From china cups to letter bombs: how suffragettes got out the message of votes for women
The suffragettes crafted a brilliant PR campaign, driven by everything from branded marmalade to marching bands. But did their quest for publicity eventually backfire? Ellie Cawthorne investigates an Edwardian battle for hearts and minds
Whining kittens, cackling geese, wizened crones, toothless old bags: the portrayals of activists on anti-suffrage postcards circulating at the beginning of the 20th century are brutally unflattering.
“Suffragettes were often portrayed as desiccated spinsters who’d never been kissed, and whose sexual frustration made them bitter and twisted and led them to attack society,” says historian Diane Atkinson. “They were shown as careless, selfish women who abandoned their families and responsibilities in pursuit of politics.”
One postcard shows a bawling baby in the middle of an almighty tantrum. The caption underneath reads: “Mummy’s a Suffragette.” As Atkinson explains, such images transmitted a clear message to anyone who saw them: “Suffragettes were bad mothers. They were bad wives. They were bad people.”
Before they could convert anyone to their cause – in short, ‘votes for women’ – the suffragettes had to convince the public that they were not bitter old crones or shrieking banshees. What they needed was a rebrand – and, as we explore in our new podcast series, Deeds not Words, the campaigning suffragettes were masters at getting their message out there.
Whether through headline-grabbing stunts, creating a dynamic and memorable public image for their movement, or even their pitch-perfect merchandise campaign, the suffragettes knew how to make a statement.
Deeds Not Words: the suffragette story
Find out more about the dramatic story of the suffragette campaign over six episodes
Building ‘brand suffragette’
As those sneering postcards demonstrate, the suffragettes’ fight to reclaim their public image would be an uphill battle. However, according to historian Fern Riddell, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) – the organisation at the heart of the movement – was “absolutely fantastic at running a PR campaign”.
She adds: “Advertising and mass media had really started to emerge in the 19th century, and the suffragettes were quick to capitalise on the fact that we’re very visual creatures. They understood that if you give people something exciting to look at, they’re going to remember it.”
In this creation of ‘brand suffragette’ they “were able to draw on a vast pool of expertise”, says Atkinson. “Women who were great artists, designers, embroiderers and actresses all contributed their talents to help create a campaign that was very modern and ‘sexy’ for the time.”
One such woman was Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, the WSPU’s multi-talented treasurer, who in 1908 invented a colour scheme for the campaign. Each hue held a specific symbolic meaning: green for hope, white for purity in private and public life, purple for freedom and dignity.
It was a memorably unusual combination, instantly recognisable – and Pethick Lawrence was quick to recognise its potential. In her role as co-editor of the WSPU’s magazine Votes for Women, she explicitly encouraged members to adopt the colours at upcoming marches.
“The effect will be very much lost unless the colours are carried out in the dress of every woman in the ranks,” she wrote. “You may think that this is a small and trivial matter but there is no service that can be considered as small or trivial in this movement… If every individual in this union would do her part, the colours would become the reigning fashion. And strange as it may seem, nothing would so help to popularise the WSPU.”
WSPU logo: Angel of Freedom
As well as clothes and banners, Pethick Lawrence’s colour scheme was adopted across a wide range of WSPU logos. Many of these were designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of the movement’s firebrand figurehead, Emmeline.
Sylvia, who had studied at the Royal College of Art, used her artistic talents to create a striking visual identity for the campaign – most notably with her trumpeting ‘Angel of Freedom’ motif. Her designs set the template for the kind of imagery that the movement deployed to represent itself – impassioned yet dignified, youthful, self-assured, progressive and dynamic.
The final puzzle piece of ‘brand suffragette’ came from Emmeline, who came up with the slogan ‘deeds not words’. Here was a clear and catchy motto that could be shouted in the streets – a punchy tagline that would stick in people’s minds and let them know that these women meant business.
“It’s this innovative use of colour and logos that really made the WSPU stand out,” says Atkinson. “I can’t think of any other political organisation that has marketed a campaign as well.”
Once this strong brand identity had been established, it was not only weaponised in the suffragettes’ marketing materials but also emblazoned across a variety of merchandise. Pethick-Lawrence was keenly aware of the need to top up the campaign’s war chest, and selling merchandise offered a powerful way to spread the WSPU’s message while simultaneously bringing in funds.
In May 1909, a two-week Women’s Exhibition was held in Knightsbridge, with around 50 stalls for curious visitors to peruse. Alongside a palmistry stand, home-made butterscotch, a mock polling booth and a replica Holloway Prison cell, all manner of branded and colour-coded merchandise was on offer – sales of which contributed substantially to the £5,664 of campaign funds raised.
As the campaign progressed, suffragette shops popped up across the country, many attached to local branches of the WSPU. London alone had 19 WSPU shops, offering desirable items to purchase in person or via mail order. From handkerchiefs and stationery to tote bags and small enamel badges bearing popular slogans, there was some thing for all budgets.
Working women with minimal disposable income could buy ‘votes for women’ marmalade, chocolate and cigarettes, or glass bead necklaces in purple, white and green. Those with more cash to splash were offered high-end jewellery studded with genuine diamonds and amethysts, or bicycles with chainguards sporting suffragette logos. One of the most popular items was a delicate 13-piece bone china tea set, each cup and saucer bearing Sylvia Pankhurst’s ‘Angel of Freedom’ motif.
Several board games were also produced, from Pank-A-Squith – a play on the names of Emmeline Pankhurst and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (a leading opponent of women’s suffrage) – to the somewhat less opaque Suffragettes In and Out of Prison. The game Suffragetto – of which there is now only one known surviving copy – saw one player controlling police constables while their opponent became the wily suffragettes trying to slink past their defences.
With products such as tea sets and board games, the suffragettes were sneaking their message directly into homes across Britain. But in order for their campaign to achieve tangible results, they needed to shout that message from the rooftops and see it splashed across the nation’s streets.
Suffragette marches: spectacle and pageantry
That’s where marching came in. Photographs of suffragette marches taken by Christina Broom capture their forthright spirit and infectious energy, with hand-embroidered banners fluttering in the wind, and marshals on horseback leading a sea of marching women.
It’s clear from these images that the suffragettes understood the power of spectacle. As WSPU leader Annie Kenney reflected: “Pageantry played a big part in popularising the movement.”
These events were great opportunities to reach potential supporters who were not already sympathetic to the cause. Flyers and suffragette literature would be handed out to onlookers, while catchy popular songs of the time were adapted with suffragette lyrics and accompanied by marching bands.
“Processions were very important when it came to the suffragettes’ image, because they showed the public who these women really were,” says Atkinson. “That was quite a good reality check, because they weren’t the harridans or freaks of nature that those ridiculous postcards portrayed.”
Such marches made an impression in even the most unlikely quarters. “I am sure a great many people never realised how young and dainty and elegant and charming most of the leaders of the movement are,” a surprised Daily Mail reporter admitted in 1908 after one such public event. “And how well they spoke – with what free and graceful gesture; never at a loss for a word or an apt reply to an interruption; calm and collected; forcible, yet so far as I heard, not violent; earnest, but happily humorous as well.”
Marches were not the only tactics deployed by the suffragettes to seize public attention. In 1909, Muriel Matters from the Women’s Freedom League decorated a dirigible balloon with the words ‘Votes for Women’ and flew it over London, tossing down a cascade of pro-suffragette pamphlets to the crowds. And in 1913, Ethel Spark and Gertrude Shaw slipped past the guards at the Monument to run a suffragette banner up the flagpole.
One figure who helped to stir up press interest in women’s suffrage was aristocratic it-girl turned suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. As a god-daughter of Queen Victoria, Duleep Singh was well aware of the attention her celebrity status could bring to the cause. So she sold copies of The Suffragette newspaper outside her home at Hampton Court Palace, and accosted politicians while wearing a sumptuous fur coat.
In one head line-grabbing caper in 1911, bailiffs impounded a seven-stone diamond ring against arrears in rates payments. Comrades from the Women’s Tax Resistance League launched a highly publicised protest at the subsequent auction, outbidding the competition to buy back the ring for Sophia.
Stunts often targeted politicians. Suffragettes leapt out at ministers on golf courses, or swapped the flags on greens for others in suffragette colours.
In Bristol in 1909, Theresa Garnett shocked reporters when she accosted Winston Churchill with a dog whip at Temple Meads train station. The Manchester Guardian lapped up the dramatic story, reporting on the episode as “a very exciting moment”, while the Manchester Evening News even commissioned an illustration to bring the incident to life for readers.
Suffragette militancy
But as the campaign dragged on, with little sign of political opposition thawing and increased hostility from police and prison officers, suffragette militancy increased. And as the movement became more extreme, so too did the nature of these public actions, escalating from harmless but headline-grabbing stunts to far more extreme acts.
Letter bombs were sent to the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, and explosives were planted in cricket grounds, Westminster Abbey and the London Underground.
And in June 1913, Emily Davison died after being struck by King George V’s horse as it raced in the Derby – surely the most famous of all suffragette actions.
While the headlines and column inches kept coming, the tenor of the reporting became more hostile to the suffragettes. Any reluctant admiration such as that shown by the Daily Mail back in 1908 evaporated, with newspapers instead declaring themselves appalled by so-called ‘suffragette outrages’. The old adage ‘any publicity is good publicity’ began to ring increasingly hollow.
In Riddell’s view, the escalating militant action was a potential public relations disaster for the suffragettes. “It’s very easy to get distracted by the PR movement, which is one of the reasons why [the suffragettes’ campaign] was so successful,” she says. “But the shock and horror that women would bomb MPs’ houses – and lay claim to those bombings – absolutely blew the minds of the British public. It certainly made people far less likely to support the suffragettes, so it was incredibly damaging to the success of the movement as a whole.”
Riddell argues that the suffragettes were in many ways rescued from this unfolding reputational nosedive by the outbreak of the First World War. By inspiring an immediate cessation of suffragette actions, it prevented the protesters from heading further down a path that would have fuelled yet more hostility to their cause.
“It tells us an awful lot about how political activism works,” says Riddell. “The lesson campaigners need to learn from the suffragettes is that if you target ordinary people’s lives and put them at risk, your movement will suffer instantly.”
Yet, a century on, protesters are still drawing from the suffragette playbook. “I think the suffragette spirit is alive and kicking among lots of protest movements today,” says Atkinson. “I’m not sure anybody’s done it as well as them, but they have certainly provided a great example for activists and interest groups in the decades since.”
Perhaps the best-known example of a modern campaign group borrowing from the suffragette playbook occurred in November 2023, when two members of the climate activism group Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery and launched a volley of blows at Diego Velázquez’s ‘The Rokeby Venus’. The precedent for this attack was clear.
Back in 1914, the suffragette Mary Richardson had sparked nationwide outrage by slashing the ‘Venus’ with a meat cleaver. And, just in case anyone was in any doubt about the inspiration for the climate protesters’ attack, they later declared that: “It is time for deeds not words.” The suffragettes’ campaign to win the vote may have been at its zenith over a century ago, but their power to make a statement clearly still resonates today.
This article was first published in the September 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Authors
Ellie Cawthorne is HistoryExtra’s podcast editor. She also contributes to BBC History Magazine, runs the podcast newsletter and hosts several live and virtual BBC History Magazine events.