A complete set of Panko Suffragists & Anti-Suffragists playing cards, complete with original case and rule sheet

[WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE]; T. E. REED [Illus.]

A complete set of Panko Suffragists & Anti-Suffragists playing cards, complete with original case and rule sheet 

London: Peter Gurney Ltd., [c.1909]

A complete set of 48 Panko, or ‘Votes for Women’ playing cards, each measuring 8 x 5cm; chromolithographically printed on one side in a traditional playing card design with decorative pattern in purple; and to the reverse in black, red, purple and green, signed with the printed monogram ‘ETR’; divided into eight suits, four representing the Suffragists (‘Votes for Women’; ‘Pank! Pank! Pank!’; ‘Toot! Toot! Toot! and ‘Law! Law! Law’) and four the Anti-Suffragists (‘Goal! Goal! Goal!; ‘Help! Help! Help!’; ‘Fourteen Days’ and Turn ‘em Out!’; contained, importantly, in the original box, and together with the original rule sheet; the box with one of the cards duplicated and affixed to the lower cover; the cards with a little toning to edges, the odd finger mark and tiny brown spot; otherwise excellent, with no tears or noticeable creasing; the rule sheet folded twice as issued, creased and split to one fold, with some tiny nicks and a couple of brown spots to verso; the box, as is common, split rubbed and chipped, with some blue ink stains to the upper cover. 

A complete set of the most popular suffragette game of its time. Named after the leader of the British suffrage movement, Emmeline Pankhurst, the premise is similar to Rummy, where teams of between 4 and 8 are divided into two, one representing the Suffragists, and the other the Anti-Suffragists. Each team must then try and collect complete sets of their suit in order to win the game. Another variant issue has been noted, with black numbers to the versos and a blue instead of purple design, though with no priority established. 

The illustrator Edward Tennyson Reed was a cartoonist who began working for Punch magazine in 1889, remaining a regular contributor up until his death in 1933. In 1893 he became their official political caricaturist, and this style is evident in the present cards, which show suffragists dressed in purple and green challenging lines of policemen with umbrellas, giving speeches, and carrying bagpipes, contrasted with the anti-suffragists, who each appear with exaggerated features including court room scenes and in various forms of battle dress. In one, a policeman arrests an elegantly-dressed woman shouting for help; another shows a woman on hunger strike beneath a sign which reads ‘Holloway Restaurant’ (perhaps Wallace Dunlop, jailed for printing an extract from the Bill of Rights in the House of Commons, who was the first to implement the hunger strike as a highly successful tactic for the suffragettes); a third shows a member of parliament walking with an anthropomorphosised version of the budget papers; while the last shows the tariff reform depicted as a lamb. 

At the time widely marketed and distributed by the WSPU, games such as these proved highly successful in introducing the suffragette cause into domestic settings where other forms of more aggressive propaganda would not have been tolerated. As ephemeral items, sets are now relatively scarce in commerce, particularly complete and with both the box and rule sheet.