Displaying items from UCL Special Collections, this exhibition examines the actions and reactions attending the women’s suffrage movement from the 1860s up to the Representation of the People Act 1918. Satirical commentaries including Laurence Housman’s Anti-Suffrage Alphabet are set alongside campaign literature and petitions for and against legislative change.
The movement calling for women’s right to vote in the United Kingdom was drawn out over several decades and generated intense differences of opinion, not only between those for and against electoral equality, but also within pro- and anti-suffrage campaigns. This exhibition draws on items held in UCL Special Collections – satirical commentaries, campaign literature, personal notes and petitions – to examine the actions and reactions surrounding the case for universal suffrage, from the 1860s up to the fi rst legislative step towards equality for women: the Representation of the People Act, 1918.