Women's March through London Topical Budget 208-1

London
1915-08-18
Silent

Suffragettes advance from Bow to Baker Street, jostling with the London traffic on their way to the Portman Rooms.

Forcing the London Omnibus to hang back, the East London Federation of Suffragettes advance from Bow to the Portman Rooms on Baker Street, on Registration Sunday, 15 August 1915. Accompanied by the United Suffragists, Women Writers' Suffrage League and the Forward Cymric Suffrage Union among other groups, they march to protest against conscription, to ask for control of food supplies, equal pay and votes for women. Topical Budget recorded these high-angle shots and released them to cinemas three days later.

Following the marching band, demonstrators and a healthy number of male supporters, banners fly aloft with slogans such as: 'United Suffragists - Votes for women'; 'Women must have man's pay for man's work'; 'British Socialists Party, North Camberwell Branch, workers of the world unite'. Another banner reads 'Follow to the Portman Room' and 'We demand votes for women to protect our homes and wages'.

Make More Noise: Suffragettes on Film

"You have to make more noise than anybody else!," cried Suffragette pioneer Emmeline Pankhurst. But how to make more noise in silent film?

Pankhurst's strategy was simple but clever: at every public meeting or gathering, Suffragettes should stand up and shout "votes for women!". But how to make more noise in silent film? With moving images becoming increasingly important, the suffragettes needed to be not just heard, but seen. Newsreels were noticeably more neutral in their reporting than newspapers, so their cameramen were invited to big demonstrations, where banners and placards were carefully placed for the cameras.

Suffragettes (often played by men in drag) were common objects of ridicule in film comedies. But some characterisations were more ambiguous, and comedy could even - sometimes - give its female protagonists the freedom to make one hell of a noise.