Banner, suffrage banner

The banner of the The Women Writers' Suffrage League was designed by Mary Lowndes and embroidered by Christiana Herringham, both founding members of the Artists' Suffrage League. It was first carried in a procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies on 13 June 1908.The WWSL had recently been formed in 1908 with the mission 'to obtain the vote for women on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men. Its methods are those proper to writers - the use of the pen.' Founding members included Cicely Hamilton, Beatrice Harraden and Dorien Leigh. Funding for the banner was donated by Cicely Hamilton and Evelyn Sharp and they carried it in the procession alongside Sarah Grand, Beatrice Harraden and Elizabeth Robins.

Lowndes original design for the Writers' banner was headed 'Scriveners' but, following an objection by the clerk of the Scriveners Company the word 'Writers' was used instead. The banner includes the Latin phrase 'litera scripta manet', a shortened version of the parable 'vox audita perit litera scripta manet' that translates as 'A heard voice perishes, but the written letter remains.'

The NUWSS demonstration of 13 June 1908 was intended to convince the new Liberal Prime Minister Asquith that there was mass support in the country for female suffrage. The event was attended by thousands of women from all areas of the UK who arrived in London on specially chartered trains. The 'glorious spectacle' enhanced by the gowns of doctors and graduates and 'nearly a thousand beautiful banners and bannerettes, each different, each wrought in gorgeous colour and rich materials' attracted much public interest and publicity.

Cicely Hamilton wrote of the banner that it was ‘distinctive in black and white, impressive in velvet, and swelling, somewhat too proudly for comfort, in a gusty breeze’.