Dedicated followers of fashion might not appreciate that the history of the magazines they avidly consume can be traced back to the Elizabethan age.  Fashion mags can tell us a lot more besides what’s trending this season. They are significant culturally complex documents and an agent for interdisciplinary analysis.

Magazines dedicated exclusively to fashion grew out of the more traditional ‘women’s magazines’.  As early as the 1600s, The Treasure of Hidden Secrets was addressed to ‘gentlewomen, honest matrons and virtuous virgins’.  The publication offered readers treatises about urine and how to cure consumption with ‘snails and worms boiled in beer’ to avoid the plague!

 

John Partridge, The treasurie of hidden secrets View online 

Gazettes, ladies’ diaries, almanacs and mini pocket pamphlets with colour plates fed female readers’ interest from the reign of Queen Anne onwards.  In 1732 bookseller Edward Cave first used the term ‘magazine’.  Arguably the ‘fashion magazine’ started in France under Louis XIV.  The Mercure Galant featured illustrated plates recording what was being worn by the aristocracy – a useful source of information for dressmakers outside the court.

The  Female Spectator  - The first magazine written by and published for women by Eliza Haywood. It ran for two years from 1744 to 1746. P.P.5251.ga. 

These early publications didn’t have snappy one word names.  The Ladies magazine or Entertaining companion for the fair sex, for their use and entertainment regularly featured fashion pages and sometimes illustrations by William Blake.  The Ladies Monthly Magazine or Cabinet of Fashion offered tips on gowns, hairdressing and fur muffs!

During the Georgian era retail therapy accelerated and lavishly illustrated magazines targeted specifically at women began to be mass published.  Fashion plates were bigger with detailed descriptions.  Advertising revenue could fund higher quality reproduction and new styles of graphic illustrations.

The emergence of the department store provided a social space for women consumers.  Fashion spreads started to feature women involved in leisure pursuits.  Women were brought out of the private sphere of the home as wife or daughter; magazines and fashion provided escapism.  Yet editorials were still paternalistic often criticizing emerging modes of femininity.  A woman’s duty was still to dress for a man, and her role was to reflect the social standing of the family through her clothing, which was of course paid for by the man. 

Gallery of Fashion is one of the earliest UK fashion magazines, famous during the Regency period. It was published in monthly issues from 1794 to 1803.  C.106.k.16. View online

The Ladies World was edited by Oscar Wilde and in 1886 he changed the name to Women’s World.  He believed that the content should be educational and include more fiction.  Cheaper publications included little fashion, with poor woodcut graphics.  In 1891 a fashion periodical called Forget Me Not aimed at working class women hit the shelves.

Advances in technology, printing, and paper-making in the 20th century resulted in an explosion of magazine production.  Fashion plates moved from woodcuts, engraving and lithographs to photography.  Periods of significant social change brought a flood of magazines.  Women’s magazines reflect radical social change - the birth of teenager was a new market to be tapped.

 Cover of American Vogue, September 1957. Proquest's  database 'The Vogue Archive' is available in all British Library reading rooms.

Many magazines are now closing as we see the rise of social media including blogging and vlogging.  But some fashion magazines seem sure survivors.  In 1916 an American fashion publication was imported into Britain for the first time.  Vogue is now the most frequently ordered magazine at the British Library!

Rachel Brett
Humanities Reference Specialist

 

Sometimes when cataloguing India Office Records we encounter unfamiliar words. Rather than an untold life, today we present an ‘untold word’, which might be known to those of you who have read Indian history.

 

What does Toshakhana mean?

Of Persian or Sanskrit origins, Toshakhana means ‘Treasure-House’, the store where items received as gifts from tribal chiefs, local rulers and princes were deposited. In fact, East India Company and India Office officials were not allowed to accept presents. Such items, often weapons or jewels, were to be valued, deposited in the Company’s toshakhana, and later used for exchange gifts with other rulers.

Several countries still have Toshakhanas. There were Toshakhanas in British India, and there was one in Bahrain.

 IOR/R/15/2/1611, f 89.

An example of file regarding the Bahrain Toshakhana is IOR/R/15/2/1611 ‘Government Property: Bahrain Toshakhana Articles and Returns’, which contains lists of valuables kept in the Bahrain Toshakhana, as well as annual returns detailing the sale proceeds of Toshakhana and Durbar pre-sents for the years 1926-1945.

Items like rifles, watches, cigarette cases, hunting knives, binoculars and telescopes were normally kept for presentation purposes in the Bushire Toshakhana and reused as gifts for local rulers.

Another common practice was the sale of firearms and ammunition from the Toshakhana for training or salute purposes, and the use of the Toshakhana for the temporary storage of firearms be-longing to the Bahrain Agency staff.

Valentina Mirabella
Archive Specialist
British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

@miravale
@BLQatar

 

The East India Company knew that it was dangerous to employ overseas servants who were xenophobic, lazy, or dishonest.  Indeed the Company was so concerned that it created a ‘Black Book’ to record errors and misdemeanours. 

  IOR/H/29

The book which survives in the India Office Records covers the years 1624-1698.  It copies in complaints made in letters received from Company servants in Asia.  Most reports of wrongdoing relate to private trade carried on against express orders, but they also cover drunkenness, negligence, desertion, disobeying orders, embezzlement, and debauchery.

Company servants had to be careful that in obeying rules set by the directors in London they did not risk alienating the local society hosting them.  Merchants were generally keen to avoid giving offence and tried to discover local protocol before trying to gain access to powerful men. The reports tell us where things went wrong.

Here are a few examples of reported misconduct which affected the Company’s relations with local people in Asia:
• In January 1626/27 Robert Hackwell, master of the Charles,  put two black men to death at Jambi and was discharged from East India Company service for ever.
• Nathaniel Mountney and Thomas Joyce were involved in a fight in 1632: ‘theire heads full fraught with wyne fell out with the Moors & in the fray a moore was slaine’.  Joyce was put in irons for ten days for the offence and only released after a large sum was paid.
• Thomas Nelson, gunner of the Swan, was charged 500 rupees in 1635 for killing a man at Macassar by a bullet carelessly shot into the town.
• In 1642 Humphrey Weston left all the Company’s property at Japara and ran away in fear of his life because he had been consorting with a Javan married woman.
• Richard Hudson’s ‘ill behaviour’ at Masulipatam aroused the local people’s hatred, especially the ‘great ones’.  Hudson had dealt in their grains and taken government duties upon himself.

  IOR/H/29 

Here is the entry in the ‘Black Book’ taken from a letter from Surat in 1686 concerning the conduct of Roger Davis, Captain of the ship East India Merchant. Davis had arrived in Bombay at the time of Richard Keigwin’s rebellion against the Company and had established friendly relations with the rebels. He then fell ill and died, thus removing the problem: ‘Had that naughty man Davis lived, we had for certain protested against him, and should have used the East India Merchant worse than we did’.  Death often did solve disciplinary difficulties for the Company.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Library IOR/H/29 East India Company book of servants’ errors and misdemeanours.

 

Related articles

Punch Drunk

Mary Dorothea Shore was the first wife of East India Company supercargo Thomas Shore whom we met in a recent post. She has been overlooked in narratives of the Shore family and so I should like to bring her out of the shadows.

Mary Dorothea was the daughter of Robert Hawthorn and his wife Dorothy, baptised in London at St Sepulchre Holborn in August 1709. Robert was an apothecary who had served as a surgeon’s mate on HMS Ranelagh.  He died when Mary Dorothea was a baby – his widow was granted probate of his estate in October 1710.

 
St Sepulchre 1737 - from George Walter Thornbury, Old and New London, London  (1887)  

Dorothy Hawthorn then married an officer in the East India Company’s maritime service named John Shepheard (d.1734). I have found baptisms for two children born to John and Dorothy Shepheard.  Son John was baptised in 1716 at St Alphage London Wall and appears to have died in childhood. Daughter Dorothy was baptised on 13 June 1725 and the register of  St Mary Whitechapel  records that her mother was dead – the burial took place on 17 June.  I wonder who cared for half-sisters Mary Dorothea and Dorothy whilst John Shepheard sailed on long voyages to Asia?

The next event for the family which I have traced is the marriage in 1732 of Mary Dorothea to John Edgell, an officer at Custom House.  John Shepheard gave his step-daughter a marriage portion of £1,000. The Edgells had six children baptised at St Mary Whitechapel: Mary, Priscilla, William, Amelia, and two sons called John who died in infancy. But in 1740 Mary Dorothea and John agreed to separate because of ‘some unhappy differences’. 

On 11 July 1741 John Edgell was admitted to Bethlem Hospital which cared for mental ill health.  He died there on 7 August 1741. His will provided for his children William, Mary, Priscilla and Amelia, but left only one shilling to his wife together with the income from her marriage jointure.  John died owing considerable debts and Mary Dorothea entered into Chancery proceedings to settle her husband’s estate.

The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam] at Moorfields, London Wellcome Images

However provision was made for Mary Dorothea by John Shore, East India Company warehouse-keeper and father to supercargo Thomas Shore. It seems that the Shore and Shepheard families had become friends through their Company connection.  John Shore died in October 1741 and his will gave Mary Dorothea £40 a year and possession of his house in Alie Street, Goodman’s Fields, with all the contents, until his ‘beloved’ son Thomas returned to England.

Thomas Shore returned from China in the late summer of 1743.  He was granted probate of his father’s will on 15 August and married Mary Dorothea on 29 August.

In 1745 Mary Dorothea and her half-sister Dorothy Shepheard were living together in Wanstead, Essex, whilst Thomas set off on another voyage to China.  They gave evidence at the Chelmsford trial of Jonathan Byerly who was convicted of breaking into the Shore house at night and stealing a quantity of silver items.  Byerly was sentenced to be hanged.

Mary Dorothea must have died within the next five years, because on 6 September 1750 Thomas Shore married Dorothy Shepheard. Was Mary Dorothea excluded from the Shore family story to avoid drawing attention to the blood relationship between Thomas’s first and second wives?

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Library IOR/L/MAR/B Ship journals for the voyages of John Shepheard and Thomas Shore, and IOR/B East India Company Court of Directors Minutes for the careers of John Shepheard and John and Thomas Shore.
Will of John Shore 1741 - The National Archives  PROB  11/713
Legal papers for the Edgell family - The National Archives C 11/2085/7
Case of Jonathan Byerley - The National Archives  ASSI 94/726
 

Related articles

The personal possessions of Thomas and Dorothy Shore - Untold lives blog

How would a seventeenth-century woman know if she’s pregnant? Why, by the following signs of course: “pains in the head, vertigo, and dimness of the eyes…the eyes themselves swell, and become of a dull or dark colour”.

Aristotle’s Masterpiece was the most popular manual about sex, pregnancy and childbirth from its first appearance in 1684 through hundreds of editions up to the late nineteenth century. The manual offers advice on everything from “the use and actions of the genitals” to “monstrous births, and the reasons thereof”. This is a book for the common people that would’ve been cheaply printed, sold ‘under the table’ and hidden under the mattress at home. With its advice for both men and women, it would’ve been furtively rifled through as often as we use Google (rightly or wrongly) to decipher our medical problems nowadays.

Aristotle’s Compleat Master Piece. The twenty-seventh edition. [London]: printed and sold by the booksellers, 1759 [Shelfmark not yet available]. 

In case you hadn’t already guessed, Aristotle’s Masterpiece is neither by Aristotle or, indeed, a masterpiece. Nicolas Culpeper had already written his Directory for Midwives in 1651 and other writers and booksellers sought to emulate its resounding success. Aristotle was a long-established pseudonym used when printing works about reproduction. The text itself is a peculiar mash-up of early seventeenth-century medical works and popular old wives’ tales about sex and reproduction passed down through generations.

For instance, is it a boy or a girl? Well, “male children lie always on the [right] side of the womb” and girls on the left. But if you wanted to be certain, cast a drop of milk into a basin of water. If the milk drop sinks to the bottom intact, it’s a girl. If it spreads and disperses on the surface of the water, it’s a boy. With sage advice like this, it’s hardly surprising that copies of The Masterpiece were used until they literally wore out. This means that comparatively few survive today, with the British Library being lucky to hold about thirty different early editions.

To us, Aristotle’s Masterpiece is a delightfully eccentric insight into seventeenth-century sexual and reproductive lore, sometimes recognisable as the precursor to modern science and sometimes decidedly not.

Aristotle’s Compleat Master Piece. The twenty-seventh edition. [London]: printed and sold by the booksellers, 1759 [Shelfmark not yet available].

This manual devotes a lot of time to describing monsters, for example. These “monstrous births” are variously attributed to “maternal imagination, witchcraft, human-animal copulation or a disorder of the womb”. The crude curious woodcuts, instrumental to the manual’s appeal, feature a child with its eyes where its mouth should’ve been, a naked woman covered in hair and conjoined twins amongst others.

Aristotle’s Compleat Master Piece. The twenty-seventh edition. [London]: printed and sold by the booksellers, 1759 [Shelfmark not yet available].

Elsewhere there are largely sensible instructions for midwives. The basic anatomical descriptions and the large, fold out diagram of the position of a baby in the womb also occupy more familiar territory for modern readers.

Aristotle’s Compleat Master Piece. The twenty-seventh edition. [London]: printed and sold by the booksellers, 1759 [Shelfmark not yet available].

But home remedies that feature dog’s grease or even dragon’s blood soon confuse matters again.  As does the insistence that bleeding a woman, a somewhat primitive practice, is advised if she’s having difficulty during childbirth and that, during pregnancy, a woman must ensure that her home is not, for some inexplicable reason, “infected with frogs”.  Ribbet.

Maddy Smith
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

 

A “day-booke” kept by a Puritan minister, John Syms, has primarily been used as an historical source for studying the events of the English Civil War, especially in and around the Parliamentary stronghold of Plymouth.  The journal is also of significant importance to book historians as Syms listed the books he owned and read over the period.  A further list reveals the chaplain’s role as an early ‘librarian at sea’; Syms served as a naval chaplain aboard a Parliamentary man-of-war.

 

"I came aboard the Providence: Aug 3 1644”, Syms listed a small collection of books he took with him. Add MS 35297 f1v 

Naval chaplains were not ubiquitous in the Early Stuart period and prior to this time were usually only found on larger ships.  Some captains preferred to be autonomous and free of the (moral) constraints represented by a chaplain.  Why take along a (paid) chaplain when a captain or other suitably appointed person could perform religious services at sea?  In the first 60 years of voyages undertaken by the East India Company from 1601, just 40 chaplains were appointed.

Whether on long voyages across oceans or on ships operating along home coasts, the liturgical role of the chaplain expanded from leading religious services to providing pastoral care: tending to the sick, sending-off the dead, and, much as chaplains did on land, lending books.

Life at sea involves long periods of potential inactivity and frustrating idleness: time which, crucially, could be filled by a chance to read a book to oneself or participate in oral readings amongst a group of comrades.

This chaplain’s books taken aboard the Providence are, as may be expected, chiefly religious with a strong Puritan bias.  But there are also some works which show some signs of having been chosen for a particular readership: men at sea.  Puritans were quite conscious about how books can be used and it is arguable that Syms consciously selected books which would prove popular – and which would also lend some power and influence – all very expedient for someone whose constant purpose was to proselytise.

It’s hard to discern all the titles from Syms’s abbreviated ‘short-title’ list, there’s too little detail to establish particular editions but here are some of the books with editions given being those closest to 1644.

We can make out a Book of Psalmes; a Concordance and a Bible, but besides these functional, liturgical books, here are some of the more idiosyncratic books. …

 
Syms took John Downham’s Christian Warfare, a best-seller (running to four editions).  It projects a plain message from anyone owning or lending copies. 4409.p.4 

 

 
The 'Heidelberg catechism' by Jeremias Bastingius - perhaps Syms had a copy of the 1614 edition? 3505.d.52  

 'The Scottish history' may be John Knox’s work on the Reformation in Scotland - two editions were printed in 1644. This edition: 203.d.2. 

 

 

Syms took copies of William Camden’s Remaines and Lightfoot’s Erubhin; or miscellanies – two quite ‘fun’ books (certainly by Puritan standards).  598.d.15 and 1020.e.12.(1)

 
Along with an English’d edition of Heinrich Bunting’s The travayles of the patriarchs and apostles there are works chosen as books which might appeal to literate men at sea. 1481.b.50 

 

An example of a functional book taken to sea in the 17th century is, ‘A Physick book, Johannes Anglicus’ which was, ‘lent to Mr prat the surgion’. This book is Praxis medica rosa anglica by John of Gaddesden.  Syms’s copy was likely to have been printed in Augsburg in 1595.  542.a.8-9.

 

The ‘Physick book', written in the 14th century, contains Arab renditions of the classic writers in medicine; it tells how to treat smallpox by wrapping patients in red cloths; has recipes for obtaining fresh water from sea water by distillatio, and advice on how to deal with the, ‘Evil Dead’ – DE MALO MORTVO – still in use in the 1640s.  542.a.8-9

Syms’s list of books is suggestive and raises many questions: how did he choose which books to take?  Were they purposefully selected, or just what was to hand, what may have been in his trunk or on sale by local booksellers?   Further questions about the role of these books arise from Syms’s involvement in an acrimonious dispute with the captain of the Providence, John Ellison, which resulted in a dozen of the ship’s men being condemned to Marshalsea Prison by the Commissioners of the Navy for having, “much abused the Office of the Navy” and Captain Ellison.

Christian Algar
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

Further reading :
John Syms Daybook, British Library Add MS 35297
Miller, Amos. C. John Syms, Puritan Naval Chaplain in Mariner’s Mirror, May 1974
Miller, Amos. S. The Puritan Minister John Syms (IV Parts) in Devon Notes and Queries
Green, Ian. Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Smith, Waldo E.L. The Navy and its chaplains in the age of sail. Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1961.

Syms’s list of books and the unrest he played a pivotal role in aboard the Providence has been examined in more detail in an unpublished paper given by Christian Algar at a conference on  Maritime Literary Cultures, in Heidelberg in October 2016.

 

When Jane Austen died in 1817, aged 41, her portable writing desk was inherited by her sister Cassandra. It was later passed down through her eldest brother’s family. In 1999, Joan Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen’s great-great-great-niece, very generously entrusted it to the care of the British Library. Among the items that had been stored for generations in the desk drawer were three pairs of spectacles. According to family tradition, they all belonged to Jane Austen.

Spectacles believed to have belonged to Jane Austen (now British Library Add MS 86841/2-4): wire-framed pair (on left), ‘tortoiseshell pair A’ (centre), ‘tortoiseshell pair B’ (on right, with string wound around arm).

The British Library has for the first time had the spectacles tested. Our Conservation department was involved from the start, to ensure that no harm would come to them. The company Birmingham Optical kindly supplied us with a lensmeter to measure their strength, and their specialist staff undertook the tests.

 Louis Cabena (left) and Deep Singh (right) from Birmingham Optical, with lensmeter and spectacles in the British Library Conservation Centre. 

The tests revealed that the three pairs of spectacles are all convex or ‘plus’ lenses, so would have been used by someone longsighted. In other words their owner needed glasses for close-up tasks, such as reading. Interestingly, ‘tortoiseshell pair B’ is much stronger than the others.

Test results

Wire-framed pair:       R. + 1.75 DS  L. +1.75 DS (PD 27.0 53.0 26.0)

Tortoiseshell pair A:   R. + 3.25 DS  L. +3.25 DS (PD 26.0 56.0 30.0)

Tortoiseshell pair B:   R. +5.00/-0.25 x 84 L. +4.75/-0.25 x 49 (PD 28.5 55.0 26.5)

We showed these results to the London-based optometrist Professor Simon Barnard. He believes there are a number of possible reasons for the variation in strength. Jane Austen may always have been longsighted, and initially used the wire-framed pair for reading and distance viewing. She later required a slightly stronger pair (tortoiseshell pair A) for reading, and used the strongest pair (tortoiseshell pair B) for extremely close work, such as fine embroidery, which would have been held closer to the face than a book.

Austen is known to have had problems with her eyes. She complained in several letters about her ‘weak’ eyes. Could it be that she gradually needed stronger and stronger glasses for reading because of a more serious underlying health problem? Professor Barnard believes this is a possibility. He points out that certain systemic health problems can cause changes in the vision of both longsighted and shortsighted people. Diabetes is one such condition, because it can induce cataracts. A gradually developing cataract would mean that an individual would need a stronger and stronger prescription, over time, in order to undertake close-up tasks. However, diabetes was fatal at that time, so someone might not have lived long enough to require several different prescriptions in succession. 

If Austen did develop cataracts, a more likely cause, according to Professor Barnard, is accidental poisoning from a heavy metal such as arsenic. Arsenic poisoning is now known to cause cataracts. Despite its toxicity, arsenic was commonly found in medicines in 19^th-century England, as well as in some water supplies. In this situation, Austen would have switched from using the wire-framed pair to tortoiseshell pair A, then pair B, as her cataracts got progressively worse.

Jane Austen’s early death has in the past been attributed to Addison’s disease (an endocrine disorder), cancer and tuberculosis. In 2011, the crime writer Lindsay Ashford suggested that Austen died of arsenic poisoning. She came to this conclusion after reading Austen’s description of the unusual facial pigmentation she suffered at the end of her life – something commonly found with arsenic poisoning. Ashford’s novel The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen strays from theories of accidental poisoning into rather more fantastical murder. The variations in the strength of the British Library’s three pairs of spectacles may indeed give further credence to the theory that Austen suffered from arsenic poisoning, albeit accidental.

We should, however, inject a note of caution at this point: although prescription lenses were in use in Austen’s day, we don’t know whether these glasses were prescribed for her by a physician, or whether she bought them ‘off-the-shelf’. We can’t be completely sure that she wore them at all. However, we are keen to publish these test results in the hope that other eye specialists will share their ideas and opinions with us. 

We know this subject is already of interest to literary scholars. Janine Barchas and Elizabeth Picherit of the University of Texas at Austin have taken a keen interest in the spectacles in the British Library, and have also been investigating Austen’s references to spectacles in her novels. Their theories have now been published in the journal Modern Philology. We look forward to further discussions and debate on this topic.  The spectacles themselves have just gone on display in the British Library’s free Treasures Gallery for all to see.

Dr Sandra Tuppen

Lead Curator, Modern Archives & Manuscripts 1601-1850

The British Library

Email: [email protected]

I recently came across something in the British Library’s collections that stopped me in my tracks – Votes for Women, the newspaper of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). As soon as I saw the green, white and violet emblem of the WSPU emblazoned on the cover, I was overpowered by the feeling that I was in the presence of something that was instrumental in giving me the freedom and rights that I enjoy today.

Interpretations of the significance of the colours of the emblem vary. They may have been designed to convey a powerful message – Give Women Votes; it is also thought that the purple symbolised dignity, white purity and green hope.

Browsing through the editions for 1911, I was struck by the relentless and inventive daily campaigning it so vividly chronicles, and the hard work of the people producing the newspaper itself. In an article in the edition for July 14 1911, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence writes about the time that he and his wife Emmeline first met Mrs Pankhurst in March 1906 when she convinced them that activism was the way to secure women’s suffrage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pethick-Lawrences’ marriage in 1901 was a love match between two committed social reformers. Not only did they devote much time and energy to leadership of the WSPU until 1912, alongside Christabel Pankhurst, but they also suffered imprisonment for their cause. The Pethick-Lawrences were inspired by that first meeting with Mrs Pankhurst to support and promote the cause by publishing a newspaper, Votes for Women. They eventually disagreed with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst about the more militant tactics they later employed and were ousted from the WSPU, but continued to campaign for women’s right to vote.

The first edition of Votes for Women was launched in the autumn of 1907, by which time there was sufficient campaigning activity to fill a monthly publication. It achieved a circulation of 2,000 copies when it was first published.

Cover of the first edition of Votes for Women

By July 1911, when Frederick Pethick-Lawrence was writing about the history of Votes for Women, demand and activities were such that it was published weekly, with a circulation of 30,000. Despite being rather grainy, the images in Votes for Women are a testament to the commitment and continuous graft of the people who produced the newspaper and volunteered to sell and distribute it.

The Publishing Office

Press cart, ready to start from the Woman’s Press, Charing Cross Road, London

A champion Votes for Women Seller, Miss Kelly

A sure sign of its success was the number and variety of advertisements it attracted by 1911, helping to fund the production of the newspaper.

The Advertisement Manager's Office

One of the many advertisements appearing in Votes for Women in 1911

Over the coming months I will post some more blogs about Votes for Women, giving further insights into the tactics used to muster support for the cause.

Penny Brook
Head of India Office Records

 

Images all taken from Votes for Women, 1911

Further reading
Votes for Women
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography