Suffragette and Anti-Suffragette Posters

The Suffragettes were followers of an organization founded in the UK in 1903 by a Manchester widow, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia. They members were mostly middle class women determined to use radical measures if necessary to secure the right to vote, the "suffrage." They called it the Women's Social and Political Union, or WSPU for short. 

Women had been petitioning peacefully for voting rights for decades. John Stuart Mill had proposed a bill in Parliament to enfranchise women as early as 1867, but it and later attempts failed. The women of the WSPU decided that it was necessary to get militant. 

At first they resorted to mass demonstrations and heckling anti-suffrage politicians at meetings. They went on to chain themselves to the railings around Parliament. They employed vandalism, such as pouring jam and honey into mail boxes. 

Using hammers concealed in their handbags, they smashed the large display windows in the new department stores. They burned "Votes for Women" in acid on those bastions of male privilege, golf courses. More dangerously, they turned to arson, carefully directed at empty buildings. 

When jailed, they went on hunger strikes, a protest tactic they invented. Mahatma Gandhi, a young lawyer in England at the time, took notice. He later used the technique in his campaign to free India from British rule.  

The first suffragette poster here -- perhaps the most striking and famous of them -- refers to an act Parliament passed in 1913. It allowed the authorities to release jailed suffragettes who went on hunger strikes when they became dangerously thin, then rearrest them after they fattened up to complete their sentence. The Suffragettes dubbed it "The Cat and Mouse Act." 

The Liberal Party was in power in Britain when the act was passed, and the suffragettes of the WSPU (The UK Women's Social and Political Union) made the most of the law's conflict with proclaimed Liberal values of justice, freedom, and tolerance. 

The failure of the Cat and Mouse Act act made the concession of women's suffrage in the UK almost inevitable. The measure was postponed by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, but women over 30 gained the vote in 1918. In 1928 the vote was extended equally to all women and all men over the age of 21. Only men who were heads of households had the vote before then. 

The poster "Convicts and Lunatics have no vote" emphasizes the fact that women, even the most well educated women, were classed with convicts and the mentally incompetent in being denied the right to vote for Parliament.

The next poster stresses the handicap women labored under in the race of life without access to the vote, represented by the sail on the man's boat. The houses of Parliament hover symbolically in the distance.

Prior to the Cat and Mouse Act, the authorities had dealt with hunger strikers by force feeding them. The Suffragettes and their supporters denounced the method as a form of torture. It was not only unpleasant but potentially dangerous if resisted. If food was forced into the lungs it could lead to pneumonia. The adverse publicity this strategy produced is what led the government to adopt the Cat and Mouse Act. 

In the same year, 1913, the Suffragettes got their first martyr. Emily Davison ran out in in front of the king's horse at the Derby. She died several days later. Prior to her martyrdom, she had been force fed 49 times in prison. Some of the women were force-fed hundreds of times.

The Suffragettes were active propagandists who spread their message through newsletters edited by one of the daughters of leader Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel. Below are posters advertising these works.

. 

The opponents of women suffrage countered with propaganda and posters of their own. They denounced the Suffragettes as unfeminine or "unwomanly." In the poster below "Clementine" is portrayed as a unlikeable, destructive little terror, a future Suffragette, putting trousers on.

Another anti-suffragette strategy was to portray the agitators as unattractive, man-hating, "old maids." 

"A Suffragette's Home" warns that politically involved women will neglect their "natural" domestic duties and imperil family life. The "breadwinner" and the children will be the ones to suffer. 

"Everybody Works but Mother" envisions a future role reversal in which women take over politics and deny men the right to vote.

"No Votes, Thank You" presents the "normal" and "natural" woman  as the majority of "womanhood" opposed to having the vote. Behind her a wild, mannish, hammer-wielding Suffragette runs at Parliament. The hammer is a reminder that some Suffragettes had used that tool to smash windows in posh West End shops.

"What I would do with the Suffragists" is a much less subtle approach to dealing with these "problem" women. 

Ending on a more positive note, we have a poster celebrating the coming of Woman Suffrage.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks! 

British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 13: Parliamentary Monarchy

The long reign of George III (1760-1820) witnessed the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. It also solidified the evolution of the country into a constitutional monarchy dominated by Parliament. The monarch remained titular sovereign but effective sovereignty now resided in Parliament. 

Monarchs had lost most control over the public finances and taxation by the end of the 17th century. They retained their right to veto parliamentary acts, and still do, but the last monarch to use it was Queen Anne (1702-1714). Future monarchs no longer contested the will of Parliament, though they sometimes tried to influence it. 

Queen Anne also was the last monarch to use the royal touch to cure disease. A lot of ordinary people might continue to believe in royal magic, but Britain's elites were embracing the Enlightenment and all that.

During the reigns of the first two Georges (1714-1760), the everyday running of government became the job of prime ministers and their cabinets, who had to have the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons to stay in power. 

Monarchs could help build and maintain a favorable majority for ministers they liked, at least until the early 19th century. But a monarch could no longer keep ministers in power if they lost their majority. They were no longer solely the monarch's ministers. They were Parliament's as well. 

Various reform acts during the 19th century further eroded the monarchy's ability to influence elections. The monarchs also lost much of their ability to reward (bribe) MPs to to support governing ministries. 

The gradual broadening of the suffrage created a more democratic electorate, capped by votes for women [horrors!] in 1918. To win elections it became more important to appeal to the voters than the monarch. 

The role of monarchs became increasingly ceremonial and advisory. They kept their palaces and servants and remained the head of state, but only as a symbolic head, a figurehead. 

Monarchs could no longer interfere in day to day politics or criticize those who governed in their name. His or Her Majesty's Government had morphed into the Prime Minister's Government.* The French Revolution and the fate of Charles I taught them to be content with this situation. 

The sixty year reign of George III was followed by two brief reigns: those of his elderly sons George IV (1820-1830) and William IV (1830-1837). 

George IV had been Prince Regent for ten years prior to becoming king. He was a cultured but extravagant wastrel whose greatest battles were fought with his parents, his wife Caroline, and his waistline. He did leave us the marvelous, exotic Brighton Pavilion. 

George IV was also the first British monarch to visit Scotland since Queen Anne, and he even wore a kilt for the occasion. For good or ill, he made kilts popular again. 

[Images: George IV decked out in Highland garb, by David Wilkie, 1822, and a satirical view by James Gillray, 1792, when George was merely the Prince of "Whales"]

By the late 1820s, due to overeating and drinking, George had become seriously obese. He weighed in at 245 pounds and had a waistline of 50 inches. His health declined rapidly in the late 1820s. He was losing his eyesight, was in constant pain from gout and dropsy, and spent days in a fog from taking laudanum. 

The prestige of the monarchy sank to a new low during his years as regent and king. The great achievement of his reign was Catholic Emancipation, which he opposed. Parliament repealed all the penal laws against Catholics in the United Kingdom, and allowed them to vote and hold public office.  

George IV's ministers and advisors disliked him. They found him lazy, narcissistic and irresponsible. One of his close aides wrote: "A more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist ... There have been good and wise kings but not many of them ... and this I believe to be one of the worst." On his death, The Times claimed that no one in the country shed a tear for him.  

George's only child, Princess Charlotte, died in 1817. He had no heir, and his younger brother succeeded him. William IV was a less scandalous figure, although he did live with a mistress, Mrs. Jordan, for many years. 

William IV was the last monarch to choose a prime minister against the will of Parliament: Sir Robert Peel, who had established the first professional police force in 1829. William failed to keep Peel in power, and in other ways acted as a responsible constitutional king. 

William's short reign produced some of the most significant legislation of the 19th century. The Reform Act of 1834 reduced electoral corruption and expanded representation of growing urban areas and the middle classes. It weakened the influence of the aristocracy and reinforced the ascendancy of the House of Commons over the Lords in Parliament. Another act of 1833 abolished slavery in the empire. A third act produced the first effective regulation of child labor in the expanding factories. 

The legislation wasn't all good. A fourth major act reformed the Poor Law. The "New Poor Law" with its dreaded workhouses proved to be the most hated piece of legislation of the 19th century, at least among the working classes. 

William IV had eight illegitimate children with Mrs. Jordan, but failed to produce a legitimate heir. When he died, his 19-year old niece ascended the throne. Victoria reigned for 64 years, the longest reign of any British monarch until that of the late Elizabeth II. [Image: The Young Queen Victoria, by Franz Winterthalter]

Victoria's reign became nearly synonymous with the 19th century: "The Victorian Age." This had less to do with anything Victoria did than her longevity during the period of Britain's greatest international influence. 

Victorian Britain had the largest navy, the largest merchant fleet, and the largest empire, spread across every part of the globe. Thanks to its early lead in industrialization, Britain was, for decades, the greatest economic power in the world as well. 

By the end of Victoria's reign, British power had begun to erode. Other countries industrialized, and some of them possessed far greater resources. The United States and Germany matched or exceeded British production in many manufacturing sectors by the late 19th century. Others were not far behind.

Much like Elizabeth II, Victoria was succeeded by her elderly son Albert, who became king as Edward VII. His reign was short (1901-1910). He was most remembered as a royal playboy. 

Edward's more straight-laced son George V (1910-1935) sought to return the monarchy to a higher level of respectability. Much of the pomp and royal "tradition" that surrounds the monarchy today dates from his reign. 

Unfortunately, George V's heir, Edward VIII proved a disappointment. He insisted on marrying "the woman I love," that American divorcee Mrs. Simpson. He abdicated in favor of his younger brother, who became George VI (1936-1952). That brings us back to Elizabeth II and Charles III. 

For all the pomp and ceremony of royal coronations, marriages, and funerals, the United Kingdom monarchs now reign over is a shadow of its former glory. The British Empire continued to grow into the early 20th century. Victory in World War I brought new colonies in Africa and the Middle East in the form of League of Nations Mandates. 

Yet, beneath the surface, British power was showing signs of weakness. The First World War was enormously costly, and it ended with the UK deeply in debt to the United States. Britain had lost and was losing global markets to the USA, Japan, and other countries.

The first crack in the edifice of empire came at war's end. Between 1918 and 1921 Irish Republicans fought for and won virtual independence from the UK -- for most of the island. 

Ulster, or Northern Ireland, which contained a large Unionist (Loyalist) population, was separated from the rest of Ireland. It remained part of the United Kingdom, bedevilling its politics to this day.

World War II accelerated the decline of Britain's wealth, power, and status in the world. India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947. By the 1960s, most the empire dissolved, to be replaced by a weak association of independent nations, the British Commonwealth. 

Much like the monarchy, the Commonwealth is a symbol of former power and glory. Both survive on image, and the belief or illusion that they provide valuable service. How long that will continue is difficult to predict, given the Royal Family's recent but hardly unprecedented tendency to feud with one another. 

The current infighting within the Windsor family, featuring William and Harry, does indicate one item of historical interest: "The Game of Thrones" is not quite over, even if it is now fought out in the tabloids. The tabloids, mass media, and the "people" would not want it any other way. 

Nowadays, British monarchs no longer end quite so badly. The question is, will the monarchy itself end in the near future? Prince Harry's attack on the "institution" has probably done more for the anti-monarchy cause than all the republicans in British history.   

*Government by prime ministers is not necessarily a big improvement over monarchical government, as the recent run of revolving-door Tory prime ministers has shown. To be sure, elected presidents have not been performing so well either. Democratic governments are only as good as the people who elect them. The main advantage is that they are easier to get rid of than hereditary monarchs.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks! 

    

Scandal: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the British Election of 1784

The Westminster parliamentary election of 1784 produced a major scandal due to the active involvement of Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806). 

At the time, British women were unable to vote or run for Parliament. They would not gain those rights for more than a century. Georgiana's scandalous behavior was not to defy the electoral laws but the convention that women, at least "respectable" women, should not actively canvas for votes on behalf of men. [Below: Portrait by Thomas Gainsborough]

Georgiana's marriage to William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, was not a happy one. The Duke was unemotional and adulterous. The Duchess sought refuge in society, the theatre, gambling, and visiting pleasure gardens. Gambling became an addiction, and she racked up enormous debts. 

As celebrities do today, she attracted the attention of the media, in press and print. Artist Thomas Rowlandson produced many cartoons in which she was the subject, such as the two below showing her at the gaming table and at Vauxhall (in center of the crowd with her sister). Many other notables are pictured at Vauxhall, including Dr. Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, and James Boswell, seated at the left.

The candidate Georgiana helped was Charles James Fox, leader of the parliamentary Whigs. In 1780 she had stood on the hustings with Fox. In 1784 she went much further. She went about the streets of Westminster, canvassing voters and trying to convince them to cast their vote for Fox. He was not only running to keep his seat as an MP, but hoping that the Whigs he led would gain enough seats to allow him to replace his rival, William Pitt the Younger, as Prime Minister. 

The Westminster electorate was relatively large for the time and included men of the middling and lower ranks. For a duchess to mix and touch -- some claimed even kiss -- such folk seemed scandalous to many contemporaries. Cartoonists had a field day, notably Rowlandson. The image below, "The Devonshire; or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes" shows the Duchess kissing a butcher. 

More licentious, and completely fanciful, "The Poll" shows Georgiana and Albinia, Countess of Buckinghamshire, on a see saw trying to "tip the balance" between the two leading candidates, Fox and Sir Cecil Wray. Albinia openly supported Wray, and met the same criticisms as Georgiana. Both women are shown exposing their breasts, symbolizing their scandalous behavior. Fox is on the right with his hands in the air. The phallic-shaped rocks the seesaw rests on add another level of suggestiveness.

The image below shows Georgiana processing to the hustings with other canvassers, including other women.

Despite all the negative publicity Georgiana received, Fox was reelected as one of the two Westminster MPs. Who knows, her efforts may even have helped him win over voters. His goal of becoming Prime Minister was thwarted, however, because Pitt gained a solid majority of supporters in Parliament.

Georgiana did not enter the political fray again so publicly. She continued for years to mix with and influence Whig leaders like Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the Prince of Wales, the future George IV. 

She also had an affair with a member of the Whig inner circle, Charles Grey, with whom she had an illegitimate daughter. The affair ended when her husband threatened her with divorce and never seeing her children again. Georgiana, who had strong mothering instincts, chose her children over Grey. He was furious at the rejection, but had some compensation. He later became an earl, Prime Minister, and had a tea named after him. 

The portrait below by Joshua Reynolds, shows the Duchess playing with her daughter, also named Georgiana. 

Wilkes and Liberty!

John Wilkes (1725-1797) is an enigmatic figure. At various times radical defender of liberty, rake, xenophobe, and conservative politician, he eludes easy categorization.

During the early 1760s, while an MP, Wilkes published a journal called the North Briton, which specialized in attacking the government led by George III's Scots tutor, John Stuart, Lord Bute, and Scots in general.

The North Briton (itself a reference to Scotland) claimed that Bute and other Scots were taking over the government with the goal of establishing a "Stuart" tyranny. The idea resonated with many Englishmen, who feared that Scots immigrants into England and its colonies threatened their livelihoods and liberties. 

In issue No. 45 of the North Briton, Wilkes attacked the King's Speech on the Treaty of Paris (1763) that ended the Seven Years War. Wilkes was incensed by what he saw as the treaty's overly generous treatment of France and blamed Bute. The government prosecuted Wilkes and other involved in the publication for seditious libel. In the end the Court of Kings Bench sided with Wilkes. Radical Whigs cheered the verdict as a major victory for liberty.

During the battle over No. 45 William Hogarth, who disliked Wilkes, immortalized him in a famous engraving.

Wilkes soon overreached himself, helping to write and print an obscene poem, a parody of Alexander Pope's poem, An Essay on Man. The parody, An Essay on Woman, is perhaps best known for the line "Life can little else supply, but a few good fucks and then we die."

Wilkes was a member of the Hellfire Club, AKA Medmenham Monks, a notorious gang of rakes and libertines, who included Lord Sandwich. Unfortunately for Wilkes, he had offended Sandwich, who in revenge read the poem to the House of Lords. Wilkes fled to -- of all places -- France to avoid arrest and prosecution but was found guilty of obscenity and blasphemy in absentia and declared an outlaw. 

Wilkes fell into debt in France, and in 1768 he returned to England. He submitted himself to jail but also put himself up for election to Parliament for the constituency of Middlesex County. The voters elected him by a wide margin, but the House of Commons declared him ineligible due to his conviction. He ran two more times and won each time before the House, bowing to the popular will, finally seated him.

During the campaigns Wilkes' supporters incited riots on his behalf, in one of which several people were killed by government troops. Radicals hailed Wilkes' eventual seating as a victory for the idea that the electorate, not the House of Commons, should determine the fitness of their representatives. 

In Parliament during the 1770's, Wilkes defended the cause of the American colonies, and became a hero to the future Patriots.

In 1780, London's mostly radical voters elected Wilkes Lord Mayor Ironically, he soon ended up cooperating with the government of George III in suppressing the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots (1780). During this episode he led a militia regiment that shot many rioters.

Wilkes' stance during the Gordon Riots cost him much of his popular following, and he gradually became more conservative.

Wilkes was famous for witty repartee. On one occasion, when running for Parliament, he asked a voter for his support. The voter replied, "I'd rather vote for the Devil." Wilkes shot back, "Naturally. But if your friend decides not to run, may I hope for your support?"

Another comeback often attributed to Wilkes may or not be apocryphal. On one occasion Sandwich said to Wilkes, "Sir, I fear you are destined to die on the gallows, or of the pox." (syphilis) Wilkes replied, "That depends my lord, on whether I embrace your lordship's principles or your mistress."

Today, Wilkes is memorialized by the names of several towns and counties in the USA and a statue in Fetter Lane in London.

  
Further Reading: 

George Rude, Wilkes and Liberty (1962)
Peter D. G. Thomas, John Wilkes, Friend to Liberty (1996)

London's Great Stinks, Cholera, and John Snow

Between 1800 and 1860, London's population grew from 1 to 3 million. Sanitation lagged far behind growth. Wells were contaminated by overflowing and leaking privies. Streets were full of human and animal wastes. 

The River Thames was a giant sewer, fed by the smaller sewers under the streets. It was also the major source of drinking water, as illustrated in George Cruikshank's cartoon of 1832.

By mid-century, the river had become so, pardon me, shitty, that summers were often marked by what were called "Great Stinks." The stinks sometimes coincided with severe cholera oor typhoid epidemics. 

During the cholera epidemic of 1849, surgeon John Snow argued that cholera was spread through foul drinking water. In 1855, he demonstrated it through a pioneering epidemiological investigation of cholera deaths in one neighborhood in Soho, where most victims had drunk water from a pump on Broad (now Broadwick) St. 

(Image: John Snow)

Few people paid much attention to Snow's work at the time but lots noticed the evil stink of the Thames. Scientist Michael Faraday, wrote to the  Times pointing out the necessity of cleaning up the river. The whole of the river, he said, was an opaque brown fluid, a "fermenting feculent sewer." 

The satirical magazine Punch published the cartoon below of Faraday introducing himself to a crap-covered god of the river, Father Thames.

  

Nothing happened then, but three years later, in the summer of 1858, another Great Stink aroused Parliament to action. The parliament building was right next to the river and the MPs found the smell intolerable. They passed an act to lay a new sewer system dumping wastes in the country instead of the river. 

Within a few years the Thames was much cleaner, and the health of London's population improved. Punch saluted the improvement with a cartoon of Father Thames cleaned up, robust, and dressed as a Beefeater, being greeted by Prince Albert. 

History as She is Learned: Some of my Students' Greatest Hits

"Visits to Bedlam Lunatic Hospital by prominent socialites and political figures (such as the Prince of Whales) increased the popularity of these visits throughout the general public."

(Image: George, Prince of Wales, by James Gillray)

"The Haitian Revolutionaries defeated the French due to gorilla warfare."

“Thomas Wolsey was born a pheasant and grew up to be a cardinal.”

"The Flagellants flatulated themselves for religion, believing the plaque was the work of God."

"Voltaire argued that forcing people to believe in a particular religion produced hippocrates."

"The Battle of the Nile provided the impotence for Great Britain to exercise a greater hold on their colonies".

"If not for his role in finding Livingstone, Henry Stanley would not have sat on Parliament."

See if you can find Stanley in this picture.

THE END (is near).