and Suffragette Protest’, in Russia in Britain, 1890–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism, eds., Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 129–144; Laurence Housman, Ernest Thesiger and Duncan Grant all attended the first season of the Ballets Russes’ London performances. 67 John Tosh, ‘The Making of Masculinities: The Middle Class in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain’, in The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920, eds., Angela V. John and Claire Eustance (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 39. 68 Ibid. 69 John and Eustance, ‘Shared Histories – Differing Identities’, 2.

CHAPTER TEN

An Irish harp and sleeping beauty: The politics of suffrage in the textile art of Una Taylor and Ann Macbeth Janice Helland

In 1890, an Irish National Banner embroidered by Una Ashworth Taylor (1857–1922) was exhibited in the London Arts and Crafts Exhibition (Figure 10.1).1 ‘A Sunburst breaking into Celtic Cross, enclosed by Irish Harp’, dominated the design which was then surrounded by the shields of the four provinces of Ireland; the right-hand corner held the signature of Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891), leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and advocate of home rule for Ireland.2 Slightly over a decade later, Ann Macbeth (1875–1948), an embroidery teacher at the Glasgow School of Art, exhibited The Sleeping Beauty, an appliquéd and embroidered panel, first in Glasgow in 1901, then in Turin in 1902 (and, like Una Taylor, Macbeth also exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society) (Figure 10.2). Although these two textile panels, one Irish, one Scottish, look very different, both were made by politically aware and engaged women. Taylor was the lead embroiderer for the Donegal Industrial Fund, an organization that supported, promoted, and marketed Irish craft from its London storefront.3 Although she was progressive in her views, there is no documentation that directly links her to suffrage activism. Macbeth, on the other hand, was actively engaged with the movement. Both panels,

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FIGURE 10.1  Irish National Banner, 1890, as photographed for Irish Independent, 28 October 1949.

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however, enable an interrogation of the various paths taken by women in the suffrage movement in Ireland and Scotland, and they encourage a discussion of textile art and suffrage that incorporates an examination of objects not explicitly related to the suffrage campaign itself. This approach incorporates Diane Urquhart’s assertion: ‘All women involved in the suffrage movement across Europe and the Americas had different experiences, whilst sharing the same ultimate objective of obtaining the right to vote’.4 This chapter, as it acknowledges those differences, will analyse textile art produced by two embroiderers as exemplifying this narrative of difference. The two panels allude to the complications of the suffrage movement in two geographical regions and are therefore emblematic of the diversity of the movement itself. While Macbeth, unlike Taylor, did design at least one suffrage banner, the object selected for discussion here evades the specificity of suffrage while eliciting an impression of cultural reification and anxieties.5 Later suffrage artists would struggle with how to adapt the kinds of representations familiar to them, such as the one found in Macbeth’s Sleeping Beauty, with their political message. Lisa Tickner, for example, suggested that pictures of the ‘ethereal feminine’, with which artists were familiar, were ‘borrowed from Pre-Raphaelite painting and art nouveau illustration’; this type of imagery was ‘adapted with difficulty to the needs of a militant campaign’.6 Can, then, Macbeth’s embroidered panel be analysed as a representation that allows one to interrogate this image of supine beauty, so skillfully designed and expertly constructed by a working woman artist, as offering diverse meanings and subtle nuances to a sophisticated viewer? Can it be considered an entry point into a discussion of the differences between suffrage in Scotland and England, differences that, although present, are much less pronounced than those between Ireland and England?

Image not available in this edition

FIGURE 10.2  Ann Macbeth, The Sleeping Beauty, 1901, Glasgow Museums © The Artist’s Estate.

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Taylor’s object, like Macbeth’s, did not represent suffrage; it was, however, overtly political in its support of Irish nationalism which, in certain instances, was at odds with the British suffrage movement. The layering of political motivation further complicates the object. Taylor was of Irish descent but had been born in and lived in England. She articulated her commitment to Ireland and Irish home rule in her choice of venue for her writing (she was an accomplished poet and author as well as an artist) which, most frequently, was the nationalist newspaper United Ireland or The Nation. According to D. J. O’Donoghue in his Poets of Ireland, Taylor possessed ‘great artistic taste and literary attainment’ and she wrote ‘almost exclusively on Irish and Catholic themes’; she was, wrote O’Donoghue, ‘fervently Irish’.7 An article, ‘Miss Una Taylor and Her Friends’, published in The Times after her death, commended her literary abilities and also praised her as ‘a learned and enthusiastic musician, while among art-embroiderers she had probably few, if any, equals in the country’.8 Taylor’s commitment to Ireland can be traced in newspaper accounts and reviews of exhibitions although her precise relationship to suffrage is not known. She and her sister, Ida (1847–1929), however, were viewed as radicals so they may well have been, at the very least, sympathetic to the suffrage cause.9 A brief description of both sisters that appeared in an article published after Ida’s death alluded to their revolutionary interests, and wrote that they, particularly Una, frequently indulged in ‘heroics about Ireland or the proletariat’.10

Ireland and suffrage My discussion of Taylor’s embroidered banner thus considers the early years of the suffrage movement in Ireland, its attempt to manoeuvre through and around Irish politics, and its struggle with anti-suffrage politicians (both unionist and nationalist). The banner itself was, and remains, a testament to Charles Stewart Parnell and home rule. Concomitantly, if the home rule debate is positioned within scholarly writing, it becomes immediately obvious that much academic activity has been devoted to all the various activities, events and aspirations that surrounded that historical moment. The same cannot be said about Irish suffrage which was under-researched until the 1980s and remained absent, or almost invisible, in writings about British suffrage. Elizabeth Crawford’s invaluable reference guide to the suffrage movement published in 1999, for example, does not contain the name of one Irish suffrage activist, not even Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877–1946) or Isabella M. S. Tod (1836–1896); it does include Scottish women.11 Lisa Tickner’s groundbreaking research on suffrage, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14, makes only passing reference to the participation of members of the Irish Women’s Franchise League in the 1910 From Prison to Citizenship procession, and no reference at all to, for example, Irish artist Rosamond Praeger (1867–1954) and her designs for both the Irishwomen’s Suffrage Federation and London’s Suffrage Atelier.12 By 1984, Rosemary Cullen Owens had published her history

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of Irish suffrage, and in 2007, Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward published their edited volume, Irish Women and the Vote.13 Significantly, in 2006, Elizabeth Crawford published her book on regional suffrage which included sections on Ireland, Scotland, and Wales thereby addressing the oversights in her earlier volume.14 Despite this, Megan Smitley, in her 2009 book on women and civic life in Scotland, maintains that the centrality of London and militancy on scholarly writing about suffrage continues.15 In Ireland, as in Scotland, interest in and concern for the rights of women developed during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and coalesced around similar issues – education, property rights, parliamentary franchise – all analogous concerns in England.16 Nevertheless, and even though individual Irish women participated in English debates and demonstrations, suffrage groups in Ireland expressed a desire to maintain and retain their own identity. Their limited participation in England reflected this desire. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington of the Irish Women’s Franchise League, for example, along with a group of Irish women, was photographed in a London demonstration carrying an elegantly designed green silk poplin banner.17 ‘Irish Women’s Franchise League’ was embroidered on one side; the other side ‘has the equivalent words in Irish, Cumannact I gCóir Coṁṫruime na mBan in orange and gold silks with some Gaelic lettering and some Celtic motifs in beige and cream included’.18 Orange and green were the Irish Women’s Franchise League’s organizational colours and suggest a visual nationalist link with the Irish tricolour; the use of ‘the Celtic Revival symbols of the shamrock and script emulating the style of Irish Early Christian manuscripts further add to the nationalist imagery’.19 One of the three principles of the Irish Women’s Franchise League stated: ‘the League must be an independent Irish organisation working on Irish lines and with special reference to the Irish condition’.20 It formed in 1908, five years after the Women’s Social and Political Union, and was the ‘militant organization within the wider Irish suffrage movement’. Furthermore, although the Women’s Social and Political Union organized branches throughout Britain, ‘Irish women did not consider the possibility of forming an Irish branch of the organization’.21 The home rule question dominated Irish politics and thus posed a challenge to those who campaigned specifically for women’s enfranchisement. Many women, and Taylor may have been among them, ‘perceived Ireland’s fate to be of more consequence than votes for women’.22 It was within this space of the ‘home rule question’ and ‘Ireland’s fate’ that Taylor embroidered her banner.

Una Taylor, home rule and the suffrage question Taylor, wrote Ireland’s Freeman’s Journal, was ‘half Irish herself’ and ‘she has taken an energetic part in promoting the Home Rule Movement in London’; there was ‘no more earnest and gifted friend of the Irish cause’ in England.23 An elegy to Parnell written by Taylor and attached to the harp-

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shaped wreath carried by John Redmond (1856–1918) in the procession from the centre of Dublin to Parnell’s grave leaves little doubt about Taylor’s commitment to Ireland: ‘We are his love and we are his hate;/His sword are we – he strikes the blow;/He leads us onward to slay the foe’.24 Taylor, like many of her Irish contemporaries, may have been concerned for women’s rights but was more concerned about independence for Ireland and, furthermore, would not have identified with unionist women involved with suffrage, particularly if she viewed them unsympathetic to home rule: ‘Political life in Ireland was concerned with one issue only: Ireland’s domination by Britain and whether or not to fight for independence’.25 The suffrage movement itself was divided with some, like Isabella M. S. Tod, who organized Ireland’s first suffrage group, actively campaigning against home rule, as did many others who were involved in suffrage organizations during the 1880s and 1890s; thus, ‘energy that might have gone to suffrage was taken up by more immediate concerns’.26 In her discussion of British and Irish suffrage, Margaret Ward asks, if ‘British suffragists, or a section of them, aligned themselves with the privileged position of their imperial state, assuming that the concerns of those in the metropolitan area were the same for those who existed in what may be described as the periphery’.27 This was the volatile political climate in which Una Taylor lived and worked, and in which she embroidered the banner which symbolizes the complications, debates and the historical gaps that appear in scholarly literature. It represents the surfeit of research on home rule during the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries; it complements and glorifies those debates, and was meant to hang in a new Irish Parliament. It was worked on and exhibited during a time when divisions between male nationalists and advocates for women’s rights were not as pronounced as they would later become. Sinn Féin, for example, ‘initially offered its support to the franchise movement, provided women did not undermine nationalist objectives’.28 Finally, it can stand for the complications of Irish suffrage itself, caught in political debates that were not of its own making, and left on the margins of the larger movement taking place in England and Scotland.

The Irish National Banner The earliest mention of the banner made prior to its display in the exhibition appeared in Freeman’s Journal in May 1890 and coincided with the banner being taken to the House of Commons in Westminster to obtain Parnell’s signature. He signed the ‘magnificent banner’, which was destined for the Irish House of Commons, ‘in the cloakroom after the House had risen’. According to Freeman’s, it was a ‘work of art of high order’ designed by Walter Crane and ‘exquisitely worked in coloured silks’ by Una Taylor, an ‘earnest and gifted friend of the Irish cause’.29

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English Arts and Crafts artist, Walter Crane (1845–1915) had in March 1889 assisted Henry Holiday (1839–1927), also English, with the decoration of St. James’s Hall for a home rule demonstration at which Parnell was to speak: ‘we multiplied harps upon green banners and Home Rule mottoes and shamrocks’.30 Later, as Crane recounts, he designed a ‘Nationalist banner, which was beautifully worked in silk by Miss Una Taylor, as a labour of love, and presented by her to the Nationalist party in Ireland’.31 Because she worked on the banner for twelve months, she must have begun the embroidery soon after the large demonstration in March 1889, and it was Taylor who introduced Crane to T. P. Gill (1858–1931), a Nationalist parliamentarian who provided drawings of the ‘Heraldry of the four provinces’ of Ireland for the banner.32 Taylor, in a later statement, wrote that the banner was designed by Crane under the direction of heraldic authorities and executed by her ‘at the desire of Irish nationalist members [of Parliament]’.33 The 1889 demonstration and speeches represent the milieu in which women in Ireland were working towards equality. A Home Rule bill had been defeated in the House of Lords in 1886. The 1889 ‘great national protest against Balfourism’, and in support of Parnell, publicly linked Walter Crane’s name with home rule and Crane, according to one press comment, made an even more public display of ‘his intense sympathy with the cause of Irish liberty’ when the Irish National Banner appeared in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition.34 The various press reviews of the banner in the exhibition read like a microcosm of either support for or derision against home rule and its supporters. The reviews, again reminiscent of suffrage debates, were not all negative in England and all positive in Ireland but complicated, some in favour, some disdainful. The Saturday Review, for example, was ‘amused to find “the Uncrowned King of Ireland” an exhibitor at the New Gallery’, and hoped that it was not ‘political bias that makes us think this flag of the future one of the most grotesque and hideous objects we ever saw’. The design of a harp and Celtic cross, continued the critic, was ‘a poor exchange for the leopards of England’.35 The Manchester Times, on the other hand, rather than publish an account written by one of its own critics, reproduced word for word, the glowing article published in Freeman’s Journal: it was ‘magnificent’, a ‘work of art of high order’, ‘exquisitely worked in coloured silks’; the ‘Irish people will be profoundly grateful’.36 Not all Irish people, however, would be ‘profoundly grateful’ because not all supported home rule or an independent Ireland. The material object, then, can be considered emblematic of the tumultuous experience of Irish women at the time and the fray into which supporters of suffrage had to venture.

Scotland and suffrage While the suffrage movement in Ireland may have suffered from neglect in the literature until the latter part of the twentieth century, Scottish suffrage has been even less discussed and has largely been subsumed into the English

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movement.37 Elspeth King maintains that one ‘could be forgiven for thinking that there was no women’s suffrage movement in Scotland, or that it was of so little consequence as to be beneath mention’ and, when mentioned, it appears only ‘incidentally in London and Manchester-based contemporary accounts’.38 Almost twenty years later, Smitley wrote: ‘Scotland is a distinct nation within the United Kingdom, differentiated by its own legal and educational systems, ethnic and linguistic groups, religious denominations, political attitudes and international networks’.39 Nevertheless, and while recent literature is moving towards an Anglophone perspective on suffrage, ‘[w]omen’s suffrage histories have been dominated by a focus on the campaign in (south east) England’.40 In Scotland, the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage formed in 1867; the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage, of which Ann Macbeth was a member, in 1902.41 The struggle for women’s rights in Scotland began early and was inextricably linked with temperance and non-militancy. In her writings about Scottish suffrage, King asserted (as Smitley would later) that ‘most work published on the suffrage campaigns, both militant and non-militant, has been written from a “British” – that is London – viewpoint’.42 The differences and the exclusions were noted at the time and surfaced in debates about the role of the Women’s Social and Political Union in Scotland. Leneman, in her research on the Scottish movement, maintained that Scottish women resented the perceived blindness on the part of the Women’s Social and Political Union regarding regional difference. Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958), on the other hand, argued for the inclusiveness of the Union: ‘Where W.S.P.U. [Women’s Social and Political Union] organising is concerned, barriers between England and Scotland, England and Wales, England and Ireland, would, in my opinion, be a very great mistake, and in every way would have a narrowing effect’.43 To a point, Pankhurst was ‘right in that, unlike Irishwomen, Scottish women were proud to be British’, but according to Leneman, ‘they were also proud to be Scottish and resented their national sensitivities being ignored’.44 In Scotland, then, while concerns about identity and an independent approach surfaced and persisted, the suffrage movement itself thrived and diversified with one faction becoming more militant (although not as militant as the Women’s Social and Political Union), others less so, and some activists joining the Union itself.

Ann Macbeth and The Sleeping Beauty Unlike Una Taylor, who was a woman of independent means, Macbeth was a working woman: first a student, then a teacher at the Glasgow School of Art, a lecturer ‘on the teaching of needlework’, and the author of a number of books on textiles.45 By the time she designed and embroidered The Sleeping Beauty, she was ‘assistant instructress’

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to Jessie Newbery (1864–1948) and recognized as a talented and innovative embroiderer. Jessie’s husband, Francis (1855–1946), principal of the Glasgow School of Art, wrote enthusiastically about Macbeth’s accomplishments with the needle: ‘she may fairly be said to belong to that class of workers who claim companionship with Penelope and find themselves at home in the company of those Medieval artists … whose needles have made history’.46 Thus, like Taylor, her skills were compared to those of historical embroiderers and, also like Taylor, this put Macbeth in the company of Arts and Crafts artists: both Jessie and Francis were advocates of designer William Morris (1834–1896), and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Additionally, they were socialists, concerned for equality and, as Liz Arthur observed, Jessie Newbery ‘frequently used the women’s suffrage colours of green, white and violet’ in her textile art.47 Almost certainly it was Newbery who introduced Macbeth to suffrage organizations, particularly to the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage, which formed in 1902, the same year Macbeth exhibited The Sleeping Beauty in the Turin International Exhibition for Modern Decorative Art.48 The large textile panel (48.5 centimetres × 106.8 centimetres), composed of silk appliqué shapes and embroidered with silk and gold metal threads, was a testament to Macbeth’s skill as a designer and embroiderer: the supine young woman a representation of romanticized femininity. When the panel was exhibited in the Glasgow Exhibition of 1901, a critic writing for London’s pre-eminent art journal The Studio, declared that it was a ‘work of great charm of colour and treatment, one of the most pleasing in the room’.49 When analysing the panel by looking closely at a photographic reproduction, a viewer immediately sees a languorous female; the eye is drawn to the face, clothed body, hair. When one views the actual panel, however, it is the work and not the content that grips the imagination; the perfected ease of Macbeth’s stitching belies the laborious hours spent with needle and thread just as it obliterates the making of the textiles used to construct the work.50 Also hidden from view by the seductive image is the extent to which Macbeth and her mentor Jessie Newbery sought to teach embroidery as an art practice to the poor. They stressed that embroidery could be worked as effectively on cheap materials, such as unbleached calico, linen, flannel and hessian, as on the much more expensive silks and velvets.51 As a result, Macbeth was knowledgeable about poverty and work, particularly as both affected women in Scotland. In an 1896 speech, for example, Margaret Irwin (1858–1940), then Secretary of the Scottish Council for Women’s Trades, later a founding member of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage, insisted that ‘women’s monopoly of the spinning and weaving industries has proved inimical to the Scottish textile trade’. In Scotland, said Irwin, textile trades ‘were practically women’s industries’.52 Unlike

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Una Taylor, who lived most of her life in London, Macbeth (although like Taylor born in England) studied and then worked in the industrial city of Glasgow. The Glasgow School of Art which, under the direction of Francis Newbery (1855–1946), was innovative and politically progressive, combined with Taylor’s own teaching of young working-class students, would have made her aware of circumstances at variance with her elegant representation of Sleeping Beauty. As mentioned earlier, its form is reminiscent of the familiar and indeed dominant image of women at the time. Its style reflects an understanding of Victorian painting and visual culture which differs little from later representations of women on suffrage banners. Equally significant is Tickner’s introduction of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser’s concept of ‘intertextuality’ to her discussion of the imagery of suffrage and the various strands of representation that made up how suffragists and anti-suffragists represented the movement. Tickner asserts the need to strategically draw together all the threads that informed the dominant Victorian and early twentieth-century narratives of womanhood, such as morality, virtue, and modesty, with the strength and focus necessary to obtain the vote. ‘The use in suffrage imagery’, wrote Tickner, ‘of an allegorical female figure derived from Pre-Raphaelite and art nouveau painting, for example, may have absolved them from the sin of “unwomanliness” at the cost of blunting the analysis of the ideological construct of “womanliness” itself’.53 While the image in Macbeth’s Sleeping Beauty (if one ignores the ‘work’ of making) reflects a dominant and familiar narrative, another picture she produced about the same time displays more explicitly Tickner’s reference to the problem of attempting to both uphold and subvert the ‘ideological construct’. Macbeth’s drawing, The Huntress appeared as a full-page colour reproduction in The Studio in 1902. Although the woman holds a bow in one hand, an arrow in the other, and wears a horned helmet on her head, she appears elegantly beautiful in her possibly Celtic attire (Plate 26). Like Sleeping Beauty she has light-coloured hair but, in the case of the huntress, the potentially flowing locks are secured with leather bindings. This likely remained a sketch, with no evidence to suggest it became an embroidered textile, and Macbeth’s other figurative textiles remained more traditional in their themes and replicated the intensity of the work of making. What remains important is to relate the work involved in the design and the stitching of Sleeping Beauty to a middle-class working woman who desired equality; the subtleties and nuances of the representation can be used as a reminder of the subtleties and nuances of suffrage in Scotland which, as mentioned earlier, had a much closer relationship to English suffrage than did the movement in Ireland. A significant distinction, as both King and Smitley have argued, was the Scottish relationship between the temperance movement and the struggle for women’s equality.54

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Ethnography and suffrage Diverging for a moment from material objects made by two artists, but remaining with the diversity of the suffrage movement, I want to draw attention to two photographs, taken about six months apart, upon the release of two women from Holloway Prison: Mary Phillips (1880–1969), ‘one of the first Scottish … Women’s Social and Political Union members to be arrested’, and Kathleen S. Tanner (dates unknown), ‘an Irish-woman’.55 The photographs commemorate the release of the women and capture a glimpse of the celebrations organized to take place as they walked into freedom. Phillips was released two days after a group of suffragists but, as The Times noted, her release attracted a ‘much larger crowd outside the prison’ because news ‘had been circulated that it was intended to give the prisoner a Scottish welcome’.56 The newspaper proceeded to provide readers with a detailed description of the ‘picturesque’ procession: first ‘pipers in full Highland costume’ followed by two Scottish women, ‘also in Scottish dress’, carrying a banner on which were painted thistles. Three Women’s Social and Political Union leaders followed ‘wearing plaids over their shoulders’ and, behind them, twelve of Mary Phillips’s ‘countrywomen dressed in tartan and wearing Glengarry caps’ pulled a ‘wagonette decorated with a profusion of heather and Scottish thistle’. Phillips walked out of Holloway wearing a white dress but was immediately draped with plaid. The colourful procession made its way to Queen’s Hall in Langham Place accompanied by the pipers playing Scottish tunes, including ‘The Campbells are Coming’.57 It was on the steps of Queen’s Hall that a group of women gathered around Phillips for the photograph, most wearing fashionable dress with plaids draped over their shoulders, two wearing kilts (Figure 10.3). Kathleen Tanner was released after serving two months’ imprisonment for obstructing the police. According to Votes for Women, she had ‘vivid recollection’ of the formation of the Irish Ladies’ Land League in the early 1880s, and maintained that her interest in politics ‘was first roused by Parnell’s policy of “obstruction”’.58 When released, she was welcomed ‘outside the prison by a number of the members of the National Women’s Social and Political Union, four of whom were dressed as Irish colleens, Mrs. Tanner being an Irish-woman’ (Figure 10.4).59 The immediate question is: why were the women dressed as ‘Irish colleens’? The ‘colleen’ was a complicated figure recognized as a ‘colonial female subject’; as such, she represents the ‘primitiveness of Ireland in British imperial discourse’.60 The image, while popular, was anathema to nationalist groups such as Inghinidhe Na hÉireann (Daughters of Erin) founded in 1900 by Maud Gonne (1866–1953).61 Both photographs and the accompanying press accounts acknowledged diversity and celebrated it by incorporating, as The Times suggested, ‘costume’ or, to return to Tickner’s discussion of representation, they denote

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FIGURE 10.3  Suffragettes welcoming Mary Phillips, 53.140/144 © Museum of London.

a narrative that could be understood while at the same time suggesting an intertextuality that signalled more than what appeared on the surface. As such, I would argue, the images gesture to the implicit hegemony of English suffrage, a factor characterized by the conventional, often fashionable, dress worn by those greeting English suffragists upon their release from prison. They also hark back to the sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, resistance on the part of Irish and Scottish women to be subsumed into a monolithic English movement that could so easily acknowledge difference in costume but not always in behaviour, and a similar argument could be made for Welsh or South Asian women who participated in suffrage activism in England. *** The textile art selected here, the Irish National Banner and Sleeping Beauty, have been used to draw attention to suffrage in Ireland and Scotland. The two artists and the objects they made represent the complications inherent in the campaign. Taylor, of Irish descent, was born in and lived in England but was ‘fervently Irish’ and the banner represents her most visual statement of that allegiance. She was also progressive – one commenter alluded to her revolutionary nature – and was likely an advocate of women’s rights even

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FIGURE 10.4  Suffragettes celebrate the release of Kathleen Tanner from prison, 2003.46/126 © Museum of London.

though there is no documentation that suggests she was actively involved in the suffrage campaign. She was affiliated, however, with the Women’s Guild of Arts, as were a number of suffrage supporters.62 Nevertheless, her Irish banner overtly represented Irish home rule and was destined for an Irish parliament. As such, it also signifies the major challenge to Irish suffrage: nationalism. Macbeth’s Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, is in almost every way a picture of the dominant image of femininity in Victorian and early twentiethcentury Britain. To return for a moment to photographs of releases from Holloway, a picture of four English suffragists walking away from the prison in September 1908 shows them all in fashionable, contemporary and feminine dress.63 Thus, like Macbeth’s embroidery, their presence does not challenge the dominant image of woman, but, like the photograph, Sleeping Beauty is more than its surface. The image belies its making, which required immense technical skill, and camouflages its maker: an intelligent, committed working woman. As such, it offers an opportunity to interrogate Scottish suffrage as a movement aligned with the English movement (to a certain extent) with the nuances and debates within Scotland almost hidden from view, certainly not on display as overtly as those in Ireland. According

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to Smitley: ‘The role of female temperance reformers and Liberal women in Scottish constitutional suffragism shows previously unrecognized diversity in the British women’s movement and Scotland’s divergence from English organized feminism’.64 This ‘unrecognised diversity’ has yet to be more substantially and extensively explored. Two objects, neither of which alludes directly to the suffrage movement, speak eloquently of commitment, skill and diversity, characteristics that also define suffrage; as such, they gesture to the complexities of circumstances and conflicts faced by women as they sought equality and a right to participate fully in civil society. As Leah Leneman suggested in her passionate narrative of suffrage in Scotland, ‘All that can be done is to look for clues wherever they may be found and to decide that telling incomplete stories is much better than leaving them to be forgotten’.65 The two embroidered textiles discussed here represent ‘incomplete stories’ but each in its own way substantially complements the rich narrative of the suffrage movement.

Notes 1

The National Museum of Ireland holds documentation alluding to the private sale of the banner in 1978. It was purchased by the Forestry and Wildlife Service (now Coillte); however, it cannot presently be located. I thank Alex Ward, Curator of Dress and Textiles, National Museum of Ireland, for this information. 2 The Catalogue of the Third Exhibition included the full description: ‘Sunburst breaking into Celtic Cross, enclosed by Irish Harp, surrounded with the motto: “Children of the Gael, shoulder to shoulder”’. The four quarters of the banner contain the shields of the four provinces. In the right-hand corner is the autograph signature of the Irish leader (Cat. No. 113, 157). 3 Janice Helland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries 1880–1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), 24–75. 4 Diane Urquhart, ‘“An Articulate and Definite Cry for Political Freedom”: The Ulster Suffrage Movement’, Women’s History Review, 1:2 (2002): 273–292, 273. 5 She designed and embroidered, for example (possibly with the help of her students), a banner that was carried in the From Prison to Citizenship procession in London in 1910. The banner is held by the Museum of London (ID no: Z6092). Jane Parkes, who had studied at the Glasgow School of Art, ‘recalled how, between classes, the students would take turns at stitching suffrage banners’. Elspeth King, The Scottish Women’s Suffrage Movement (Glasgow: People’s Palace Museum, 1978), 19. 6 Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 7 D. J. O. Donague, The Poets of Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), 451.

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‘A Link with Carlyle and Stevenson: Miss Una Taylor and Her Friends’, The Times, 24 June 1922, 7. Una Taylor shared a house in Montpelier Square in London with her equally talented literary sister, Ida, until about 1910, when they moved to Wootton Wood near New Milton. Ida Ashworth Taylor wrote several books, including Lady Jane Grey and Her Times (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1908); Christina of Sweden (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1909), and Life of Madame Roland (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1911). 9 ‘Miss Ida Ashworth Taylor’, The Times, 22 October 1929, 18. 10 Ibid. 11 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: Routledge, 1999). 12 Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 114. See Joseph McBrinn, ‘“A Populus Solitude”: The Life and Art of Sophia Rosamond Praeger, 1867–1954’, Women’s History Review, 18:4 (2009): 577–596. McBrinn discusses Praeger’s contribution to suffrage organizations in Belfast and in London, particularly her designs which included political postcards. 13 Rosemary Cullen Owens, Smashing Times: A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1889–1922 (Dublin: Attic Press, 1984); Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward, eds., Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens (Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2007). 14 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006). 15 Megan Smitley, The Feminine Public Sphere: Middle-Class Women and Civic Life in Scotland, c. 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 12. For a discussion of exclusions with regards to Welsh suffrage, see Ursula Masson, ‘“Political Conditions in Wales Are Quite Different …” Party Politics and Votes for Women in Wales, 1912–15’, Women’s History Review, 9:2 (2000): 369–388. 16 In Ireland, the first Irish suffrage group, the North of Ireland’s Women’s Suffrage Committee, was formed in Belfast in 1872; the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association was organized in 1876. For a discussion of the history of suffrage in Ireland, see, for example, Rosemary Cullen Owens, Smashing Times, or Maria Luddy, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (Dublin: Historical Association of Ireland, 1995). 17 The photograph held by the Museum of London (ID no. IN 1278) is dated 1908. Tickner published the photograph, indicating it was carried in the From prison to citizenship procession 1910. Donna Gilligan, ‘A Missing Materiality: The Visual and Material Culture of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1908–1918’ (MA dissertation, National College of Art & Design, National University of Ireland, Dublin, 2016), 92–93, suggests the banner’s date might be later than 1910. 18 Email message from Alex Ward, Curator, National Museum of Ireland to the author (15 September 2016). The banner is in the collection of the NMI. 19 Gilligan, ‘A Missing Materiality’, 39. 20 Francis Sheehy Skeffington, ‘The Movement in Ireland’, Votes for Women, 11 November 1911, 83. 21 Margaret Ward, ‘Conflicting Interests: The British and Irish Suffrage Movements’, Feminist Review, 50 (1995): 130. 22 Urquhart, ‘An Articulate and Definite Cry for Political Freedom’, 273.

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23 ‘London Correspondence (From Our Own Correspondent)’, Freeman’s Journal, 14 May 1890, 5. Taylor’s mother was Irish, the daughter of the 1st Baron Monteagle; she was related to a number of Irish nationalists including William Smith O’Brien, editor of United Ireland. 24 ‘Imposing Scene at the Grave’, United Ireland, 23 January 1892, 5. 25 Margaret Ward, ‘“Suffrage First – Above All Else”: An Account of the Irish Suffrage Movement’, Feminist Review, 10 (Spring 1982): 21. 26 Luddy, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 13. 27 Margaret Ward, ‘Conflicting Interests’, 129. The issues around suffrage in Ireland are similar to those that arose in other areas where nationalism and imperialism collided. See, for example, Margaret Ward, ‘Gendering the Union: Imperial Feminism and the Ladies’ Land League’, Women’s History Review, 10:1 (2001): 71–92, or Suruchi Thapar-Björkert and Louise Ryan, ‘Mother India/Mother Ireland: Comparative Gendered Dialogues of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Early 20th Century’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 25:3 (2002): 301–313. 28 Sinéad McCoole, No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activities in the Revolutionary Years, 1900–1923 (Dublin: The O’Brien Press, 2008), 26. Sinn Féin did not form until 1905 and later they would withdraw their support but many individual nationalists did support the franchise. Nevertheless, according to McCoole, ‘many felt the issue should not be addressed until Ireland had her own government’. Hanna Skeffington in a letter to the New York Times in 1917 suggested that England should not be considered a model for suffrage when the vote was to be extended only to women over thirty and she reminded readers that: ‘Sinn Féiners in their proclamation of an Irish republic, on the other hand, granted the franchise to all men and women over 21, an ideal that both Allies and Central Powers would do well to emulate’ (‘Sinn Fein as Suffrage Model’, 24 November 1917, 12). 29 ‘London Correspondence (From Our Own Correspondent)’, 5. 30 Walter Crane, An Artist’s Reminiscences (London: Methuen, 1907), 331. 31 Ibid. 32 ‘London Correspondence (From Our Own Correspondent)’, 5; Crane, An Artist’s Reminiscences, 332. 33 Taylor/Monteagle Papers, Shannon Foynes Port Company Archive (P11/14, 1/1/1922). 34 ‘Great Protest Against Coercion’, Freeman’s Journal, 14 March 1889, 5. ‘Balfourism’ was a term used to indicate the aggressive government response to resistance in Ireland including coercion and suppression of the press. 35 ‘The Arts and Crafts Exhibition’, Saturday Review, 11 October 1890, 11. 36 ‘A Decoration for the “Irish House of Commons”’, Manchester Times, 17 May 1890, 8. 37 One reason for this was distance: ‘[W]e feel that distance from England is so great that it annuls in great measure the benefit to be derived by joining the Union, and that in the opinion of this Committee, a Scottish Union would be more effective in extending the work in Scotland’. Glasgow and West of Scotland Women’s Suffrage Association as quoted in King, The Scottish Women’s Suffrage Movement, 19. Another reason was that of Scottish identity. See Leah Leneman, The Scottish Suffragettes (Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2000).

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38 Elspeth King, ‘The Scottish Women’s Suffrage Movement’, in Out of Bounds: Women in Scottish Society, 1800–1945, eds., Esther Breitenbach and Eleanor Gordon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 121–150, 121. 39 Smitley, Feminine Public Sphere, 12. 40 Ibid. 41 Leneman, The Scottish Suffragettes, 9–10. 42 Elspeth King, ‘Glasgow Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1902–1933’, 5. British Archives Online https://www.britishonlinearchives.co.uk (accessed 20 July 2016). 43 Christabel Pankhurst as quoted in Cliona Murphy, The Women’s Suffrage Movement and Irish Society in the Early Twentieth Century (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), 77. 44 Leah Leneman, A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1991), 196. 45 Fiona MacFarlane and Elizabeth Arthur, Glasgow School of Art Embroidery (Glasgow: Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries, 1980), 17–18. 46 Francis Newbery, ‘An Appreciation of the Work of Ann Macbeth’, The Studio, 27 (1902), 41. 47 Liz Arthur, ‘Jessie Newbery’, in The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, eds., Elizabeth Ewan, Sue Innes and Sian Reynolds (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 282. See also, King, The Scottish Women’s Suffrage Movement, 19. 48 Macbeth was awarded a silver medal at the exhibition. The Scotsman, 5 December 1902, 8. 49 ‘Glasgow International Exhibition’, The Studio, 23 (1901): 166. 50 Janice Helland, ‘“Quaint and Curious”: Scottish Textiles at Turin, 1902’, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, 5 (2000): 51–58, 54–55. 51 Ibid. 52 Margaret Irwin as quoted in Queen, The Lady’s Newspaper, 28 March 1896, 556. 53 Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 152. 54 Smitley, Feminine Public Sphere; King, The Scottish Women’s Suffrage Movement. 55 Leneman, The Scottish Suffragettes, 44; ‘Woman Suffrage: Release of a Prisoner’, The Times, 5 December 1908, 12. 56 ‘Woman Suffrage’, The Times, 19 September 1908, 2. 57 Ibid. 58 ‘Ten O’Clock’, Votes for Women, 15 October 1908, 4. The Ladies’ Land League supported reform of the existing land system and advocated for the rights of tenants. See, for example, Niamh O’Sullivan, ‘The Iron Cage of Femininity: Visual Representation of Women in the 1880s Land Agitation’, in Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, eds., Tadhg Foley and Seán Ryder (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), 181–196, or Adrian N. Mulligan, ‘“By a Thousand Ingenious Feminine Devices”: The Ladies’ Land League and the Development of Irish Nationalism’, Historical Geography, 37 (2009): 159–177. 59 ‘Woman Suffrage: Release of a Prisoner’, 12. 60 Gail Baylis, ‘Exchanging Looks: Gap Girls and Colleens in Early Irish Tourist Photography’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 10:4 (2012): 325–343, 326.

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Baylis also offers a brief discussion of the emergence of the ‘colleen’ as a popular icon in the 1860s. Available online: http://journals2.scholarsportal. info.proxy.queensu.ca/pdf/17460654/v10i0004/325_elggacieitp.xml (accessed 19 October 2016). 61 See, for example, Tanya Dean, ‘Staging Hiberina: Female Allegories of Ireland in Cathleen Ní Houilan and Dawn’, Theatre History Studies, 33 (2014): 71–82. 62 Email message from Zoë Thomas, 10 February 2016. See also, Zoë Thomas, ‘At Home with the Women’s Guild of Arts: Gender and Professional Identity in London Studios, c. 1880–1925’, Women’s History Review, 24:6 (2015): 938–964. 63 Museum of London (ID no. NN22724). Maud Joachim (1869–1947), Vera Wentworth (1890–1957), Elsie Howey (1884–1963), and Florence Haig (1856–1952) were released after three months’ imprisonment in Holloway for their participation in the suffrage demonstration in Parliament Square in June 1908. The Times, 17 September 1908, 2. 64 Smitley, The Feminine Public Sphere, 2. 65 Leneman, The Scottish Suffragettes, 7.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Images of empathy: Representations of force feeding in Votes for Women Chloe Ward

Around 11 o’clock in the morning, on 10 March 1914, Mary Richardson (1889–1961) entered London’s National Gallery and walked into the room where Diego Velasquez’s celebrated Rokeby Venus hung. Hidden inside the sleeve of her grey coat was a meat cleaver.1 Only recently released from H. M. P. Holloway, where she had been serving a sentence for militant suffrage activities, Richardson was a repeat offender who already been arrested nine times.2 For Richardson, the destruction of property perpetrated by militant suffragettes was efficacious because, as she wrote, it was a direct attack ‘upon the government … without bloodshed. Money could be spilled, yes! Property could suffer; but human beings would be immune, except for the sufferings inflicted upon us militants in the course of the campaign’.3 Richardson saw militancy as a deliberately ‘symbolic act’, linking the violence of window smashing, stone throwing, and other militant activities with the violence inflicted upon suffragettes’ bodies through the painful experiences of imprisonment and the tortures of force feeding that took place within the prison.4 When she had been detained previously, Richardson, like so many of her suffragette colleagues, had gone on hunger strike, protesting the government’s refusal to class suffragettes as political prisoners. As a result, Richardson was subjected to the brutal process of forcible feeding. Funnelling liquefied food into the stomach through a tube inserted down

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the throat or nose, forcible feeding was an invasive process that could result in serious complications such as haemorrhage, suffocation, or stroke. Previously practised almost exclusively in asylums and hospitals, forcible feeding, the government claimed, would save the lives of suffrage prisoners on hunger strike. Suffragettes, on the other hand, saw the procedure as a form of torture. As she entered the National Gallery that day, Richardson was driven to act by the recent arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), matriarch of the movement, whose repeated imprisonments, hunger strikes and consequent force feedings at the hands of prison doctors had severely damaged her health.5 In the National Gallery, two guards patrolled the room housing the Velasquez painting, which had been purchased for the Gallery for a substantial sum of £45,000. As may be seen in the image on p. 196 of this edited collection, the artist had depicted Venus reclining on a divan, her body forever turned away from her observer, her sinuous, nude back exposed as she contemplates herself in a mirror. Richardson took out her drawing materials and, in spite of the awkward meat cleaver pinned inside her sleeve, was able to make some sketches that she considered ‘quite good’.6 As lunchtime approached, one guard abandoned his post while the other opened his newspaper. Richardson took this as her cue and neared the painting, apparently in rapt contemplation. Extracting the knife from her coat in one swift motion, she took her first blow, smashing the painting’s protective glass. Seven further strikes cut into the painting itself, slicing a series of gashes across Venus’ naked torso, and making one of the most impactful visual statements of the suffrage movement.7 The following day, Richardson issued a testimony that was published in The Times: ‘I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history.’8 For Richardson, the painting had become far more than a representation or a symbol; instead, Velasquez’s Venus was a proxy for the suffragette body, the slashes cut into the canvas constituting the violence that Pankhurst, herself, was suffering. As Alfred Gell has pointed out, Richardson’s act signifies an exceptional fusion between representation and reality: ‘the image bears traces which testify directly to, rather than simply represent, the violence women endure, or believe they endure … creat[ing] the space in which the life of images and persons meet and merge together’.9 In this complex interplay of representation and reality, Richardson’s statement of intent raises more questions than it answers. Why did Richardson conflate the image, Venus, and the subject, Mrs Pankhurst? To what degree would Richardson’s intentions have been understood by the public and, importantly, by members of the government whom she was attempting to challenge through her actions? And, perhaps most of all, what cultural genealogy led Richardson to think of and act upon this merger of ‘the life of images and persons’?

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Richardson, herself, attempted to explain her actions. Her later accounts, all issued nearly forty years after the event, suggest that she took offence that male visitors ‘gaped’ at the nude figure in the painting.10 This morally tinged argument about female objectification has coloured much subsequent scholarship, diverting analysis from the original motives that are embedded in Richardson’s carefully crafted public statement. In this chapter, I wish to return to the role of images that is exemplified by Richardson’s statement and suggest that the damage inflicted upon the Rokeby Venus was in fact embedded within a shift in the way members of the suffrage movement – and subsequently, the public – responded to and related to images. Rather than a singular militant act to be examined, I argue that Richardson’s act of iconoclasm was lodged within a broader common cultural experience of looking that emerged during the suffrage movement. This transformation, which I will present as an emergent ‘structure of feeling’, to use Raymond Williams’ phrase, was fundamentally tied to the way suffragettes’ bodies were being represented by the visual propaganda of the suffrage movement, particularly through the widespread circulation of images of force feeding.11 Issued predominantly by the Women’s Social and Political Union and produced by the artist Alfred Pearse (1855–1933), such illustrations became among the most pervasive, memorable and iconic representations of the suffrage campaign.12 Taking the form of periodical covers and widely disseminated posters, illustrations of force feeding instructed viewers in new ways of reading images, promoting interpretations that eschewed the usual semiotic relationship of signifier to signified: instead of images merely ‘representing’ the subjects they depicted, the connection between image and subject was designed to be – and was perceived as being – much more literal. For some suffragettes, images of force feeding evoked deeply personal responses, vividly conjuring their own experiences in prison; for others, such images provoked an intense empathy, allowing even individuals who had not personally endured force feeding, to identify with the trials being depicted, understanding them as testimonies of women’s collective suffering. In both cases, images came to signify something more real than represented. By 1914, this new relationship to images had become pervasive, allowing a suffragette like Mary Richardson to easily see how slashing a powerful image like the Rokeby Venus could attest to the violence of attacks on the suffragette body and, significantly, that her act would be read as such by the wider public. Raymond Williams provides a useful model for investigating this type of shift in historical perceptions and responses through his notion of ‘structures of feeling’, a concept that aims to capture the way modes of thinking, feeling and sensing emerge in particular societies or groups. The precise meaning of Williams’ term has been much debated, but its vagueness has consequently allowed for a wide potential range of applications, on both macro- and micro-historical levels. In the broadest sense, ‘feelings’ refers to the domain of tastes, attitudes and perceptions, while ‘structures’ indicates

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that the experiences in question are not unique and individual but rather are repeated across a group, constituting a common social culture. Together, structures of feelings are concerned with, as Williams puts it, ‘meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt’.13 Williams’ concept has been most commonly applied to studies of the cultures that emerge through literature and film, yet Ben Highmore has recently called for the expansion of the theory to studies of material culture, an application Williams himself anticipated.14 The extension of structures of feeling to the domain of everyday objects and environments, Highmore contends, could reveal the ways that experiences of the material world inspire feelings that can themselves be historical agents, rather than mere symptoms of the historical process.15 This chapter intends, on a micro-historical level, to implement Highmore’s suggestion and thereby to identify just such a phenomenon in images of force feeding, which were explicitly devised to inspire the kind of visceral and empathetic reactions that could be historical agents, arousing sympathy for the suffrage movement and provoking viewers to take action. Of course, this was not the first time that images were designed to evoke strong empathetic responses or that new modes of reading images have emerged within a culture or community. The most notable precedents are the emotional responses aroused by Christian devotional images, which have often been cited as having the power to elicit tears of compunction. The word ‘compunction’ itself derives from the Latin compungere, to prick sharply, suggesting that the image has the power to physically wound the body (or, equally, the heart). At various points, new emotional relationships with such images have developed. In the fourteenth century, for instance, a new style of devotional images emerged that featured intimate, half-length representations of Christ and the Virgin Mary. These allowed viewers to feel closer to the subjects than previous full-length poses had allowed. As James Elkins has pointed out, such images enjoined worshipers to do more than just sympathize with Jesus or Mary: the aim of prayer was to identify with them bodily, to try to think of yourself as Jesus, or as the Mother of God … you would come to feel what they had felt, and you would see the world, at least in some small part, through their eyes. At that point their tears would be your tears.16 This new, highly personalized relationship to images transformed worshippers’ beliefs and actions, fostering more emotional forms of prayer and cultivating a market for domestic icons that became the focus for empathetic meditation. A similar development echoes through images of suffrage force feeding, which promoted new relationships to images and incited intense physical and emotional empathy with their subjects. The similarity between emotional responses to religious and suffrage iconography is not unexpected considering the degree to which suffrage organizations drew on religious referents.

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Well aware of the power of intimate depictions of sacrifice and suffering, suffrage artists and editors used such subject matter as a tool to inspire and unify their members. By appropriating the visual strategies of religious iconography, artists could both endow their cause with the righteousness such images symbolized and portray their members as potential martyrs, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for what they believed was undeniably just. Like medieval devotional images, images of suffrage force feeding precipitated new relationships to images, transforming viewers’ beliefs and actions with profound results. Between 1909 and 1914, the period in which forcible feedings were being performed upon suffrage prisoners, viewers’ increasingly visceral, empathetic responses to images of the procedure led to growing outrage over the practice, greater sympathy for the women’s cause and a heightened sense of unity in the common female experience of suffering. Ultimately, these reactions helped to turn public support away from government-sanctioned force feeding. Most importantly, as I will argue, by enrolling viewers in a shared emotional experience, such images were designed to fuel the sense of communal identity that was critical to the success of the suffrage movement. This chapter will first discuss the inherent visuality of force feeding and the widespread demand for the procedure to be represented to the public. It will then provide context for the images of force feeding that were created to meet that demand, discussing the circumstances of their publication and circulation via the suffrage journal Votes for Women. Finally, it will examine the function and use of these images in political and emotional terms, arguing that they were designed to encourage powerfully visceral and empathetic reactions that were believed to unify and sustain the suffrage movement. In examining this emergent relationship to images, and discussing the ways these images may be seen as historical agents, this chapter ultimately aims to reclaim a place for the study of illustration in the history of the suffrage movement and shed light on the wider role of art in activism. In September 1909, one month after forcible feeding was introduced in British prisons, Labour Party MP James Keir Hardie (1858–1915) raised the issue in Parliament. Hardie encouraged his audience to visualize the violation and domination its victims experienced: ‘Women, worn and weak by hunger, are seized upon, held down by brute force, gagged, a tube inserted down the throat, and food poured or pumped into the stomach. Let British men think over the spectacle’.17 Yet, Hardie’s audience responded not with sympathy but with riotous laughter. As he wrote to The Times, ‘I was horrified at the levity displayed by a large section of the Members of the House. Had I not heard it, I could not have believed that a body of gentlemen could have found reason for mirth and applause in a scene which, I venture to say, has no parallel in the recent history of our country’.18 At this early stage in the development of suffragette militancy, images of force-fed suffragettes had not yet taken on the potent political and emotional weight they would later carry. The earliest popular image of the procedure would not be published until October 1909,

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appearing as a Women’s Social and Political Union poster (Figure 11.1) and as an illustration in Votes for Women (Figure 11.2).19 With no visual referents to draw upon, aside, perhaps, from popular anti-suffrage cartoons that frequently portrayed suffragettes subjected to physical violence, Hardie’s request that his colleagues visualize force feeding fell flat, or rather worse.

FIGURE 11.1  Alfred Pearse, Torturing Women in Prison poster, 1909, 7EWD/H/8 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

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FIGURE 11.2  Alfred Pearse, Torturing Women in Prison, published in Votes for Women, 1909.

Yet, in spite of the House’s unsympathetic reaction, Hardie was anticipating an important theme that began to emerge in reports about force feeding in the final months of 1909, that is, references to the powerful desire to visualize the procedure, and the emotional impact of doing so. As Hardie

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insists, hunger striking was a spectacle: a fundamentally visual form of protest, in which women’s emaciated bodies, the stark confinement of prison, and the violating penetration of force feedings had the potential to inspire both horror and sympathy. Like Hardie, other contemporary commentators recognized the fact that visualizing force feeding strengthened its emotional force. Dr Frances Ede (c. 1851–1942), who was imprisoned for suffrage activities and who gave public lectures about her experience of hunger striking in Aylesbury jail, conveyed the visual horror of the entire prison experience to the crowds that came to hear her speak. In a lecture at the London Pavilion, she made plain that it was a ‘diabolical process to watch people starve’.20 Similarly, journalist Henry Noel Brailsford (1873–1958) drew on the graphic, interlinked images of torture and rape that were suggested by descriptions of force feeding. His ‘Letter to a Liberal Member of Parliament’, published as a pamphlet by the Women’s Social and Political Union, professed that ‘It needs little imagination to conceive the horror of a treatment which degrades and insults while it inflicts pain’.21 Yet, as Hardie’s experience in Parliament demonstrated, not all audiences had the imagination to fully appreciate the outrage being committed in His Majesty’s prisons. As many scholars have discussed, the hunger strike’s political effectiveness is dependent upon its conveyance to an audience; it must be seen to have meaning. Like Franz Kafka’s ‘Hunger Artist’, who displays himself in a cage to showcase his own starvation, and dies when he finally loses the public’s attention, the potency of suffrage hunger strikes was located not in the act itself but in its transmission.22 Maud Ellmann, writing on the role of starvation in protest, elucidates Kafka’s moral: ‘it is not by food that we survive but by the gaze of others; and it is impossible to live by hunger unless we can be seen or represented doing so’.23 Rosemary Betterton similarly points to this emphasis on the visual in accounting for the vast canon of texts and memorabilia associated with the suffrage movement, particularly those related to the representation of civil disobedience and hunger striking. ‘Both strategies’, she writes, ‘crucially depended on visibility for their political effect: both the terrorist act and the hunger strike must be seen to have meaning’.24 It was therefore in the movement’s interest to make visible the suffering taking place in the prisons. Yet, with hunger strikers’ political acts carried out within the prisons’ confines, actually observing the spectacle Hardie, Ede and Brailsford had described was impossible for members of the public. In spite of – or perhaps because of – the harrowing visual realities of force feeding, the public issued constant demands that the innermost scenes of the prison be revealed. The need to view the process of force feeding was presented as a moral imperative. Suffragists, suffrage organizations and elements within the popular press stressed the public’s duty to recognize the situation unfolding in the prisons and to take action against the procedure when the government would not. As The Standard reported:

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It is not only the Government who must be held responsible. It is the duty of the general public to know and to realise what is going on. They must remember that forcible feeding, in any circumstances painful and dangerous, is not done in prison as it would be done in a hospital. Already in dozens of cases forcible feeding of suffragist prisoners has been accompanied by wanton and unnecessary cruelty … No one of us who is content to allow this kind of thing to continue without protest can be held guiltless of these atrocities. Those who wish to escape this degrading blemish should act now.25 Autobiographies, re-enactments, pageants and literature inspired by suffragettes’ prison sentences were issued to meet the demand for more explicit portrayals of force feeding. The famous suffragette Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913) even proposed that the hunger strike be imposed upon husbands in the domestic kitchen, reproducing the physical sufferings of the prison beyond its walls and allowing women to ‘effectively demonstrate their determination to have a say in their so-called sphere, as well as the vote’.26 Yet the strategies that received the highest praise were those that were most ‘graphic’, indicating the importance of reconstructing visual experience through even non-visual media. Emmeline Pankhurst, for instance, encouraged a suffragette to record her experience of forcible feeding ‘as graphically as possible’, and Emmeline’s daughter, the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960), was celebrated for having ‘given a graphic account of the dreadful suffering which forcible feeding involves’.27 However, there was no substitute for the visual itself. Pictorial representations of the procedure were seen as the most effective method by which to publicize the terrors of the prison experience and encourage viewers to take action. A pamphlet issued by the Woman’s Press, the publishing arm of the Women’s Social and Political Union, noted that representations of the procedure should be made available, if not by photography, then by other visual means. As it asserted, ‘it would be futile to ask for a fair photograph of the proceedings … but the scene might be reconstructed, so that we might see with our own eyes the sort of daily goings-on in the women’s prisons’.28 With photographs indeed prohibited by prison authorities, other methods were employed to make the experience of force feeding visible. In an early experiment in gonzo reportage, the American journalist Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) famously had herself photographed being forcibly fed for a 1914 exposé on the procedure. In staging the stunt, Barnes felt a sense of solidarity with her British comrades, reproducing a procedure that, as she claimed, allowed her to share ‘the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex’.29 Yet for the most part, illustrations, not photographs, were employed to meet the public’s demand to render the private experience of the prison public and tangible. The resulting images of force feeding – some so familiar that they have come to symbolize the struggles of the movement in the modern popular imagination – are invaluable historical

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documents. While they dramatize rather than reveal the precise realities of prison, what they do divulge is perhaps more significant: evidence about what the artists and editors of the suffrage press intended the public to see, and therefore, consequently, believe and feel. While numerous studies have examined the experiences of suffrage hunger strikers, these analyses rely primarily on autobiographical accounts, largely neglecting analysis of the powerful imagery of force feeding that mediated popular understandings of the procedure.30 In a political movement that placed high priority on the production and management of its images, a fuller examination of images of force feeding, and their political and emotional contexts, is long overdue.31 Harnessing and channelling the power of images was an objective shared by international women’s suffrage movements. As the American suffragette Glenna Smith Tinnin (1877–1945) wrote, ‘an idea that is driven home to the mind through the eye produces a more striking and lasting impression than any that goes through the ear’.32 It was with this same philosophy that the British suffrage movement waged a publicity campaign about forcible feeding through images, aiming to win support for their cause and draw attention to a government that sanctioned violence against women. Although suffragettes had little control over the way their bodies were treated in the public realm – whether physically abused while participating in demonstrations or violated by the procedure of forcible feeding in the prisons – they wrested back a measure of power by carefully controlling the ways their bodies were depicted. To do so, suffrage imagery made women’s suffering vivid and personal by representing the experiences of the suffragette’s body. Such ‘agitation by symbol’, as the suffrage journal The Common Cause put it, was intended to induce ‘imaginative insight into the minds of others and the reconstruction of suffering which is not felt’.33 To ‘reconstruct’ rather than merely represent suffering was a pivotal distinction; images were a channel through which suffering could be not only seen, but experienced. The idea that images of force feeding would conjure profound empathy accorded with contemporary developments in the notion of empathy itself, which had first been discussed in English in 1895 by the writer and amateur psychologist Vernon Lee (the pseudonym of Violet Paget, 1856–1935).34 Drawing on German precedents, Lee presented empathy as an aesthetic concept, famously conducting experiments on the array of emotional responses provoked by art.35 Early notions of empathy therefore stressed images’ special capacity to allow viewers to share in the emotions of others. While images were seen as a prime vehicle for empathy, suffragettes were seen as the ideal empathetic audience. Discourse within the suffrage movement suggested that suffragettes possessed an unusually acute ability to identify with others’ pain, something Sylvia Pankhurst identified as ‘an almost morbid sympathy for pain and suffering’.36 This was often articulated by recalling Matthew 25.40 – ‘whatever you do to the least of these, you

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do to me’ – a biblical phrase that lent spiritual authority to suffragettes’ experiences. As playwright and staunch suffragist George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) wrote, adapting the verse, ‘If you take a woman and torture her you torture me’.37 Highly emotive images were designed to capitalize upon this supposedly innate empathy. Viewers supporting the cause, or those with an acute natural compassion, would respond to images of force feeding, feeling empathy for imprisoned suffragettes and enmity towards the government that had sanctioned the practice of force feeding. Yet stimulating empathy was not the sole aim; images of force feeding could also be used to rally suffragettes together in collective action that would strengthen and unify the movement. The hunger strike was believed to be a contagious behaviour. Prison officials and members of the government feared that if hunger strikes were allowed to continue amongst suffrage prisoners, the practice would spread to other areas of the prison, inducing ordinary convicts to adopt it, and resulting in a total breakdown of the disciplinary system.38 Yet for suffrage supporters, this merely demonstrated the hunger strike’s inherent power, with accounts describing it as ‘the strongest protest that the women can make’ and ‘the strongest of all weapons’.39 If officials’ fears focused on the infectious nature of the hunger strike within the prison’s walls, suffrage artists and editors saw an opportunity to do one better and transmit the condition beyond the prison. Images were the ideal medium by which to spread such activism. As Brailsford explained, individuals gravitate towards activism when they are faced with the sacrifices of others: ‘no brutality damps the ardour of its workers. Hundreds have faced prison, and each act of self-immolation has only stirred others to an equal daring’.40 Representations of the suffering endured by the movement’s prisoners could motivate others to join the cause, impelling them to take action in response to female suffering they had ‘felt’ empathetically. Images were therefore tools to spur action and expand the reach of militant suffragism, presenting the movement as a community united by shared emotions. The magazine Votes for Women was the source of the movement’s most impactful representations of force feeding. Considered ‘second only in importance to the Campaign itself’, the paper was edited by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954), the socialist and women’s campaigner, and her husband Frederick Pethick-Lawrence (1871–1961), an accomplished magazine editor who had founded the Labour Record and Review.41 Shortly after its inception, Votes for Women became the most prominent periodical of the British suffrage movement. Starting with only 5,000 sales per month in April 1908, circulation had climbed to over 30,000 per week by early 1910.42 The journal’s initial success was due to its association with the Women’s Social and Political Union, among the suffrage movement’s largest and most important organizations, for which Votes for Women served as the organ from the journal’s foundation in October 1907 until 1912, when the Pethick-Lawrences were expelled from the Union for objecting

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to the group’s militant tactics. In spite of this division, Votes for Women successfully continued publication under the Pethick-Lawrences until 1914 and subsequently under the United Suffragists until the end of the First World War, documenting the relevant news and progress of the women’s movement. Priced at only one penny, the magazine was designed to be accessible and was cheap enough to satisfy readers of all social classes. Votes for Women also assumed a popular tone, helping it appeal to audiences from well beyond the Union’s immediate political milieu. Yet the magazine never shied away from forceful political rhetoric. As Maria DiCenzo writes, ‘the paper’s bold and forceful style reflected the Women’s Social and Political Union – situating itself as the “mouthpiece of the advance guard” determined to “press forward” and claim “victory”, appealing to women of all ages, social classes and political inclinations to join the “battle”’.43 Catering to both popular and activist tastes, the magazine encouraged the integration of the two spheres – prompting the populist reader to become activist and pushing for activism to become popular. Among suffrage journals, Votes for Women was also the most visually engaging. Their illustrations were primarily made by Alfred Pearse, an accomplished magazine and book illustrator who also published cartoons in Punch and The London Illustrated News. Working under the name ‘A. Patriot’, Pearse produced a cartoon in nearly every issue of Votes for Women, labouring for free as a way of supporting the women’s cause. Because the Women’s Social and Political Union offices were frequently raided by police, with their business papers removed and presumably destroyed, sources detailing the commissioning and production of the illustrations are scarce. Nonetheless, it is likely that their content was a collaborative effort between Pearse and the Pethick-Lawrences.44 While the paper’s early cartoons largely focus on lambasting and infantilizing Asquith and his government, from late 1909 Pearse’s images began to increasingly reflect the scenes unfolding in the nation’s prisons. Often emphasizing the misrepresentation, objectification and abuse of suffragettes’ bodies, the illustrations addressed forcible feeding, as well as impressions of women’s prison experiences and representations of physical violence towards suffragettes. While the direct influence of images is notoriously difficult to prove, we know that the makers and viewers of images of force feeding almost certainly believed in their power to exert influence, to change minds and to incite action. Early twentieth-century readers and writers exhibited a fundamental faith in the pervasive influence of the press and, as Stephen Koss has observed, ‘Mistaken or not, this conviction created its own reality’.45 David Freedberg has identified a similar phenomenon in images, writing that ‘clichés about images may actually provoke behavior that meets the terms of the cliché … Repeat an idea often enough, and it can … form the basis for an action’.46 As both Koss and Freedberg suggest, the belief in influence can be sufficient to generate influence, itself. Maria DiCenzo has pointed to Votes for Women as the suffrage periodical that most exemplifies

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the conviction of its own power to influence the public, and notes that there was ‘the assumption that the ideas and arguments presented in its pages would convince any reasonable reader of the validity and urgency of the cause’.47 The same would have applied to the images printed in the paper’s pages, which were just as political and as ‘convincing’ as the paper’s editorials. Therefore, viewers of Votes for Women’s images likely believed in their capacity to create change, and this belief could have consequently generated action. The images’ political role extended beyond their powerful content: they also functioned as an effective lure to entice new readers. Appearing on the journal’s covers, they made the paper stand out, both on the news stand and in the urban context. Votes for Women encouraged readers to hawk the paper on street corners, carry copies visibly under their arms, and leave them on buses and in other public spaces where potential new readers might discover them. The cover illustrations offered appealing and clear visual messages, tempting new readers deeper into the paper’s pages. Pearse’s illustrations ‘won unusual approbation’, according to the Women’s Social and Political Union Annual Report, and were a popular draw for readers.48 Each December, the journal republished a compendium of all its cover images from the previous year, and in 1911, the Union organized an exhibition of the original drawings in the Woman’s Press offices on Charing Cross Road, demonstrating the organization’s belief that the images’ interest and influence transcended their usual periodical context.49 Pearse’s illustrations appeared not only in the journal but often, with the help of the Union’s publishing network, were transformed into posters and postcards, delivering suffrage messages cheaply, broadly and publicly, while broadcasting suffrage imagery to both members of the movement and non-members alike. Pearse’s illustration The Government’s Methods of Barbarism (Figure 11.3) was made into a colour poster that came in two sizes, the larger suitable for hoardings and the smaller for shop or domestic windows, which readers were encouraged to purchase and then redistribute using methods reminiscent of guerrilla marketing.50 The Women’s Social and Political Union made activism accessible to its members by producing and distributing the materials suffragettes could use to further the cause. With all the participants in Votes for Women’s poster drive hanging the same images in their respective cities, a group of geographically disparate individuals could participate in a uniform movement, committing the same acts of protest. Posters were found to be highly potent political weapons. The government, in particular, found itself repeatedly threatened by the images issued by suffrage organizations, the majority of which were produced by the Union based on illustrations from the pages of Votes for Women. When Winston Churchill (1874–1965) visited his Dundee constituency in 1909, he was dismayed to find his election advertisements covered with forcible feeding posters, and by 1914, suffrage posters were considered to be so influential

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FIGURE 11.3  Alfred Pearse (‘A. Patriot’), The Government’s Methods of Barbarism, published in Votes for Women, 1910.

that there was an attempt to revive old parliamentary acts that would permit the censorship of images that appeared on certain hoardings.51 Yet, perhaps, the greatest testament to the effectiveness of suffrage poster campaigns was its imitation by the very government it aimed to undermine. As Paula Hays Harper has noted, the production and circulation of official government propaganda posters during the First World War were based on the methods pioneered by suffrage organizations.52 Pearse’s work for Votes for Women defined the journal and thus mediated individual suffragettes’ contact with the broader suffrage community. What is more, his illustrations became not only national but global icons for the women’s movement. In 1914, The Suffragette proudly reported that one of Pearse’s original cartoons of force feeding had been republished in the Portuguese newspaper O Seculo under a headline condemning the continued mistreatment of women in English prisons.53 Even today, Pearse’s illustrations are some of the most familiar visual representations of the suffrage movement, appearing as illustrations in many studies of the

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early twentieth century.54 Yet, the intense scholarly focus on the texts of the suffrage campaign has meant that the movement’s visual products still require much more research. Pearse’s suffrage illustrations, iconic as they have become, have therefore never been studied in depth. In 1909, the Women’s Social and Political Union converted one of Pearse’s designs into the movement’s first force feeding poster, now perhaps the best known of all portrayals of the procedure.55 Torturing Women in Prison: Vote Against the Government (Figure 11.1) glorifies the suffragette subject while condemning her captors. The image depicts force feeding as the violation of a beautiful woman who is being restrained by a ‘wardress’ and a doctor, as another doctor performs the procedure. The young victim’s attractive face contorts in silent horror as one doctor pours liquid down a tube in her nose. The other grips the suffragette’s throat, forcing her head back. The prison cell in which the procedure takes place is bare but for one small window, under which ‘Votes for Women’ is scrawled in chalk. The suffragette tips her chair on its edge in her struggle, and the backwards thrust of her weight disturbs the viewer’s sense of balance and stability. Reflecting the light, the doctor’s glasses obscure his eyes and allow him to evade confrontation with the viewer’s gaze. The image presents an idealized suffragette, the suffragette every force-fed prisoner thought of themselves as being: that is, innocent of any crime. Suffrage organizations were keen to differentiate suffrage prisoners from the common convicts with whom they often found themselves side by side. A postcard by the Artists’ Suffrage League even went so far as to present a comparison between a suffragette in an academic gown next to a simian male convict in his prison-issued uniform.56 Pearse’s illustration conveys this incongruity by presenting the innocent suffragette being subject to excessive force by the prison staff, struggling against the outrage of forcible feeding, but with no hope of overthrowing her jailers. The disparity between the suffragette’s apparent innocence and her alarming circumstances is designed to disturb the viewer, invoking the desire to restore visual order. Images like these beatify the sufferer, portraying her physical beauty and her forbearance as saintliness, making the injustice of force feeding all the more pronounced. The choice to depict the suffragette in a light-coloured dress (unusual in women’s prison uniforms of the time) and to frame her head and torso with a lighter shaded background reinforces this reading, creating a halo-like glow around her that not only testifies to her innocence but also evokes religious imagery that signifies her devotion to the suffrage cause. It was this poster that Laura Ainsworth (1885–1958), one of the first suffragettes to be forcibly fed, ‘armed’ herself with when confronting Herbert Asquith (1852–1928) at a Liberal reception.57 ‘Why did you do this to me?’ she demanded as she thrust the poster at the Prime Minister. Before Asquith could respond, Ainsworth was briskly escorted from the room, her poster snatched from her. The fact that the poster was confiscated indicates a recognition of the image’s power. Yet, even more telling is Ainsworth’s

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utterance. Claiming the depicted pain as her own, Ainsworth’s remark suggests that the image caused her to identify with the image’s subject and re-experience the sensations of force feeding. Evoking, on the one hand, her individual experience, the incident simultaneously suggests the image’s ability to represent the collective experience. As Caroline Howlett has written, ‘An impersonal depiction of a “typical” suffragette being forcibly fed could, Ainsworth implies, articulate the individual experience of any forcibly fed suffragette; the ordeal is not an isolated and isolating bodily experience but a point of identification and union between many women’.58 Embodying the experience of not just one, but all force-fed women, the figure in Pearse’s image universalized the practice of force feeding and acted as a reminder of shared experiences, sensations and emotions that united so many of the movement’s members. However, Ainsworth not only saw herself and her fellow suffragettes in the image; she also saw Asquith, asking him why ‘you’ did this ‘to me’. In the discourse surrounding force feeding, suffragists held members of the government directly – personally – responsible for the activities that took place on the prison ward. When told by a doctor that her hunger strike was ruining her health and shortening her life, for instance, the suffragette Harriet Kerr (1859–1940) retorted that it was the Home Secretary who was at fault: ‘Go and tell McKenna [Reginald McKenna (1863–1943)] that it is he who is doing this, not I’.59 After her release from Winston Green Gaol, where she had been force fed, suffragette Mary Leigh (c. 1885–1978) went so far as to sue the then Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone (1854–1930), for assault.60 Such accusations against members of the government for the practices of the prison ward were provoked and perpetuated through the images circulated by the suffrage press and its poster campaigns. In January 1910, Pearse’s illustration The Government’s Methods of Barbarism (Figure 11.3) appeared on the cover of Votes for Women. Through its title, the illustration condemns the government for the practice of force feeding, but it also alludes to the government’s direct hand in the treatment of suffrage prisoners through the figure of the moustachioed doctor who strangles the suffragette with a gag. Although not a blatant caricature, the figure bears an undeniable resemblance to Gladstone, who remained Home Secretary until the following month and was widely condemned for sanctioning the practice of force feeding suffrage prisoners. The message that members of the government should be held to account was made even more explicit in a 1913 illustration by Will Dyson (1880–1938) for the Daily Herald (Figure 11.4), an image that was reproduced the following week in Votes for Women.61 The Daily Herald had strong ties to the suffrage movement and Dyson’s regular contributions, which helped launch his successful art career, often critiqued the government’s treatment of imprisoned suffragettes. In this image, McKenna is depicted pouring a bucket of slop down a funnel and into the mouth of a suffragette, personally committing the act that so many

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suffragettes considered to be a form of torture. Although the setting has been paired down significantly, the angle of the chair and the small prison window in the upper right corner draw on Pearse’s by then famous illustrations. The image’s title For what you are about to receive and the caption in which McKenna declares that ‘before we proceed/To forcibly feed/We NEVER omit to say Grace!’ ironically suggest that suffragettes should be grateful for the government’s benevolence in keeping them alive in spite of their militant hunger striking. The suffragette is forcefully restrained by McKenna, who holds his outsized hand over the suffragette’s face, obscuring it in a gesture that appears to risk breaking her neck. Both violent and concealing, the action evokes Sylvia Pankhurst’s charge that the prison system imposed a regime of anonymity among prisoners – calling them by their prison numbers rather than names, for instance – in an effort to destroy their identities and fracture their ‘strength of will and power of initiative’.62 In Dyson’s image, the suffragette’s anonymity allows her to represent the movement as a whole, and the widespread experience of violence to which suffragettes were exposed. While Dyson’s illustration maintains an element of humour in spite of its ominous message, Pearse’s images of force feeding were universally chilling, growing progressively darker as the practice continued. The Government’s Methods of Barbarism (Figure 11.3) presented an even more alarming scene than Torturing Women in Prison (Figures 11.1 and 11.2) had when it was published the year before: the suffragette’s chair tilts backwards at an even more precarious angle, her earlier three-quarter pose has turned to the starker and more dramatic full profile, and an additional three wardresses struggle to restrain the writhing patient, seizing her arms and knees while tying her ankles to the chair. Here, even more than before, the disproportionate force used against the suffragette alludes to the horrors of rape. Doctors and nurses, entrusted with the care of the body, seemingly exploit their position, overseeing its abuse instead. Such grim and damning images of force feeding conspicuously undermined the public’s faith in the medical profession. As Ian Miller has written in his medical history of force feeding, ‘What seems clear is that evocative images of suffering and medical torture cast doubt on the professionalism of members of a trusted, learned profession allowing a clear sense of antagonists and victims to emerge’.63 Physicians sent numerous letters to suffrage and national newspapers to denounce force feeding in the strongest possible terms and to dissociate themselves personally from the practice. As Harley Street doctor Forbes Ross (1867–1914) wrote to The Observer, ‘forcible feeding by the methods employed is an act of brutality beyond common endurance’. As he made clear, his opposition was objectively medical and not influenced by his sympathy for the suffrage cause: ‘I am not … advocating the cause of the Suffragettes. I am protesting against the brutality of Englishmen who can treat women in this way … No other nation in the world does such a thing’.64

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FIGURE 11.4  Will Dyson, For what you are about to receive ... , The Daily Herald, 1913, WDN0109 © British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent.

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Caroline Howlett has argued that images of force feeding were less effective than personal written accounts because of the possibility of misinterpreting them, arguing, in particular, that they may be read to suggest that the viewer plays a role on the medical team executing the forcible feeding: ‘The only possible position for a spectator of forcible feeding is, precisely, that of the doctors and wardresses performing the operation; no one else was allowed to watch. To view forcible feeding is therefore to come uncomfortably close to being the torturer oneself’.65 However, there is no evidence to suggest that viewers regularly misinterpreted such blatantly shocking images or saw themselves in the role of the antagonist. Most images of force feeding situate the viewer at a distance from the subjects, never implying that we are responsible for performing the procedure. Instead, I suggest that such images place the viewer in the role of the suffragette, herself. Pearse’s illustrations have an out-of-body quality that suggests autoscopy, the experience of seeing oneself from a position outside the body, which is – appropriately  – most frequently reported during medical crises. The viewer inhabits a location from which we seem to observe our own forcible feeding from a distance, perhaps suggesting that this is the only position from which such violence and violation could be endured. Moreover, I would contend that this method of representing forcible feeding shaped the ways in which it was then remembered by those who experienced it, and consequently how it came to be described in autobiographical accounts. The most famous instance appears in Prisons and Prisoners, the 1914 autobiography of renowned suffragette Lady Constance Lytton (1969–1923). She reports being force fed while in the guise of seamstress Jane Warton, an identity she assumed so as to not to receive special treatment in prison. Lytton narrates the immediate aftermath of the procedure writing, ‘I saw Jane Warton lying before me, and it seemed as if I were outside of her’.66 Encouraging viewers to imagine themselves in the position of the tortured suffragette while simultaneously viewing the procedure from a distance, representations of force feeding maximized the emotional potential of images. Using visual strategies that simultaneously individualized and universalized the experience of force feeding, such images recreated emotional experiences that united ‘me’, ‘she’ and ‘we’. The illustrations that were published in Votes for Women and that circulated as posters illuminate the emotional life of the suffrage movement, providing evidence for the emergence of a new relationship to images that transformed mere representations into visceral realities. Nearly forty years after she attacked the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery – an event that occurred just months before militant suffragettes rechannelled their zeal into the war effort, resulting in the end of forcible feeding – Mary Richardson visited her local cinema. Normally a regular treat, Richardson found the weekly screening was marred when a scene depicted a female prisoner being forcibly fed. As she wrote:

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The images on the screen became blurred! I found tears were streaming down my cheeks. Somehow, I got up from my seat and stumbled out of the dark cinema. It was wet outside and a pitch-black night. But I couldn’t go back. Until the film ended and the bus came to take us home I just walked up and down in the rain, hearing and seeing the old scenes of forty years ago.67 Responding to the sight of another woman being forcibly fed, Richardson’s own sensations were reawakened, causing her to physically hear and see ‘the old scenes’ of her time as a prisoner. In just the way images of force feeding were designed to function during the suffrage movement itself, the film evoked powerful physical and emotional responses that persuaded Richardson to take action: inspired by her own response to the film, Richardson was compelled to record her memories in an autobiography, Laugh a Defiance, now considered one of the most evocative accounts of militant suffragism. In slashing the Rokeby Venus, Richardson had attempted to induce a response as intense as the one she experienced in the cinema many years later. Images of force feeding, broadly circulated for the previous five years, had established a new mode of looking at and reacting to images. Representations of female bodies in pain – such as the pain Richardson implied through the gashes she cut into Velasquez’s canvas – were testaments to real pain felt by real women. In her experience, such images had the potential to inspire deeply visceral personal emotions as well as profound empathy for others, feelings that could stir viewers to condemn the government for its treatment of women, could unite viewers through shared feeling and, most importantly, could move viewers to take action. As she wrote in her statement published the day after she attacked the Rokeby Venus, ‘Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas’.68 As evidenced by the way representations of force feeding propelled the suffrage cause forward, images of injustice proved to be just as vivid.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6

In later accounts, Richardson called the weapon an ‘axe’; however, the report published the following day in The Times records it as ‘a small chopper with a long narrow blade, similar to the instruments used by butchers’. ‘National Gallery Outrage’, The Times, 11 March 1914, 9. ‘Retribution! Mary Richardson’s Reply’, The Suffragette, 13 March 1914, 491. Mary Richardson, Laugh a Defiance (London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), 39. Ibid., 165. Ibid., 165–166. ‘Mary Richardson’, in Woman’s Hour Collection ([radio programme] BBC, 12 September 1957).

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8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

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The Suffragette reported that ‘Perhaps no act of militancy has ever caused such a deep sensation or aroused so much comment in the Press and among the public’. Although doubtless invested in promoting Richardson’s militant act, the journal’s emphatic comment indicates the intense interest in the case. ‘Retribution! Mary Richardson’s Reply’, 491. ‘National Gallery Outrage’, 9. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 64. As quoted in Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1992), 37. Structures of feeling were first discussed in Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Cardigan: Parthian, [1961] 2013). A fuller discussion of images of force feeding and Pearse may be found in Chloe Kroeter [Ward], ‘Art and Activism: Promoting Change Through British Periodical Illustration, 1893–1914’ (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2013). Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 132. Ben Highmore, ‘Formations of Feelings, Constellations of Things’, Cultural Studies Review, 22:1 (2016): 144–67. Williams specifies that the evidence for structures of feeling may be gleaned from a wide range of ‘documentary culture, from poems to buildings and dress fashions’. Williams, The Long Revolution, 70. Highmore, ‘Formations of Feelings, Constellations of Things’, 145. James Elkins, Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (London: Routledge, 2001), 155. Italics in original. As quoted in Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1931), 317. As quoted in Antonia Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes (London: Michael Joseph, 1973), 177. Torturing Women in Prison, Votes for Women, 29 October 1909, 68. Frances Ede, ‘Statement from Dr Frances Ede’, 15 April 1912, Suffrage Collection, Museum of London (Z6084b). Henry Noel Brailsford, Forcible Feeding: A Letter to a Liberal Member of Parliament (London: St Clement’s Press, 1909), 2. Franz Kafka, ‘A Hunger Artist’, in A Hunger Artist and Other Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Maud Ellmann, The Hunger Artists (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993), 17. Rosemary Betterton, An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body (London: Routledge, 1996), 62. Italics in original. ‘Meeting at Aylesbury: Duty of the Public’, The Standard, 15 April 1912, 11. Killed when she ran onto the racetrack of the Epsom Derby with a Women’s Social and Political Union flag, Davison is widely known for being the single direct casualty of the British suffrage movement. Emily Wilding Davison, ‘Hunger for Everybody (To the Editor)’, Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 9 October 1912, 6. Emmeline Pankhurst, ‘Emmeline Pankhurst letter to Myra Sadd Brown’, 1912, Suffrage Fellowship Collection, Museum of London (50.82/1136). The National Women’s Social and Political Union, Seventh Annual Report (London: The Woman’s Press, 1913).

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28 The Woman’s Press, ‘Doctors as Torturers: The Medical Profession Exploited by the Government’, 1909, 7EIJ/2, Women’s Library, London School of Economics. This pamphlet is catalogued as being dated c. 1912–1914, but I suspect this was in fact issued in 1909, as it has been occasionally catalogued elsewhere. 29 Djuna Barnes, ‘How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed’, New York World Magazine, 6 September 1914, 17. 30 Barbara Green, for example, notes the ‘excessive textuality’ surrounding force feedings that reproduced the prison experience for an outside audience, and omits pictorial representation in favour of narrative vehicles like autobiography, theatre, pageant, procession, literature and correspondence. Barbara Green, Spectacular Confessions: Autobiography, Performative Activism, and the Sites of Suffrage, 1905–1938 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), 88. 31 Lisa Tickner demonstrates how the movement managed its own images in The Spectacle of Women. Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987). 32 ‘Why the Pageant?’, The Woman’s Journal, 15 February 1913, 50. As quoted in Linda J. Lumsden, Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 103. 33 ‘Agitation by Symbol’, The Common Cause, 15 July 1909, 173. 34 Lauren Wispé, ‘History of the Concept of Empathy’, in Empathy and Its Development, eds., Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1987] 1990), 18. 35 See Susan Lanzoni, ‘Practicing Psychology in the Art Gallery: Vernon Lee’s Aesthetics of Empathy’, Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences, 45:4 (2009): 330–354. 36 Although referring to the typical suffragette, Pankhurst bases her description on Lady Constance Lytton, whose account of her own force feeding is among the best known. Sylvia Pankhurst, ‘Paper by Sylvia Pankhurst, headed “A Suffragette” [i.e. Lady Constance Lytton]’, 1 March 1910, Pethick-Lawrence Collection, Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge (PETH 9/107). 37 As quoted in The Suffragette Movement, 451. 38 As discussed in Brailsford, Forcible Feeding, 2. 39 Committee for Repeal of the Act, ‘To Stop the Torture of Forcible Feeding and to Repeal the Cat and Mouse Act’, c. 1913, Suffrage Collection, The Women’s Library, London School of Economics (7EWD/F/8/2); Jane Terrero, ‘Jane Terrero – Prison Experiences’, 1912, Suffrage Fellowship Collection, Museum of London (60.15/13), 1. 40 Brailsford, Forcible Feeding, 4. 41 The National Women’s Social and Political Union, Fourth Annual Report (London: The Woman’s Press, 1910), 6. 42 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide (London: Routledge, 2001), 460. Other sources suggest a peak circulation of up to 40,000. See, for example, Maria DiCenzo, ‘Militant Distribution: Votes for Women and the Public Sphere’, Media History, 6:2 (2000): 115–128, 115. The Women’s Social and Political Union reported a circulation of between 30,000 and 40,000 by the end of 1909. The National Women’s Social and Political Union, Fourth Annual Report, 7.

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43 Maria DiCenzo, ‘Unity and Dissent: Official Organs of the Suffrage Campaign’, in Feminist Media History: Suffrage, Periodicals and the Public Sphere, eds., Maria DiCenzo, Lucy Delap and Leila Ryan (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 76–119, 101. 44 In his autobiography, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence describes an illustration of Churchill that appeared in the journal, saying that ‘I had him portrayed as the “dirty boy” in the well-known Pears Soap picture’. His phrasing suggests his involvement in selecting the subject matter for the illustrations that appeared in the journal. Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Fate Has Been Kind (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1943), 83. 45 Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (London: Fontana Press, [1981] 1990), 445. 46 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 10. 47 DiCenzo, ‘Militant Distribution’, 115. 48 The National Women’s Social and Political Union, Sixth Annual Report (London: The Woman’s Press, 1912), 6. 49 Kenneth Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: An Illustrated Historical Study (London: McFarland & Company, 2013), 104. 50 ‘A Forcible Feeding Poster’, Votes for Women, 28 January 1910, 274. 51 The posters in Dundee were almost certainly Torturing Women in Prison (Figure 11.2). Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes, 130. Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia, 153–154. 52 Paula Hays Harper, ‘Votes for Women? A Graphic Episode in the Battle of the Sexes’, in Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics, eds., Henry A. Millon and Linda Nochlin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), 150–161, 150. 53 ‘As Others See Us’, The Suffragette, 6 March 1914, 457. 54 See, for example, The Government’s Methods of Barbarism in Green, Spectacular Confessions, 87; Elizabeth Robins, ‘In Conclusion’, in Literature of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign in England, ed., Carolyn Christensen Nelson (Plymouth: Broadview Press, 2004), 78–85, 79; and James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History (London: Belknap Press, 2007), 66. 55 Although unsigned, the design is almost certainly by Pearse. This image appears in numerous publications including Katie Marsico, Women’s Right to Vote: America’s Suffrage Movement (Tarrytown: Marshall Cavendish, 2010), 43; and Linda Schlossberg, ‘Consuming Images: Women, Hunger, and the Vote’, in Scenes of the Apple: Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing, eds., Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 87–106, 91. 56 Polling Booth: Companions in Disgrace. Artists’ Suffrage League postcard, c. 1910. Suffrage Collection, The Women’s Library, London School of Economics (7JCC/O/113). 57 As described in Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes, 119. That this was the poster Ainsworth held was identified by Caroline Howlett, ‘Writing on the Body? Representation and Resistance in British Suffragette Accounts of Forcible Feeding’, in Bodies of Writing, Bodies in Performance, eds., Thomas Foster, Carol Siegel, and Ellen Berry (London: New York University Press, 1996), 3–41, 9 and fn. 14. 58 Ibid., 9.

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59 Harriet Kerr, ‘Paper headed “Miss Kerr’s Statement”, containing an account of Miss Kerr’s imprisonment [?1912]’, c. 1912, Pethick-Lawrence Collection, Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge (PETH 9/121), 2. 60 She lost the case and the ruling set a precedent that perpetuated the practice of force feeding. Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes, 132. 61 Will Dyson, For What You Are About to Receive … , Votes for Women, 30 May 1913, 505. Dyson’s illustration was also reprinted in Votes for Women on 17 October 1913, 34. 62 Sylvia Pankhurst, ‘The Treatment of Political Prisoners’, Votes for Women, 7 January 1909, 250. 63 Ian Miller, A History of Force Feeding: Hunger Strikes, Prisons and Medical Ethics, 1909–1974 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 47. 64 ‘A Doctor’s Protest’, The Observer, 3 October 1909, 9. 65 Howlett, ‘Writing on the Body’, 32. 66 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences (New York: George H. Doran, 1914). 67 Richardson, Laugh a Defiance, xiii. 68 ‘National Gallery Outrage’, 9.

INDEX

Actresses’ Franchise League 139, 151, 164 advertising 6, 103, 117–32, 138–9, 147 Aesthetic Movement 50 Ainsworth, Laura 263–4 Aldham, Mary 194, 197–8 Allan, Janie 59 Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett 54, 97, 162 Anderson, Louisa Garrett 221–2 Ansell, Gertrude Mary 194, 195, 197 anti-suffrage movement 3, 146, 179, 240 badges of 151 in Ireland 234 masculinity, approaches to 212, 213 postcards 165 George = A Husbandman 219 When Women Vote 218 propaganda 163, 213, 216, 219, 254 arson 19, 33, 55 art attacks 13, 171, 178–9, 185–98, 249–68 Art Nouveau 50, 233, 240 Art Workers’ Guild 24, 27, 31 and Women’s Guild of Arts 26, 28, 32, 34–6, 68 artistic education 45, 60, 78–9, 97–8 Artists’ Suffrage League 3, 67–8, 78, 164 badges of 139 banners by 53 foundation of 30, 33, 66 postcards by 263 spectacle, contribution to 31 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society 128, 239, 251

Arts and Crafts movement 6, 69, 75 Glasgow School of Art 44, 46 Suffrage Atelier 65–8, 70, 79, 80 Women’s Guild of Arts 24–8, 36 Ashbee, Charles 70, 123 Ashbee, Janet 70 Asquith, Herbert 52, 205–6, 213, 260, 263–4 Ayrton-Gould, Barbara 165 badges 4, 10, 132, 137–52, 165 advertisements for 120 male support for suffrage 209, 219, 221 marketing value of 137–52 material culture 209 Baker, Eve 58 banners 4, 9, 24, 30, 150 Artists’ Suffrage League 31, 164 collection of 147 Fabian Society 28 in Ireland 231–7, 242–3 London and Westminster Tailoresses’ Society 7 Lowndes, Mary 30, 33 male makers of 209–11, 219–21 processions 162 representations of women on 240 in Scotland 49, 51–3, 55, 60, 241 Suffrage Atelier 66, 67, 69, 76, 164 Barbour, Lady Frances 59 Barclay, Armiger 175 Barnes, Djuna 257 Barrowman, Janet 56 Batten, Mary 26, 36 Bazaars 11, 53–4, 147, 205 Beale, James 103 Beale, Margaret 103

274

Becker, Lydia 161–2, 179 Belmont, Alva 147 Benson, A. N. 212 Benson, Godfrey 205 Billington, Mary 98, 99, 107 Billington-Greig, Teresa 45, 142 Binyon, Laurence 34, 36 Birmingham 142, 192, 194 City Art Gallery 186, 192 Municipal School of Art 128 Birrell, Augustine 213–14 ‘Black Friday’ 191, 193 Blackburn, Helen 161–2, 164 Blathwayt, Emily 192 Boadicea 142, 162 Bodichon, Barbara 6 Bonn, Ivy 195 bookbinding 44, 46, 50 Brackenbury, Georgina portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst 178–9 Brailsford, Henry Noel 256, 259 Briggs, Annie 185 Bristol Exhibition of Women’s Industries 99–100 Brontë sisters 30 Broom, Christina 9, 123, 167 Brown, Helen Paxton 58 Brydon, John McKean 97 Buckton, Catherine 103 Burne-Jones, Edward 185 Campbell, Rev. R. J. 214 caricature 3, 213, 219, 264 Carpenter, Edward 212 Carson, Sir Edward 194 Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society 139, 150 census boycott 124, 128–9, 148 Central Committee for the Training and Employment of Women 60 Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design 46, 47 ceramics 44, 50, 54, 77 Chance, Julia 29 Chaplin, Henry 170 Charles, Lallie 168 Chartism 190 Christie, Grace 26

INDEX Church League for Women’s Suffrage 139, 150, 221 Churchill, Winston 190, 192, 214, 261 Clark, Sarah 71 Clarke, Mary 94, 99 Clausen, Sir George Primavera 197 colours, suffrage 12, 132, 163, 239 badges 137–9, 141–4, 146–8, 150–1 fashion 120, 124, 127 interior decoration 129 Ireland 235 jewellery 128–9 Scotland 51–3 Coming Citizen, The 28 Common Cause, The 119, 122, 129, 138, 258 Communist Party 71 Conder, Maude Reignier 38 Conservative Party 103, 141, 170 Conway, Moncure 95, 97, 100 Cope, Sir Arthur Stockdale 170 Corelli, Marie 219 Cottier, Daniel 97, 98 court appearances 71, 191–5, 197 Courtauld, Catherine 66, 76 The Anti-Suffrage Society as Portrait Painter 165 Craig, Edith 67 Crane, Walter 124, 236, 237 Cranston, Kate 54, 56–7 Crawfurd, Helen 55 Crommelin, Caroline 93 Dacre, Susan Lydia Becker 161, 179 Daily Herald 70, 264 Darling, Grace 165 Davison, Emily Wilding 195, 257 Dawson, Edith B. 27, 37 De Morgan, Evelyn 26 Derry and Toms 119–20 Despard, Charlotte 45, 142, 178 Dewar, De Courcy Lewthwaite 47, 52, 58, 60 Disabled Soldiers’ Embroidery Industry 221 Disraeli, Benjamin 141

INDEX Downing, Edith 164 Downing Street 145 Druce, Elsie 37, 38 Drummond, Flora 51, 167, 179, 194 Drummond, Sir Henry Wolff 141 Dun Emer Arts and Crafts Guild and Press 67 Duval, Elsie 208 Duval, Emily 208 Duval, Una Dugdale 159, 167, 170, 175, 178 Duval, Victor 208, 219 Dyson, Will 264–5 East London Federation of Suffragettes 71 Ede, Frances 253 Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage 238 Edis, Mary portrait of Charlotte Despard 178 Edwards, Maude 195 Egley, William Maw 174 Ellis, Havelock 216, 219 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 104 Esplin, Mabel 30 Essam, Charles 99 Everett, Ethel 35 Exhibitions Fabian Society 28, 111 fashion 7, 120–8, 138, 161–3, 241–3 Fawcett, Henry 207 Fawcett, Millicent Garrett 32, 33, 94, 112 Central Committee, National Society for Women’s Suffrage 94 statue of 15 femininity 27, 28, 105, 163, 196, 222 challenges to 2, 3, 9, 50 deviancy from 7 idealization 239, 243 Scotland, in 43 Fergusson, David 43 First World War badges 137 effect on artistic trades 122, 124 militant campaign 198 propaganda 262

275

returning soldiers 221 war effort 59–60 Florence, Mary Sargant 26, 36–7, 68, 148 Militarism versus Feminism 30 Folkard, Louisa Amelia 120–2, 132 Forbes, Barbara 33 force feeding 54–5, 59, 191, 218, 249–68 Ford, Emily 30–1, 34, 36 Factory Acts 30 Forrester, Lillian 185–6, 192–3, 197 Forster, E. M. 212 Franklin, Hugh 215 Fraser, Helen 51, 60, 138 Freeman, Elizabeth 145 French, Annie 58 fundraising 53–4, 59–60, 122, 163 Galsworthy, John 211–12 Garnett, Annie 26 Garnett, Theresa 145 Garrett, Agnes 6, 26, 93–113 Garrett, Rhoda 94, 97, 99, 111 Gatty, Katherine 71–2, 77 Geddes, Margaret 23, 37 George, V 33, 59, 145, 194–5 Gibb, Margaret 192 Gill, T. P. 237 Gilmour, Margaret 46 Gilmour, Mary 46 Gladstone, Herbert 167, 264 Gleeson, Evelyn 66 Gleichen, Feodora 26, 27, 35 Grant, Duncan 216–18 Handicapped 216–18 Gray, Norah Neilson 58 Greenlees, Georgina 58 Guerrilla Girls Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum 198 Hacker, Arthur portrait of Ethel Wright 172 Hamilton, Cicely 163 Hardie, Kier 190, 253–6 Hardy, Thomas 212 Harvey, Agnes Bankier 58 Haslemere Handweaving Industry 68

276

INDEX

Herkomer, Hubert von portrait of the Duke of Wellington 194, 197 Herringham, Christiana 26, 30–1 Holiday, Henry 237 Holliday, Jessie 164 homosexuality 210–13, 216, 218–21 House of Commons 15, 170, 236 House of Lords 15, 148, 237 Housman, Clemence 66, 69–71, 76, 77, 219–20 Housman, Laurence 69–71, 76, 77, 215–16, 218 An Anti-Suffrage Alphabet 30 banner designs 209–10, 219–21 Suffrage Atelier, involvement in 66, 75 Howe-Martin, Edith 142 Hughes, Eileen 71–2, 77 hunger strikes 55, 191, 197, 256–8, 264, 265 force feeding during 249–50, 253, 259 male participation in 218 medals for 148, 150 Temporary Discharge of Prisoners (Cat and Mouse) Act 193 Hyde Park Demonstration (1908) 4, 118, 138, 163 hysteria 14, 222

Irish Parliamentary Party 231 Irish Women’s Franchise League 141, 235 male support for suffrage movement in 208 Irwin, Margaret 239 Ives, George 212

Independent Labour Party 51, 55, 104, 111, 190 Inglis, Elsie 60 interior decoration 67, 93–113, 129–31 International Congress of Women, Geneva 112 International Exhibition of Decorative Art, Turin 47, 231, 239 International Federation of Business and Professional Women 38 International Woman Suffrage Alliance 28 Ireland 231–44 badges 141 Dun Emer Arts and Crafts Guild and Press 67 home Rule 194, 231, 234–7, 243

Labour Party 51, 71, 95, 218, 253 Election Fighting Fund 70, 94 in Scotland 51 Ladies Residential Chambers Company 111 Lansbury, George 70, 71 Lavery, Sir John portrait of King George V 195 Lawrence, D. H. 212 Lawrence, Sir Thomas 168 Lee, Vernon 258 Leigh, Mary 193, 264 Leighton, Frederic 185 Lethaby, W. R. 34, 36 Lewis, W. O. 142 Liberal Party 103, 151, 190, 244, 263 Liberal Women’s Suffrage Union 151 liberty 50, 123–4

Jacobs, Louise 30, 66, 68, 72 The Appeal of Womanhood 30 Jeffrey, Gabrielle 150 jewellery 50, 54, 128–9, 142–4 Jewish League for Women’s Suffrage 151 Joan of Arc 147, 162 Jones, Grace 129–31 Jopling, Louise (Louise Jopling-Rowe) 67, 71, 171, 175 Joseph, Agnes E. Hope 66, 76 Just Government League 141 Kauffman, Angelica 162 Kenney, Annie 55, 123, 164–5, 190 Kerr, Harriet 191, 264 King, Jessie 47, 50, 54–6, 58, 60 Kingsford, Florence Kate 26 Knight, Dame Laura portrait of Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence 179 Kotzé, Amy 122–4

INDEX Lion, Flora portrait of Flora Drummond 179 Lloyd George, David 31, 32, 167, 186, 195 Lowndes, Mary 26, 30–4 Lucas, John Seymour 171 Lytton, Lady Constance 8, 267 Macbeth, Ann 58, 243–4 arrest of 55–6 exhibition, participation in 47, 55, 57 Glasgow School of Art 49–51, 53 Sleeping Beauty 231–4, 238–41 Macdonald, Frances 50, 57 Macdonald, Margaret 50, 56, 57 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie 45, 50, 56, 60 Madame Tussaud’s 165 Malicious Damages to Property Act 1861 186 Manchester 15, 98–9, 119, 171, 190 attacks on art in 171, 179, 185–6, 193 Emerson & Co. 94, 99, 112 Independent Labour Party 186 Municipal School of Art 69 Society for Women’s Suffrage 30, 161 Manesta, Evelyn 185–6, 192–193, 197 Mappin & Webb 129, 143 marches 7, 14, 28, 31, 195 male participation in 51, 207 ‘mud march’ 66 Scotland, in 53 Marcon, Grace 195 marketing 107–11, 117–32, 137–9, 146, 261 Marsden, Dora 72 Martyn, Edith 35 Mason, Josephine 38 Mathews, Richard George 164 McKenna, Reginald 264–5 McNair, Herbert 50 medals 47, 141, 148–50, 179 Medway, Winifred Bourne 165 Men’s International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage 207

277

Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage 207–12, 214, 216, 219, 221 badges of 139, 145, 150 Glasgow, activity in 51 Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement 141, 207–8, 212–13, 219 Merchants’ Portrait Company 139, 142 metalwork 44, 46, 50, 54 militancy 28, 95, 151, 214, 218 attacks on art 13, 171, 178–9, 185–98, 249–68 male involvement in 206–7 portraiture and 159–80 Scotland, in 55, 238 window smashing 55, 71, 112, 148, 166, 191, 193, 194, 218, 249 Millais, John Everett 161, 185 milliners 12, 124–6, 128, 163 Mills, Ernestine 142 Mills, Roberta 126–8, 132 Moffat, Graham 51 Moffat, Maggie 51 Morris, May 11, 26–9, 31, 32, 34 Morris, William 6, 27, 70, 124, 239 Moser, Mary 30, 162 Müller, Henrietta 102 Murray, Flora 221 National Central Society for Women’s Suffrage 94, 111 National Council of Women 60 National Gallery 186, 195, 196, 198, 249–50 National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage 139, 151 National Portrait Gallery 198 attacks on 186 suffragette portraiture 159–60, 170, 176, 178, 180 National Society for the Promotion of the Franchise of Women 100 National Society for Women’s Suffrage 94, 111 National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship 60, 112 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies 5, 94

278

INDEX

badges of 142–4, 147–8 colours 138 Election Fighting Fund 70 formation of 7 men’s activity in 207, 216 processions of 28, 31, 162 Scotland, in 51–2, 55, 57–9 Suffrage Atelier 60, 78 needlework 9, 76, 231–44 Glasgow School of Art 46–7 male participation in 209–13, 219, 221–2 Suffrage Atelier 76 Nesbit, Jane 58 Nevill, Lady Dorothy 103 New, Edith 193 New, Edmund Hort 209 Newbery, Francis 44, 46–7, 49, 239–40 Newbery, Jessie (née Rowat) 47–9, 51, 55, 58, 239 Newcombe, Bertha 31 Nightingale, Florence 162 Northcutt, Alice 121 Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage 51, 210 pageants 8, 30, 53, 55, 257 Pankhurst, Adela 98 Pankhurst, Christabel arrest 190 education 98 Emerson & Co. 99, 112 fashion 123 The Great Scourge and How to End It 195 portraits of 159–71, 174–5, 178–80 publishing 147, 195 war effort 137 Women’s Social and Political Union 45, 238 Pankhurst, Emmeline 8, 93, 111–12, 167, 257 arrest 186, 250 education 97–9 Emerson & Co. 94–7, 99–101, 112–13 fashion 123 hunger strikes 193

militancy 190 portraits of 178–9 Scotland 54, 59 sentencing 186, 193 statue of 15 Women’s Social and Political Union 118, 186, 218 Pankhurst, Richard 94, 96, 104, 107, 207 Pankhurst, Sylvia 3, 7, 205, 258 Art and Crafts movement 74, 80 art and design 54, 141, 148, 150, 163, 176, 178 East London Federation of Suffragettes 71 education 98 Emerson & Co. 99–104 force feeding 257 hunger strikes 193 imprisonment 265 militancy 175, 190 Pankhurst Memorial Society 178 Park, Alice 147 Parkes, Jane 53 Parnell, Charles Stuart 231, 234, 235, 241 Parry, Lady Maude 97, 103 Parry, Sir Hubert 97, 103, 104 Pearse, Alfred 3, 209, 251, 260–8 The Government’s Methods of Barbarism 261, 264, 265 Torturing Women in Prison 253–5, 263 For what you are about to receive 265 Pearson, John 122 Peterloo Massacre 190 Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline 55, 61, 132, 175 badges 146 colours 137, 138–9 marriage 218 Votes for Women 118–20, 259–60 Pethick-Lawrence, Frederick 118–20, 132 marriage 218 Votes for Women 118–20, 138–9, 259–60 Phelps, Elspeth 122

INDEX Phillips, Mary 51, 144, 241 photography 4, 7, 241–4 force feeding 257–8 portraiture 160, 164, 165, 168 surveillance ‘mug shots’ 198 pilgrimages 3, 147 police 145, 190, 193, 195, 241 brutality 59, 191 surveillance 198 Political Equality League 147 portraiture 159–80, 194, 195, 197–8 postcards 3, 4, 145, 165, 209 anti-suffrage 218, 219 Artists’ Suffrage League 216, 263 photographic 72, 160 Suffrage Atelier 67, 74, 77, 78 Women’s Guild of Arts 24 Women’s Press 139 Women’s Social and Political Union 165, 261 posters 3, 4, 9, 209, 251 Suffrage Atelier 1–2, 66, 67, 72, 75, 77, 79 Women’s Guild of Arts 24, 30 Women’s Social and Political Union 254, 261–4, 267 Praeger, Rosamond 234 Pre-Raphaelites 4, 185, 233, 240 Primrose League 103, 141 prison 55, 186, 191–2, 194, 208 cell replicas 54–5 force feeding 249–68 Holloway 51, 52, 145, 148, 150, 220, 221, 225, 241, 243, 249 male prisoners 214, 219 medals 148–50 needlework in 222 Perth prison 59 prisoner ‘mug shots’ 198 release from 243 Puckle, Mora 128 Punch 161 Redmond, John 236 Reform Bill 151 Representation of the People Act 15, 95, 111 Reynolds, Claire 128 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 174

279

Richardson, Mary 193, 196–8, 249–50, 267–8 Ridley, Ada 30 Robinson, Charlotte 93 Rochford, Marie 128 Romney, George 174, 194 Ross, Forbes 265 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 185 Royal Academy 170–5, 178 attacks on 186, 194, 195, 197 exhibitions at 159, 160 female membership of 24, 30, 162 Royal College of Art 150 Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts 53, 58, 59 Royal Scottish Academy 186, 195 Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour 50 Ruskin, John 6, 70 Rutter, Frank 208 Ryland, Bertha 192, 194, 195 Salmon, Elizabeth 58 Sandell, Ethel 34 Sanderson, Annie Cobden 72 Sargant, John Singer portrait of Henry James 194, 198 sashes 159, 163 Scarisbrick, Charles 171 Scotland 8, 43–61, 233–40, 242, 244 Glasgow Art Club 58 Glasgow School of Art 43–61, 231, 238, 239–40 Glasgow Society of Lady Artists 24, 46, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60 Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage 47–8, 238–9 male support for movement 208 Royal Scottish Academy 186 Scottish Council for Women’s Trades 239 Second World War 24 Seruya, Sime 139, 147 Shaw, Anna Howard 138 Shaw, George Bernard 212, 259 Shaw, Kathleen 66, 76 Siddons, Sarah 168 Skeffington, Hanna Sheehy 234–5

280

INDEX

Sloane, Mary A. 34, 35 Smith, Maude Kate 194, 197 Smith, Pamela Colman Suffrage Atelier 66, 68, 76 Women’s Guild of Arts 26, 30, 35 Smyth, Dorothy Carleton 54, 61 socialism 65, 68, 70, 71 Society of Women Artists 24 Solomon, Solomon J. Your Health 171 Somerville, Mary 162 South Kensington School of Art 46 Stark, Chris 43–6 Steen, Annie 128–9, 132 Stieglitz, Alfred 75 Stokes, Marianne 31 Strachey family 33, 216 Strong, Clara 124–6, 132 Suffrage Atelier 14, 65–80, 164–5, 210, 220 Comfortable Women 74 The Polling Station 1–2 In the Shadow 74 Waiting for a Living Wage 74 Suffrage Fellowship 178, 198 Suffragette, The 119–20 advertisements in 126–7, 129, 142, 147 Swan, Annie 55 Swanson, Margaret 55 Swynnerton, Annie portrait of Millicent Fawcett Garrett 179 Tanner, Kathleen 241 Tax Resistance League 30, 148 Taylor, Ida 234 Taylor, Una 235–6, 238, 240, 242–4 An Irish National Banner 231–4, 236–7 Women’s Guild of Arts 26, 34, 36 tea rooms 56–8 temperance 51, 56, 238, 240, 244 Tenniel, John 161 Terrero, Janie 9 Terry, Ellen 67 Thesiger, Ernest 206–7, 209–10, 216, 218–21 From Prison to Citizenship 220

Thew, Mary 58 Thompson, Euphemia 46 Tinnin, Glenda Smith 258 Tod, Isabella M. S. 234, 236 Toye and Company 142, 150 Trotter, Alys Vane 34 Turner, Mary Thackeray 26 Union of Women Workers 59 United States of America badges 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 151 colours 138 posters 75 United Suffragists 71 Uzanne, Octave 45 Velásquez, Diego Venus at her Mirror (the ‘Rokeby Venus’) 193, 196–8, 249–51, 267–8 Victoria and Albert Museum 6, 38 Vince, Millicent 98 violence 28, 191–2, 249–50, 258 men and 213–14 representations of 254, 260, 265, 267 Scotland, in 55 window smashing 55, 71, 112, 148, 191, 193, 194, 218 Vote, The 72, 79, 119, 127, 129 Votes for Women 118–20, 144, 145 advertisements in 120–32, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143 ‘An Appeal to Men’ 208 representations of force feeding in 249–64 Wales 8, 208, 235, 238, 242 Walker, Emery 34, 36 Walker, Ethel 38 Wallace-Dunlop, Marion 55 Watts, George Frederick 185 Watts, Mary Seton 34 Webb, Beatrice 32 Wellesley, Gerald and Ada 103 West, Rebecca 72 Wheelhouse, M.V. 30, 36, 37 White, Gleeson 47

INDEX Wilde, Oscar 216 Willis, Ethel 66, 76 Wilson, Marion Henderson 58 Wollstonecraft, Mary 162 Woman’s Press, The 54, 139, 142, 215, 257, 261 Woman’s Suffrage Bill 190 Women’s Exhibition, The (1909) 162–71, 176, 180 Women’s Freedom League 12, 72, 119, 124, 208 badges 142, 148, 150–1 colours of 127 formation of 7, 45 Scotland 58, 59, 60 Suffrage Atelier and 72 Women’s Guild of Arts 24–39, 68, 243 Women’s Industrial Council 71–2 Women’s International Art Club 23–5, 37–9 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 5 Women’s Liberal Federation 31 Women’s Parliaments 190–2 Women’s Social and Political Union 3, 30, 160 advertising to members 120–32, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143 badges of 139, 141, 142, 146, 147, 148, 220 banners of 4, 205 banquet of 94 colours of 138, 144, 163 demonstrations by 191 deputation to George V 194 financial support of 71, 163 foundation of 7, 12, 93, 104, 112, 207

281

headquarters 28, 196, 260 Ireland, in 235 Labour Party and 70 leadership 71, 159, 162, 186 male support for 214, 218, 221 Manchester, in 185 processions of 14 propaganda by 170–1 publicity for 190, 251, 256 Scotland, in 45, 48, 49, 51, 53, 59, 238, 241 separatism 25, 33 shops of 139, 140 tactics of 32, 190, 192, 195, 213–14, 261 war, impact of 5, 126 Women’s Exhibition, The (1909) 163–7 Women’s Tax Resistance League 30, 148, 220 Women Writers’ Suffrage League 9, 139 Wood, Helen Muir 58 Woodward, Alice B. 30, 36 Woodward, E. C. 30, 37 Wright, Ethel 159–76 Christabel Pankhurst 162–71, 178 Lady Ada Osbourne 145 The Path of Roses 171 Pierrot 171 Song of Ages 174 Wylie, Kate 54 Yeats, Lily 66 ‘Young Hot Bloods’ 164 Zaccagnini, Carla 198 Zangwill, Israel 214

PLATE 1  Laurence Housman and others, An Anti-Suffrage Alphabet, 1911 © Museum of London.

PLATE 2  Mary Moser banner, c. 1908–1914 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

PLATE 3  Margaret Gilmour’s repoussé brass alms dish. Exhibited at the Glasgow International Exhibition, 1901 © The Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright.

PLATE 4  Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, O Ye that Walk in the Willow Wood, 1903–1904. Gesso panel, centrepiece of the Salon de Luxe, Willow Tea Room © The Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright.

PLATE 5  The original Women’s Social and Political Union chain link design badge and two American copies from the Connecticut Women Suffrage Association and the Just Government League. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

PLATE 6 Postcard photograph of Women’s Freedom League demonstration. Woman on the right appears to be distributing both literature as well as badges. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

PLATE 7  Cause and event pins. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

PLATE 8  The Hunger Strike Medal for Lavender Guthrie, who later committed suicide. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

PLATE 9  Sylvia Pankhurst, three designs for both badges and seals for the Women’s Social and Political Union. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

PLATE 10  Various badges produced for other English suffrage organizations. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

PLATE 11  Two anti-suffrage badges. From the collection of Kenneth Florey.

PLATE 12  Ethel Wright, Christabel Pankhurst, oil on canvas, exhibited 1909. Bequeathed by Elizabeth Ruth Dugdale Weir, 2011, NPG6921 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

PLATE 13  Susan Isabel Dacre, Lydia Becker, oil on canvas © Manchester Art Gallery/Bridgeman Images.

PLATE 14  Winifred Bourne Medway, Miss Annie Kenney, c. 1910, oil on canvas, K4330 © Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.

PLATE 15  Ethel Wright, Bonjour, Pierrot!, oil on canvas, 1893 © Gallery Oldham.

Image not available in this edition

PLATE 16  Ethel Wright, Success magazine cover, New York, June 1902. Plandiura Collection, purchased 1903 © Museum Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

PLATE 17  Sylvia Pankhurst, self-portrait, c. 1907–1910. Given by S. E. Boucher, 1974, NPG4999 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

PLATE 18  Georgina Brackenbury, Emmeline Pankhurst, 1927, oil on canvas. Given by Memorial Committee, 1929, NPG2360 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Image not available in this edition

PLATE 19  Flora Lion, Flora Drummond, 1936 © National Galleries of Scotland.

PLATE 20  A Proposal, anti-suffrage postcard, undated. Private Collection.

PLATE 21 George A. Husbandman, anti-suffrage postcard, undated. Private Collection.

PLATE 22  Laurence and Clemence Housman, Hampstead banner, c. 1907 © Museum of London.

PLATE 23  Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage badge, c. 1908 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

PLATE 24  Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage badge, c. 1908 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

PLATE 25  Shoe-bag embroidered by convalescing soldier in Endell Street W.H.C. (Women’s Hospital Corps), c. 1915–1918 © The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

PLATE 26  Ann Macbeth, The Huntress, The Studio, 1902 © The British Library Board.