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Petersfield faces major women's demo on Sunday

Wed 28th Jul 2010, 21:08

On the morning of Sunday 1 August, women will chain themselves to the offices of a business in Petersfield High Street, as local people enjoy the monthly Farmers’ Market in The Square. The women will dress as members of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Suffragette Movement.

This reconstruction of dramatic protests carried out by women in 1913, fighting for Votes for Women, will bring the events to life. Less well-known is the Suffragettes’ protest against the depiction of women in art galleries and museums of the time, a detail of their story that has been brought to light by an intriguing series of letters revealed in transcripts to the Petersfield Museum.

A “policeman” dressed in Edwardian uniform, will compare his sheet of “mug shots” of potential trouble-makers with the women. There may well be arrests! Those who are dragged off by the police will be taken to the Magistrate’s Court (the present day Petersfield Museum, site of the original Courthouse). Here, local people can attend a talk on the political situation of the time and the struggle that members of the Suffrage Movement fought for electoral reform.

Organized by the Petersfield Museum, transcripts of a fascinating correspondence in 1913 have inspired the event. These have been uncovered and shown to the Museum, revealing a little-known element of the Suffragette story. This is the story of members of the more militant wing of the Movement, driven by frustration at the injustice they endured and by their representation in art and culture, to deface and destroy artworks in galleries and museum exhibits in a number of attacks.

These intriguing letters describe an atmosphere of heightened alert operated by museum curators of the time (all male) who viewed these women as “dangerous ladies”. So they went to extreme lengths to protect their collections, recruiting police and sometimes closing their museums for fear of attack.

This series of dramatic demonstrations included an incident in March 1914, when a suffragette called Mary Richardson attacked a painting in the National Gallery with a meat cleaver, smashing the glass and slashing the painting beneath. She became known the newspapers as “Slasher Mary”. This all added to the feeling of nervousness among the museum community at the time.

Looking at the sheet of “mug shots” circulated by curators at the time, it is hard to see how anyone could have feared these women. But fear was a useful tool in building prejudice against the Suffragette Movement and its cause.

Victoria Guest, Education and Outreach Officer for the Petersfield Museum, explains the timing of the demonstration. “Political reform is so relevant to people living in this country right now. With the first hung parliament and government coalition for years, prompting a call for electoral reform.

“Some members of the Suffragette Movement paid with their lives to raise awareness for their cause, and what better time to remember their fight? It is also a good opportunity to tell the story of the little known Suffragette attacks on museums and galleries described in a rare collection of letters of the era that we have just been given access to.

“We are lucky enough to house several rare items of Suffragette memorabilia in our social h istory archive and visitors are often interested to know that a Suffragette March passed through Petersfield on its way from Portsmouth to London. There is also an intriguing link between one Suffragette and the Editor of the local paper of the time, The Squeaker (now the Petersfield Post), about which we are trying to find out more.”

All the Suffragette material will be on temporary display at the Museum this weekend. The original letters themselves will not be on show, but their transcripts will be available to view.

The Petersfield Museum, Victoria Guest, Education & Outreach Officer, 01730 260756
education@petersfieldmuseum.co.uk