Beschreibung:

SUFFRAGETTES – HOLLOWAY BROOCHSilver 'Portcullis' or 'Holloway' brooch awarded to Lizzie Berkeley of Hebden Bridge, depicting the portcullis of the House of Commons, one [of two] hanging chains and superimposed broad arrow in purple, green and white enamel, with safety chain and pin, stamped 'SILVER' and 'TOYE & CO/ LONDON' on reverse, 25 x 21mm., [1909]; together with a contemporary cardboard box depicting diagonal stripes in the WSPU colours, lined in green velvet, 55 x 55mm.; programme for the 'Mass Meeting of Women' at the Royal Albert Hall on 29th April 1909, 8 pages, outer leaves detached, old tape repairs, fragile, 8vo; with an essay by Lizzie Berkeley on prison conditions, and another entitled "Marie Corelli and Women's Suffrage", an argument against the anti-suffrage movement, written in ink in a Jubilee exercise book, 11 leaves, stained, marked, some leaves detached, paper covers, 4to, [n.d.] (4)Footnotes'WHERE IS THE JUSTICE AND CIVILISATION OF WHICH ENGLAND IS SO PROUD': A Yorkshire suffragette receives her 'Victoria Cross' and speaks of the conditions she experienced in prison.
Known variously as the Portcullis Badge, Holloway Prison Brooch and the Victoria Cross of the Union, the silver brooch was presented by the WSPU to women imprisoned at Holloway Prison for militant suffragette activity. Designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, it includes the portcullis symbol for parliament, the chains of imprisonment and the broad arrow of the prison uniform picked out in the colours of the WSPU; purple (dignity), white (purity) and green (hope). Initially mentioned in Votes for Women on 16 April 1909, the first brooches were presented by Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst, Annie Kenney and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence at the 29th April 'Mass Meeting', the programme for which is included in the lot. The programme lists a Miss Berkeley under the roll call of prisoners, and she may well have been at that meeting to receive her award. It is not known whether the box accompanying the brooch is the original, but it nonetheless remains a rare survival of suffragette memorabilia from the period.
Elizabeth (or 'Lizzie') Berkeley (1883-1969) was a button machinist from Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. Her father George trained as a teacher but by the 1891 census he was listed as unemployed and his son Robert, aged 11, the grandfather of the current owner, was forced to work in an iron foundry in Halifax to support the family. An article in Leeds Mercury of 22 March 1907 under the headline 'The Suffragette Martyrs: Fifty Women go to Prison', notes that she was fined 40s or 14 days imprisonment for taking part in a large demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament – one of the first so-called 'rushes' – on 18 March 1907. Her experience in Holloway prompted her to write a heartfelt diatribe in her notebook against conditions for all prisoners, not just for suffragettes, distinguishing between third and first division prisoners, describing their isolation, loneliness and inactivity, the terrible food and conditions, and asking why things can't be improved; "...do you wonder that people are driven mad, or broken in health, is there any humanity in such treatment, the dress itself is like an outward visible sign of inward wrong...", she writes. She remained unmarried and died in 1969. The brooch has remained in the family since then.