Women's Social and Political Union Summer Festival, 1913

Postcard depicting the 'W.S.P.U. Summer Festival, 1913'. This event was organised by the Women's Social and Political Union between 3 and 13 June 1913 at the Empress Rooms in Kensington. It was described in the June 6, 1913 edition of the WSPU newspaper ‘The Suffragette’ : ‘On all sides the visitor is made to feel the old world atmosphere of some rose bedecked garden…Useful goods to suit all tastes will be found on the stalls and the entertainments provided by the Actresses’ Franchise League are a fitting accompaniment to so gay a scene’. Centre stage of the festival was a plaster statue of Joan of Arc, the patron saint of Suffragettes. On the eve of the Epsom Derby Emily Wilding Davison visited the Festival with two friends and lay a wreath at the statue.

This is one in a series of images of the Festival taken by the photographic company F Kehrhahn. A regular photographer of WSPU events it is possible the firm was commissioned by WSPU headquarters to visually record its activities and reproduce the images as postcards for commercial sale benefiting both the photographer and the campaign 'war chest'.