Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from

Aaron Manky, listener discretion advised.

In February 2018, Britain's Postal Service released a collection of stamps

commemorating the one hundred year anniversary of women's suffrage in the

United Kingdom. If the puffed sleeves and cinched wastes in the black and white

photos on the stamps weren't an obvious indicator as to when the photos were

taken, the sea of sashes and protest signs makes the context pretty clear. But

because the size of the stamps is only a little bigger than an inch in either

direction, the captions below each photo are helpful at distinguishing

specifically what and whom we're looking at. One stamp reads, The Great Pilgrimage

of Suffragists and it features a mass of women standing shoulder to shoulder

preparing to march in London for their cause. Another is titled, Women's Freedom

League Postal Parade and it shows a procession of women holding signs. The women

are being led in their parade by a young girl most likely no older than 12. I

should say the photos are all inspiring in a sort of non-specific pleasant way.

They're mostly nameless women, respectfully holding signs and gathering to assert

their rights and that makes sense when thinking about how women's suffrage is

most often remembered. The whole peaceful progress narrative just doesn't play as

well next to pictures of police brutality and the prison force feedings that

those women were forced to endure. Today, the women's right to vote is so

widely accepted as an indisputable right that it's almost difficult to imagine

the lengths to which the government once fought against women's suffrage.

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