Europe

100 Years On, Posters Offer Window Into Struggles of U.K. Suffragists

By YONETTE JOSEPH

The organizations identified on the children’s bibs were linked to the major political parties of the day, said Chris Burgess, exhibitions officer at the University of Cambridge library. The poster argues that support for the groups should be withdrawn until women could vote. Cambridge University Library

LONDON — They were wrapped in plain brown paper and addressed to “the librarian” at the University of Cambridge.

In cities like Cambridge, suffragist campaigns deliberately depicted women in academic dress. Women were not allowed to become full members of the city’s main university until 1948. Cambridge University Library

The delivery took place circa 1910. Sent by a major figure of the suffragist movement in Britain, Marion Phillips, the parcel contained posters illustrating the struggles of women in the country to get the right to vote.

Some posters in the University of Cambridge collection clearly targeted women in textile factories or working as seamstresses. Cambridge University Library

It took decades for the posters on fading paper to be rediscovered and dusted off. But the images illustrating women’s fight for voting rights have gone on display for the first time at the university to commemorate the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which gave British women over the age of 30 the right to vote 100 years ago on Tuesday.

“Campaigning went far beyond the simple equality message to point out how the vote could make a difference in households, at work, on the streets — matters that concern all women,” said Dr. Lucy Delap, a professor of history at Cambridge Cambridge University Library

The institution bills the posters as “one of the largest surviving collections of suffrage posters from the early 20th century.”

This was one of the most popular posters of the suffragist campaign in Britain. The artist, Duncan Grant, was a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group of British painters. Cambridge University Library

“These posters are fantastic examples of the suffrage publicity machine of the early 20th century,” Chris Burgess, the exhibitions officer at the university’s library, says on the exhibition’s website.

Print publications were central to winning the hearts and minds of the public. Cambridge University Library

“They were created to be plastered on walls, torn down by weather or political opponents, so it is highly unusual for this material to be safely stored for over a hundred years.”

In 1909, Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone ordered that imprisoned suffragettes who went on hunger strike be force-fed. Cambridge University Library

Women such as Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst campaigned for the right to vote for all. The movement was split into labels: suffragists and suffragettes, whose members took a harder stance, staging loud protests, smashing windows and the like.

Mrs. Fawcett considered herself a suffragist, a moderate opposed to the sometimes violent protests of campaigners like Ms. Pankhurst, known as a suffragette.

History so far seems to have been relatively kinder to the moderate. Last year, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that Mrs. Fawcett would be the first woman to be honored by a statue in Parliament Square in London, where there are 11 statues of men — giants like Churchill, Lincoln and Mandela.

(A memorial to Ms. Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel stands in a corner of the Palace of Westminster in London.)

In addition, a blue plaque commemorating Mrs. Fawcett was to be unveiled at the Cambridge Guildhall on Feb. 6, according to the City Council.

As for Ms. Pankhurst, who helped found the Women’s Social and Political Union, was arrested several times and even went on a hunger strike, The New York Times wrote in 1913:

“The hysterical women in England who have been followers of Mrs. Pankhurst in her defiance of law and decency are now threatening to institute a reign of terror. Mrs. Pankhurst has been convicted as an accessory to the crime of arson and has been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment — a mild sentence.

The behavior of the trial Judge and the latitude accorded to the prisoner, who was permitted to conduct her own defense, seemed unaccountable on this side of the Atlantic, where we are inclined to boast of our liberty. The court seemed to be afraid of the prisoner, as, indeed, the Home Office seems to be afraid of the whole gang of female mischief-makers.

We have all been saying that if woman suffrage is to survive in Great Britain, these militants, who represent but a small part of the suffrage movement, would surely delay the hour of triumph.”

But triumph they did.

Anne-Sophie Bolon contributed reporting.