Medals & motivation

Title

Medals & motivation

Description

Sustaining protest campaigns for months & years is so hard.

The UK suffragettes created tangible artifacts to honor their members’ sacrifices and motivate them to keep going.

🎖️thread.

Women who had served time in prison were awarded a medal “For Valour” by the WSPU, the radical suffragettes.

The medal below belonged to Florence Haig. Its three bars commemorate each of her prison terms, plus a medallion for hunger striking.

Medals were awarded to each former prisoner in inscribed boxes, presented “By the Women’s Social & Political Union in recognition of a gallant action, whereby through endurance to the last extremity of hunger and hardship, a great principle of political justice was vindicated.”

In 1910 the WSPU made a quilt to commemorate the women who had gone to prison, refused food as political prisoners, and been force fed. Each suffragette's signature is embroidered on a panel - find Lucy Burns top left; Alice Paul in the 3rd column. #Suffrage100 #NoJusticeNoPeace 

Creator

Daily Suffragist

Date

13/06/2020

Files

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Citation

Daily Suffragist, “Medals & motivation,” Daily Suffragist, accessed April 23, 2024, https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/412.

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