SUFFRAGETTE ALBUM â013 PANKHURSTS & THE WSPU Autograph album of Helen K. Watts, 1908-1962

SUFFRAGETTE ALBUM – PANKHURSTS & THE WSPU Autograph album bearing ownership inscription 'Helen K. Watts/ Lenton Vicarage/ Nottingham. April 6: 1908', containing some 200 signatures, inscriptions and poems, some women signing several times, some with their aliases, others noting their time in Holloway, including: Emmeline Pankhurst ('Human emancipation must precede social regeneration'), Constance Lytton (with a quote from Thoreau 'written by Jane Warton on the walls of her cell in Walton Goal Liverpool, January 1910'), Marion Wallace-Dunlop ('Go on! Go on! Go on!'), Charlotte ('Charlie') Marsh ('Met again with very great pleasure, my old comrade Helen Watts'), Rose Lamartine Yates ('Feb 24 – March 24. 09 Holloway'), Frederick Hankinson ('unitarian chaplain at Holloway Prison during your term of imprisonment in the great Fight for Liberty & Freedom of Women March 7/1948'), etc.; Several groups of signatures gathered at meetings and reunions: 'H.M. Prison Leicester/ Sept. 4-8: 1909 Hunger Strike' (six, including Nelly Crocker ('Graduate Degree H.S. (hunger strike)'), Grace Chappelow); 'Welcome Supper/ Morley's Café June 7: 1912' (13, including Jessica E. Laing ('2 months hard labour'), Dorothy Pethick ('14 days Oct. 9 1909'); 'Deputation Dinner/Fifth Anniversary/ February 24: 1914/ Quadrant Restaurant Regent Street' (nine, including Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, Una Dugdale Duval, Daisy D. Solomon); 'Deputation Reunion/ Ninth Anniversary/ February 26: 1918/ Minerva Café, Holborn' (nine, including Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, Una Dugdale Duval, Rose Lamartine Yates, Daisy D. Solomon); 'Ex-Prisoners' Victory Dinner/ Craigs Court 13th October 1928' (31, including Annie Kenney Taylor, Constance L. Collier, Edith How-Martyn, Flora Drummond, Olive Walton, E. Sylvia Pankhurst, Edith Ruth Mansell Moullin, Una Dugdale Duval, Mary R. Richardson); 'Quadrant/ 13 Oct: 1936.' (six, including Frederick Hankinson); 'Saturday 14 July 1962' (ten, including Grace Roe, Lilian Lenton, Stella Newsome); with folded note addressed to Miss Hicks tipped in ('I am going to give you an awful shock. Don't faint! Grip onto the table! I did a month in Holloway Gaol with Daisy Solomon in Febr. 1909 – when Mrs S.S. also took part in the deputation but did not get arrested much to her grief'), with comment in Amy Hicks' hand ('Bear up – I did four months'); two Equal Political Rights Demonstration pamphlets (Mass Meeting and Procession of Women's Organisations, Hyde Park, 3 July) tipped in, various newspaper clippings, 70 leaves, dust-staining and marks, red calf with 'Album' in gilt on upper cover, torn and worn, 150 x 182mm., 1908 to 1962; with small group of loose ephemera including a card bearing the Angel of Freedom device (inscribed 'Fight on! Fight better!'), correspondence from Charlotte Marsh (1958), notice of dinner for the Suffragette Fellowship, 13 October 1936, photographic portrait postcards, a length of WSPU ribbon, etc. Footnotes: 'GO ON! GO ON! GO ON!': ALBUM ILLUSTRATING A LIFETIME OF COMRADESHIP IN THE WSPU. This collection was amassed over nearly 60 years, from 1908 to 1962, and charts a lifetime's support of the militant suffrage movement and the bonds of friendship forged in adversity. The entries read as a roll call of the most significant members of the WSPU. Not only are its founders Emmeline Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and Christabel Pankhurst represented, but there are also many other important figures who shaped the movement such as Constance Lytton, Annie Kenney, Flora Drummond, Marion Wallace-Dunlop, Frederick Hankinson and Mary Richardson. The largest entry is for the 'Ex-Prisoners' Victory Dinner/ Craigs Court 13th October 1928', an event reminiscent of the huge 'Welcome Breakfasts' put on for newly released prisoners in the heyday of the struggle, and given in the year of the Representation of the People Act which finally gave women over the age of 21 electoral equality with men. Helen Kirkpatrick Watts (b.1881) of Nottingham joined the WSPU after hearing Christabel Pankhurst speak at a local meeting in December 1907. She was first arrested on 24 February 1909 and charged with wilfully obstructing the police after taking part in the Deputation from Caxton Hall to the House of Commons. On her release on 24 March 1909 she met with suffragettes at Morley's Café, an anniversary reprised in 1912. She was arrested again in September 1909 in Leicester after disrupting a meeting held by Winston Churchill – commemorated here by the signatures of fellow inmates who joined her in hunger strike. Despite being rather deaf, she continued to speak at meetings and kept up with her 'comrades' with regular reunions right up until she emigrated to Vancouver in 1965 (see Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928, 1999, p.702). This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: • • Zero rated for VAT, no VAT will be added to the Hammer Price or the Buyer's Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing