Lot 637 : Sold for £130 hammer

Estimate £50-£80

An early 20th Century part set of playing cards from the card game Panko or Votes for Women 'The Great Card Game Suffragists v Anti-Suffragists' comprising thirty-eight cards Pank! Pank! Pank!, Gaol! Gaol! Gaol!, Toot! Toot! Toot!, Help! Help! Help!, Votes for Women, Law! Law! Law!, Fourteen Days! and four Turn 'Em Out!, each with a black and white image tinted in purple, green and red by Edward Tennyson Reed of Punch magazine featuring Emmeline Pankhurst and Winston Churchill, each card 9cm x 6cm. (38) Dating to circa 1910, this game was manufactured by Peter Gurney of London. It was sold by the Women's Social and Political Union at its shops as well as through independent merchants to raise funds for the cause, at a cost of two shillings. It appeared in the WSPU Christmas pamphlet of 1909 with the following caption 'Not only is each picture itself an interesting memento, but the game produces intense excitement without the slightest taint of bitterness'. The cards show various scenes of Women's Suffrage to include one perhaps depicting Wallace Dunlop who was arrested and sent to Holloway prison for printing an extract from the bill of rights in the House of Commons - she is shown dressed in an ermine coat with broad arrows on beneath the sign 'Holloway Restaurant' and Faim de Siecle which translates to the hunger century and is likely a play on Fin de Siecle which means the end of the century. It is believed Dunlop was one of the first to refuse food, leading to many of the hunger strikes. Another shows Christabel Pankhurst with her arm raised and holding a Votes for Women scroll.

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