You’ve no doubt heard of the Pankhursts. And maybe the one who was hit by King George V’s horse. But considering there were thousands of women who put their lives and liberty on the line for the right to vote, it’s dismaying how few suffragettes most people could name in a pub quiz.
A new exhibition at Manchester’s Portico library aims to introduce some of the lesser-known suffragettes – working-class and/or young women who carried out or helped organise vital acts of rebellion but have never been immortalised in a statue.
Aimed particularly at young people, the exhibition, called Spirited, introduces Lilian Lenton, an arsonist known as the Leicester Pimpernel because she was so good at escaping from police. A big believer in the suffragettes’ “deeds not words” credo, Lenton was just 21 when she was arrested in February 1913 for setting fire to the Tea House at Kew Gardens and was force-fed in prison.
Publicity of her ordeal shamed the government into rushing through its “Cat and Mouse Act” in April 1913, under which hunger-striking suffragette “mice” could be released on temporary licence to recover their health, when the security forces could re-arrest them.
Lenton was in court again in June, after breaking into a house near Doncaster and setting it on fire. The Manchester Guardian reporter attending her trial was clearly quite taken with the long-haired, big-mouthed escape artist.
An article on display described how she decided to address the jury at Leeds Assizes, interrupting the court clerk as he read out the charges against her. She was quickly admonished by the judge, who said: “Miss Lenton, don’t you think you have made enough protest for the time being?” She thought not. “I have made nothing like sufficient protest,” she replied.
The exhibition also highlights what brilliant marketers the suffragettes were, selling merchandise to raise money for their cause. On display is a strainer for Justice Tea, sold in Selfridges at Christmas in 2009, alongside suffragette chocolate, teapots, cups and saucers. Themed games proved particularly popular. “Elusive Christabel”, on show in Manchester, celebrated Emmeline’s daughter’s flight to Paris, with players able to make a paper Christabel vanish.
Another suffragette celebrated at the Portico is Elsie Duval, who joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) aged just 15. She went on the run in 1913 with her boyfriend Hugh Franklin, who once tried to attack Winston Churchill and was one of the few men to be imprisoned for his part in the suffrage movement.
Duval died in 1919 aged 27 – still too young to vote. The Representation of the People Act had been passed the previous year but only gave women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification the right to cast their ballot.
Catherine Riley, the curator of the exhibition, said it showed you did not have to be rich or famous to change the world. “There are so many reasons for young people to feel disenfranchised at the moment. We want to show that mass actions can have an effect,” she said.
Spirited is at Manchester’s Portico library until Friday 2 November
