Content note: Comic caricature of a suffragette being arrested; mocking verse about her imprisonment. This object is shown as it was published. Why
This is 'the house' that man built (anti-suffrage postcard, about 1908)
A comic verse postcard shows a policeman seizing a bespectacled woman in a feathered hat beneath a flag reading HOLLOWAY, with 'Votes for Women' slips fallen at her feet. The tell is the caricature: the suffragette is drawn as a flustered, unattractive figure and labelled 'poor Suffragette', and her movement reduced to 'racket and riot' to be quieted by 'plank beds and very low diet'.
- Date
- 1908
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Anti-suffrage postcard publisher (not named on the card)
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Medium
- Postcard
- Issuer type
- Mixed
- Regime
- Asquith Government
- Leader
- Herbert Henry Asquith
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Techniques
- Name-calling
- Regime
- Asquith government
- Leader
- H. H. Asquith
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (UK anonymous or unknown author, published about 1908; Commons PD-UK-unknown, PD-1923)
People's History Museum, Manchester, via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
HOLLOWAY THIS IS "THE HOUSE" THAT MAN BUILT, AND this is the home of the poor Suffragette, And there's room for a great many more in it yet; When they racket and riot And will not keep quiet, We place them on plank beds and very low diet; To stop all their din We just run them in, Into THIS HOUSE that man built. [three slips on the ground] VOTES FOR WOMEN
