By Amara Thornton

Ure Routes, the blog I've set up to chronicle the histories in the Ure Museum archives, has moved to a University of Reading site. This month's post is there. It's about an exciting bit of content in the Ure Museum relating to Annie Ure's experiences as a student at University College Reading during the height of the suffrage campaigns before the First World War.  You can read "A Suffrage Sequence" and watch the short film here. 

By Amara Thornton

Do you know about Tausret?  She was a queen in ancient Egypt. 19th dynasty to be precise.  Until a few months ago I'd never heard of her, but now I know more – thanks to a rather intriguing book: Janet Buttles' The Queens of Egypt.*  
 
Earlier this month I was prepping for Suffrage Standup, an event I took part in at LSE Library, and researching Margaret Murray's participation in a suffrage Costume Pageant and Dinner.  As Margaret Murray probably attended the dinner dressed as Tausret, I was hoping to find out a bit more about this ancient royal.  And so I did, thanks to Janet Buttles. 
 
Buttles was an American writer who was associated with American industrialist and archaeology funder/excavator Theodore Davis.  Her biographical details are online courtesy of the Emma B. Andrews Diary project– a fascinating digital diary and data resource revealing early 20th century Egypt through the eyes of  Emma Andrews, an educated American tourist and collector. Andrews was Buttles' aunt as well as Theodore Davis's collaborator and mistress for many years. 
 
Queens was Buttles's attempt to do something innovative in the field of Egyptology. She pulled together in one volume all the details that were known at that time about ancient Egyptian royal women.  And in doing so she articulated one of the main (and continuing) problems with making historical women more visible – missing or inaccessible historical records.  In her Preface she stated: 

Gaston Maspero, a former head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, wrote an introduction to Queens. He mentions the value of Buttles's personal experience with the archaeology of Egypt in making her sympathetic to her subjects.  
 
The book is organised chronologically, from the 1st to 26th dynasty (omitting the Ptolomaic period, which included the reign of Cleopatra VII). Despite the sketchy details available, Buttles's description of Twosret's life is intriguingly dramatic: 

​Archibald Constable & Co published Queens in 1908, at a period when suffrage campaigns were beginning to turn towards greater militancy.  And it was reviewed in a suffrage periodical, Women's Franchise. The review opens with the observation that Buttles's work was "A valuable addition to the knowledge of the position of women in antiquity".  
 
Now I know about it, I'll be dipping into Buttles's book to discover more ancient historical women in influential roles. You should too!
 
References/Further Reading
Buttles, J. 1908. The Queens of Egypt. London: A. Constable & Co. 

Cana, F. B. 1908.  Where Civilization Began. Women's Franchise [British Newspaper Archive] 13 Aug: 80.

*There are many alternative spellings for Tausret's name. Between 2004 and 2016 the University of Arizona ran an excavation project at Tausret's temple in Thebes.  More information and up-to-date analysis can be found here and here.  

By Amara Thornton
 
I seem to have a very informal research strand developing this year uncovering archaeologists suffrage activities – see my post on Jessie Mothersole at the 1911 Christmas Bazaar, and my short piece for the Imperial War Museum's WomensWork100 project on Agnes Conway's interests in suffrage. The British Newspaper Archive has come up trumps again. This time, it's Margaret Murray.
 
Just weeks before war would be declared, suffrage newspaper The Vote noted that Margaret Murray would be one of a number of women participating in a "Costume Dinner and Pageant" to be held in the Hotel Cecil on 29 June 1914. 
 
The event was co-organised by the Women Writers' Suffrage League and the Actresses' Franchise League.  Now, unless Murray had a stage career that I'm unaware of (unlikely), it seems highly probable that she was affiliated with the Women Writers' Suffrage League. By this point, she had published several archaeological articles and books, including her popular volume of (translated) Ancient Egyptian Legends in the intriguing "Wisdom of the East" series. That April, Ella Hapworth Dixon's article "The Woman's Progress" in the Ladies Supplement to the Illustrated London News had named Murray as "An Antiquary of Note", partly on the strength of her published work.
 
For the dinner, women (and some men) of the day who supported women's suffrage campaigns were asked to don fancy dress to represent famous celebrities from history, stationed at various tables throughout the event space. Each figure was introduced by Cicely Hamilton, founder of the Women Writers' Suffrage League.  
 
These historical celebrities weren't just British, though British historical celebrities far outnumbered those of other nations and regions.  Egypt, "Asia" (including China, Japan and the Middle East), France, Italy, Finland, the United States were all represented. Murray was the person in charge of the Ancient Egypt table. A review of the event published days afterwards in Vote noted that "Queen Ta-usert" (Twosret), who ruled Egypt in the 12th century BC (and whose jewellery had been discovered in 1908) made an appearance. Whether Murray was actually in costume as Ta-usert/Twosret is unfortunately not stated. But I'd like to think so.
 
In reviewing the event the "Special Costume Diner" of Votes for Women described the memorable fancy dress dinner, which attracted hundreds of attendees, as a "sensation" of mingling with "people who mattered in bygone days impersonated by people who matter today." Of which Margaret Murray was one.
 
References/Further Reading
 
Dixon, E. 1914. "The Woman's Progress". Ladies Supplement to the Illustrated London News[British Newspaper Archive] 18 April.
 
Park, S. 1997. The First Professional: The Women Writers' Suffrage League. Modern Language Quarterly 57 (2): 185-200.
 
Sheppard, K. 2012. The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work in Archaeology. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
 
Thornton, A. 2018. Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People. London: UCL Press.
 
The Vote. 1914. "Costume Dinner and Pageant" [British Newspaper Archive] 12 June: 121. 
 
The Vote. 1914. "Women of All the Ages" [British Newspaper Archive] 3 July: 181-2.
 
Votes for Women. 1914. "A Pageant of Famous Men and Women" [British Newspaper Archive] 3 July: 618.
​

By Amara Thornton
 
The British Newspaper Archive (BNA) regularly releases new titles available (for paying subscribers) to search.  I use digitised newspapers regularly in my research, so when in February the BNA announced a raft of new suffragette papers had been added to the collection I was intrigued to see whether these might shed light on the activities of some of the women I've been researching.
 
My curiosity was rewarded recently when I discovered evidence that archaeological-artist (and later author) Jessie Mothersole, about whom I have previously written, participated in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) "Christmas Fair and Fete" in 1911.  I knew Jessie was active in the suffrage movement – in his 1914 memoir her art-tutor Henry Holiday included a suffrage-infused poem she wrote with his illustration on suffrage originally published in Labour Leader, and a copy of her portrait of suffragette Myra Sadd Brown is in the Women's Library at LSE. 
 
However, notices in WSPU newspaper Votes for Women, issues of which are now digitised and searchable on the BNA database, reveal that Jessie Mothersole was one of a number of artists involved in creating artwork for the Fair which took place over six days in early December 1911 at Portman Rooms on Baker Street.  
 
Various branches of the WSPU were responsible for organising tables and activities at the Fair, representing London neighbourhoods and other cities and regions, including Leeds, Birmingham, Hertfordshire, Nottingham and Kent. Profits were to go towards the WSPU. It seems that Jessie created the signage for the Hampstead WSPU branch's stand (selling chintz and ceramics), which was organised by branch Secretary Lilian Martha Hicks of Finchley Road.  Jessie was thanked by name for her efforts alongside other fellow artists in a letter from Sylvia Pankhurst to the Editor of Votes for Women published in the paper on the penultimate day of the Fair.  
 
The Women's Library has a series of postcards showing scenes of the 1911 Fair; they are accessible in the Jill Craigie Collection (Ref 7JCC/O/01) at the LSE Library. Thanks very much to Debbie Challis for bringing these to my attention! Debbie has also written about documents relating to archaeologist Hilda Urlin Petrie's suffrage activities; you can read Part 1 and Part 2 of her Hilda history on the Institute of Archaeology History of Archaeology Network website.  In related news Fern Riddell's biography of suffragette Kitty Marion, Death in Ten Minutes, has been published this month by Hodder & Stoughton, and the LSE Library's exhibition "At Last! Votes for Women" will be open from next week (23 April) until the end of August. 
 
Suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford has just published Art and Suffrage, a compendium of biographies of artists working for the suffrage movement.  Jessie Mothersole isn't included in it, but I'm sure some of the other artists who took part in the Fair are.  Her presence at the WSPU Christmas Fair suggests that she supported a more militant approach to suffrage than other women working in archaeology (like Agnes Conway, for example).  
 
Just how far that support went, however, remains a mystery. For now. 
 
References/Further Reading
 
Crawford, E. 2018. Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists. London: Francis Boutle. 
 
Crawford, E. 1999.  The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide. London: Routledge. 
 
Christmas Fair and Fete. Votes for Women. 18 August 1911: 749.
 
Holiday, H. 1914. Reminiscences of My Life. London: William Heinemann.
 
Pankhurst, E. S. Letter to the Editor. Votes for Women. 8 Dec 1911: 163.

By Amara Thornton

The Imperial War Museum (IWM) turned 100 last year, and with the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War coming later this year, and the 100th anniversary of the first tranche of women getting the right to vote in the UK, 2018 has had a celebratory start.

As part of the general celebratory mood, the IWM has instigated a project, WomensWork100, which simultaneously references the suffrage anniversary, WW1, and the Museum's own history all in one.  Alongside highlighting the role of women during the war, WomensWork100 also covers the role of the Women's Work Committee in forming the Museum's collection of objects representing women at war from 1917 onward.  One of the members of that Committee was Agnes Conway; at the IWM Centenary Partnership's request I wrote a short article on Agnes's life, with a focus on her interest in suffrage and her work during the war.  You can read "Agnes Conway: Her Life and Legacy" on the Imperial War Museum's Centenary Project website.