In over 40 years spent hunting for and selling objects related to the women’s suffrage campaign, this little box is the only example I have ever found of ‘Votes for Women’ Hooks and Eyes. It is a perfect ‘suffrage object’, hitching to a political slogan a utility that was particularly personal to women. For how else were figure-hugging jackets, skirts or, indeed, corsets to be held together without a generous number of hooks and eyes? And who else would be sewing them on? The majority of suffragettes and suffragists were, of necessity, also needlewomen. So here was an opportunity to back the Cause while sewing fastenings onto their skirt plackets or bodices.

When, sometime in the mid-1990s, I first acquired the box, it was empty. The 36 ‘hooks and eyes’ it had once contained had been put to use c. 90 years previously and the garment to which they had been attached had doubtless long since gone to landfill. But the little cardboard box had survived. Was this by accident or because it had been put aside as a souvenir of a long-ago commitment to the cause of ‘votes for women’? I remember being amazed to find it on a stall at the monthly market that was then held in Alexandra Palace in north London. I duly catalogued it, sold it and then, five years or so ago, bought it back and placed it in a new home, where I am sure it is also much appreciated.

It has proved impossible to establish the name of the manufacturer and, though I would have loved to be able to establish whether ‘Votes for Women’ really had been trademarked to these hooks and eyes, I’m unable to undertake the research necessary, For this would involve ‘needle in the haystack’ searching through records held at the National Archives (I hope you enjoy the choice of metaphor). There are, however, two interesting points to notice about the one-time contents of the box. For the label tell us that the hooks and eyes were ‘sprung’, meaning tension kept the connection closed until released manually – very necessary to prevent a costume malfunction. We are also told that they were rustproof, an important consideration if the garment was to be washed or was caught in a shower while the wearer was demonstrating outside parliament.

Just think of the number of hooks and eyes keeping these figures in place

Surprisingly, no advertisement for ‘Votes for Women’ hooks and eyes appears in any of the suffrage papers. It could be – although there is no proof – that this addition to the suffragette sewing basket was commissioned to supply the WSPU shops or for a fund-raising fair. Moreover, it is to be noted that the hooks and eyes were sold in a box – and not, as was usual in the early years of the 20th century, on cards. In fact, the women stitching hooks and eyes onto cards were the very type of sweated labourers on whose behalf suffrage campaigners protested. Mind you, matchbox makers were also very ill-rewarded and one can only wonder whether that ‘Votes for Women’ label was perhaps not slapped on with some resentment.

The manufacturer registering ‘Votes for Women’ as its trademark was not the only maker of hooks and eyes to discern a market for its goods among the supporters of the suffrage cause. Votes for Women  (eg issue for 23 April 1909, p 26) carried advertisements for ‘Smart’s invisible hooks and eyes ‘ which were the ‘patented  invention and property of two members and supporters of the Women’s Social and Political Union.’ The firm was, indeed, on occasion noted as giving a donation to a WSPU fund-raising campaign. Smart’s’ was making hooks and eyes in the 1890s but I have been unable to discover anything about the firm. Most such items were manufactured around Birmingham, but Smart’s advertisements give no address,

Copyright

 In The British Women’s Suffrage Movement in 100 Objects: a material history – to be published in July – you can discover how all manner of objects were caused to be created in the furtherance of the campaign for ‘Votes for Women’. You can pre-order the book – at an enticing reduced price – here .