A Lancashire Lass in Clogs & Shawl Being "Escorted" through Palace Yard

Dublin Core

Title

A Lancashire Lass in Clogs & Shawl Being "Escorted" through Palace Yard

Description

Chorus:
Take me back to Palace Yard, Palace Yard, Palace Yard,
That’s where I long to be, with the friends so dear to me;
The tall policeman, smiling, bland, to gently take me by the hand,
For Women’s Rights” anything we will dare; Palace Yard, take me there!

From Museum of London: The parliamentary defeat of a Private Members Bill that would have given the vote to some women, was the catalyst for this demonstration. Forty Lancashire mill girls and Annie Kenney joined hundreds of suffragettes trying to get into the Lobby of the House of Commons. Many were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and reisting the police. Sixty-five were sentenced to jail terms of up to four weeks.

Creator

G.W. Edward

Date

1907

Contributor

From suffragepostcards.wordpress.com: The suffragette in this postcard has been identified as Dora Thewlis, aged 16 at the time of the postcard, otherwise known as ‘Baby Suffragette’. She was actually from Yorkshire not Lancashire. This postcard is used as a cover of Jill Liddington’s book ‘Rebel Girls: How votes for women changed Edwardian lives’ and she has information about Thewlis. Several newspapers marked the release of her book with articles about Thewlis: The Independent (8th May 2006) carries an article entitled ‘Dora Thewlis: The lost suffragette’ and the Daily Mirror (10th June 2006) has an article entitled ‘The baby suffragette’.

McQuiston (Suffragettes to She Devils, page 26) has a copy of the postcard and writes that it was probably taken at a demonstration outside the House of Commons in 1907. The protest was at the failure of a bill introduced by W.H. Dickinson in March. She notes that it is unusual as it features a working woman. McDonald (Vindication! A postcard history of the women’s movement, page 37) feels that the card ‘marks a significant change in postcards of the movement by showing the involvement of working women and the authority of the police’. McDonald adds that it was also an early example of ‘news’ being made into a postcard.

From Museum of London: March 20, 1907

Files

lancashire-lass-front.jpg

Collection

Citation

G.W. Edward, “A Lancashire Lass in Clogs & Shawl Being "Escorted" through Palace Yard,” The Suffrage Postcard Project, accessed March 18, 2024, https://thesuffragepostcardproject.omeka.net/items/show/254.