Pank-a-Squith Board Game

This is a very well-preserved and rare example of a political board game produced in limited numbers in England in the early 1900s. The game, Pank-a-Squith, was named after Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), the suffragette leader, and Herbert Asquith (1852-1928), British Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916 and a strong opponent of women’s suffrage. The colours of the militant suffragette movement, green, white and purple, are prominent on the 50 squares of the game which are arranged in a spiral. The aim of the game is to reach the central square which represents universal suffrage. A number of political events are represented, including suffragettes throwing stones through a window of the Home Office, as occurred in 1908, and Emmeline Pankhurst slapping a policeman on the face in 1909 to ensure that she was arrested. On square 16 a notice says that ‘Any player landing on this space must send a penny to Suffragette Funds’. The game was produced in 1909 in Germany for the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Britain as a fund-raising item. The WSPU, formed by Pankhurst and others in 1903 to use direct action to obtain the vote, sold this game and other items in a number of shops that they ran.