Suffrage Playing Cards

Decks of suffrage playing cards were especially popular with supporters, and several varieties in different colors were produced, all with suffrage related back designs. The first deck depicted here was issued by the Women’s Political Union, and the Joker and, at times, the Ace featured the Clarion figure, which the WPU had imported from England. The next two decks in purple and yellow versions and which depict Justice holding her scales, were circulated primarily in New York by the Woman Suffrage Party, although there is evidence of their national distribution by NAWSA as well.

Suffrage playing cards, which sold for 25 cents a deck, not only provided income for the movement, but they gave buyers a chance to promote suffrage in social situations. But conservative attitudes towards cards sometimes entered in as one suffragist, when asked by a potential buyer if they could be used for poker, replied “Oh no, there must be no immoral influences.” In England, only one deck is known, that shown here issued by the WSPU depicting the prison arrow that was prominent in many of their designs,