Scenes from Suffragette Demonstration at Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne
1910-07-16
Silent
1m

Supporters of the Women's Social and Political Union campaign in the North East.

By the end of the Edwardian era, male support for women's suffrage was growing, as this film shows. This substantial demonstration by the Women's Social and Political Union was filmed in October 1909 by the Warwick Trading Company. The cameramen have chosen an excellent vantage point, which takes in the scale of the event as the marchers snake into the background, but also gives us a very good view of those passing before the camera.

Among the women and the marching band are significant numbers of male campaigners, while the banners of support detail the numbers - in their thousands - of men who signed petitions for the suffrage bill from Newcastle, Gateshead, Jarrow, Darlington, Tyneside, Jesmond and across the north east.

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.