Toys and Games

While it might seem obvious that suffragists would be involved in the manufacture of educational suffrage toys for their children, most of the games that they sold were directed towards adults instead. There were a variety of dolls available, but most were of limited production and even many of those were hand made.  What were popular, though, were spinners or whirligigs, with a die-cut tin bird or fish conveying the “Votes for Women” theme.

Card games were popular.  The anti-forces, of course, sold “Old Maid” decks with the suffragist represented as an “Old Maid,” reinforcing their argument that only women who could not find husbands were interested in the vote. English activists produced such games as “Panko” and“The Game of the Suffragette” to be played in parlors that served both to educate and to entertain. English suffragists also sold board games in which the suffragist had to negotiate her way through obstacles to deliver a bill to Parliament.  The Women’s Political Union in America distributed a suffrage jigsaw puzzle.