The tale of an anti-sufragette postcard in the collections of the Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove.
Delivered at the Picture This: Postcards and Letters Beyond Text conference at Sussex University, 25 March 2011
2. What is it?
⢠Anti-suffragette postcard from 1909
⢠Rare local history purchase for RPM
⢠Material evidence of anti-suffragette
violence
3. Material culture and telling stories
⢠Museums attract big audiences and play a
big role in writing historyâŚ
⢠âŚbut the stories they tell are shaped by
their collections
⢠Struggle for womenâs suffrage difficult to tell
through material culture. Photographs, film
and spoken word are effective, but emerge
from narrow circumstances of creation.
4. Material culture and telling stories
⢠This postcard is more than its image
and / or text
⢠Few other artefacts of political male
violence against women
⢠What story does it tell?
5. The image
This is âThe Houseâ that man built,
And these are the Suffragettes of note
Determined to fight for their right to vote
For they mean to be, each one an MP
And theyâll keep their vow some fine day youâll see
For the Suffragette is determined to get
Into âThe Houseâ that man built.
6. The image
⢠Made by Birn Brothers. Ltd,
c1908
⢠Part of a series of comic
postcards depicting the womenâs
suffrage movement
⢠Series based around key trope:
âThe House that man builtâ
⢠Mostly mocking, but some are
ambiguousâŚ
7.
8.
9.
10.
11. âThis Houseâ series
⢠Appears to be telling two sides of one story
⢠Series divided by layouts, typeface and depictions of
women
⢠Yet neither are polemical. Adopt a broadly wry,
distanced perspective on contemporary events and
debates
⢠Likely that âproâ images, although perhaps mockingly
idealised, would be read as supportive of female
suffrage
13. The text
⢠Posted evening of 27 April 1909
⢠Sent to crew or workmen attached to
HMS Hindustan, a pre-dreadnought
battleship
⢠HMS Hindustan was in dry dock at
Portsmouth 1909-10 undergoing a
major refit
14. The text
'Gentleman. A meeting will
be held in the Dome, at Bton
on Wednesday next by Mrs
Crissy Pankhurst. We hope
to see a big audience of men
to make things a bit livly.
Please bring a weapon to
defend yourselves with as
the ladies use Dog whips. I
am yours truly the secretary
to the suffragetts [sic]. Doors
open at 7.30'.
15. Crude coding
⢠Message written upside down, possibly to
evade detection from post workers
⢠Use of euphemism: âmake things a bit livlyâ
⢠Choice of image
⢠Ironic repositioning of writer as âsecretary to
the suffragettsâ
19. Irony as textual violence?
⢠Writer seeks to adapt and subvert the
object in order to re-describe and
therefore weaken his opponents
⢠Yet he needs âa big audience of menâŚ
as the ladies use Dog whipsâ
⢠Evidence of fear?
20. The coda
⢠Christabel Pankhurst never appeared at the
Dome. No evidence any such event planned.
⢠Probably confused rumour from performance of
pro-suffrage play performed in Banqueting Room
of Royal Pavilion, âMan and Womanâ, 5 May 1909
⢠Performance organised by more moderate
Brighton and Hove Womenâs Franchise Society
⢠Brighton Herald: âsuffragists as opposed to
suffragettesâ
⢠No reports of any violence at event
21. Final ironies
⢠Writer has attempted to subvert or distort the
âmeaningâ of the event and the postcardâŚ
⢠⌠yet attempts to do this by organising a protest
against an event without âmeaningâ
⢠This postcard is valuable material evidence of
political male violence against womenâŚ
⢠âŚbut also indicates much of this violence was by
men who were oprganised yet ignorant of the
spectrum of pro-suffrage organisations