The new foyer display at The Women’s Library, FeMAIL: Suffragettes and the Post, explores how suffragettes saw the Post Office as both a means of mass communication and a symbol of the oppressive male Government; as friend and simultaneously foe.

During the campaign to win women the vote, militant and moderate suffragettes alike used and attacked the postal system to increase the momentum of their campaign and to ensure frequent media coverage. And with over 32,500 pillar boxes in place by 1900, the scope for direct action was almost without limits.

FeMAIL: Suffragettes and the Post includes a fascinating selection of postcards, stamps and audio accounts from those who took part in some of the most daring postal dramas as well as the world’s first suffrage stamp, the prison diary of a suffragette charged with smashing post office windows, newspaper cuttings and the world’s earliest known suffrage postcard.

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Stamp from the collection of co-curator of FeMAIL: Suffragettes and the Post, Norman Watson.

Norman Watson, who is a journalist, author and award-winning speaker, says of the exhibition:

"Today’s sophisticated visual technology makes us keenly aware of the power of images to mould public opinion…we only need to think of advertising billboards or television commercials. Turn-of-the-century suffragists were equally sure of that power... Early postcards show that art and photography were rich and important mediums for suffrage sympathisers who believed they had power to shape thought, focus debates and stimulate action."