''Pank-a-Squith'' was a political board game about the suffragette movement created around 1909. It was created for the British

Women's Social and Political Union The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom from 1903 to 1918. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership an ...

as a way to generate funds and help spread

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

ideologies.

History

''Pank-a-Squith'' was created for the British

(WSPU) and produced by a German company around 1909. It was named after two important figures in the British suffrage movement: the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and British Prime Minister and opponent of women's suffrage,

H. H. Asquith Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom f ...

. Its name can be read as "Pankhurst vs Asquith," since both individuals were opponents in their views on women's suffrage. Starting in 1909, the game was sold in the WSPU shops in Britain and was used as a way to generate funds for the suffragette movement. ''Pank-a-Squith'' was also first advertised in 1909 in the newspaper, ''Votes for Women''. According to the WSPU in their own advertisement, the game was sold as a way to "popularise the cause and the colours". During the women's suffrage movement in Great Britain, games and toys were often sold to help spread supporters' ideologies as well as to financially support the movement through their sales. Similar political games were sold throughout the course of the WSPU in their shops, including the card games ''Suffragette'' (ca. 1907), ''Panko'' (ca. 1909), and ''Holloway'' (ca. 1908), and board games like '' Suffragetto'' (ca. 1907–8) and ''Suffragettes In and Out of Prison'' (n.d.).

Description

The game is played with 2-6 players and includes a game board, instructions, and six game tokens shaped as suffragettes. Each suffragette game piece holds a rolled petition and wears a sash of suffragette colors, including green, white, and purple. The game board contains a spiral of squares with various illustrations. Played similarly to snakes and ladders, players roll dice to move their pieces along the board's tiles. The goal is to move from the outermost square, which represents home, to the end point at the center, which depicts the

Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...

. The illustrations on the game board depict various suffragette events and difficulties. On the sixth square, there is a depiction of women throwing rocks at the British Home Office windows. On the twenty-fifth square, Emmeline Pankhurst is shown being arrested, as she was after striking a police officer on June 29, 1909. The forty-third square shows a woman refusing to eat, which happened during

hunger strikes A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...

. The sixteenth square also states, "Any player landing on this space must send a penny to Suffragette Funds."

References

{{Reflist 20th-century board games Emmeline Pankhurst Asquith family Women's Social and Political Union British board games German board games Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

History

Description

See also

References