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Portway, Wantage
Berks
23rd November, 1929
My dear Editor,
…
“The Flapper Vote”. Do women want it? The answer is firmly no! Allowing young women to vote is childish, illegal, and against King and Country.
If “Flappers” want to serve England and find happiness let them win the respect of men by building happy homes; learning domestic work, rearing children, and doing laundry.
Get rid of the “Flapper Voter”; and unemployment pay; and high wages for servants. Women, working at men’s jobs, are doing enormous harm to England. Let the law speak; and demand rights for men’s manliness….
Portway, Wantage
Berks
23rd November, 1929
My dear Editor,
…
“The Flapper Vote”. Do they want it? Why not get the answer? The fact that many “Flappers”, have hardly entered “years of discretion”; the answer is firmly no! and a change of Government influenced by “Flappers”, is childish, illegal, and against King and Country.
If “Flappers” would serve England royally and find happiness: let them win the respect of men-folk, by building happy homes; learning domestic work, rearing children, and by laundry work.
Away, with the “Flapper Voter”; and the dole; and servants’ high wages. Let them work for hard-worked mother’s: many of whom are too poor, to pay £1. weekly, to keep them in fine clothes. Women, working at men’s jobs, are doing incalculable harm to England. Let the law speak; and demand rights for men’s manliness.
…
A copy of a letter from Frances Helen Pumfrey to the editor of the Daily Mail in 1928. The letter makes it clear that this was one of at least two letters that Helen Pumfrey sent to the Daily Mail at this time.
Further to Background to Source 2 there were groups who were very concerned about the increasing possibility of the women getting equal political rights to men. For instance, the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, had been running a campaign against young women getting the vote in 1927-28. At this time the Daily Mail was owned by Lord Rothermere who led the newspaper in a number of controversial campaigns such as being sympathetic to the rise of Fascism in Italy under Benito Mussolini and, later, Nazism in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Rothermere and his newspaper felt strongly that if young, working-class women were given the vote, they would be more likely to vote for the Labour Party and potentially lead to new socialist policies.
At this time in the United States of America there was a period of economic growth nicknamed the ‘Roaring Twenties’. A key symbol of this new age was that of a woman in her 20s, looking to throw off the social constraints of her parents. These women would drink and smoke in public, dress in modern clothes that might be considered revealing at that time, and would go on dates without a chaperone to escort them. In Britain and America, these women became known as ‘flappers’ which was either a term of female empowerment, or an insult, depending on who was using the word. In Britain, people who did not want women to have equal political status referred to any potential widening of the enfranchisement as the ‘Flapper Vote’ – as it would allow young women to participate.
Remember we are hoping that this source can be useful to us in investigating whether the attitudes towards women changed after they secured the vote in 1918. Sources usually help historians in two ways:
Which of the inferences below can be made from this source?
| On a scale of 1-5 how far do you agree that this source supports this inference? | Which extract(s) from the source support your argument? | |
| Pumfrey thought it was unpatriotic to give young women the vote. | ||
| It was argued that young women could not be trusted with the vote. | ||
| Pumfrey believes men and women should have fundamentally different roles. | ||
| Pumfrey does not think that women having the vote will have much impact on Britain. | ||
| The source is particularly revealing about attitudes towards women in the 1920s. | ||
| The source shows attitudes to women changed after they secured the vote in 1918. |
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Pumphrey forwarded this copy of her letter to Winston Churchill and mentioned that she had also written “letters of political importance” to David Lloyd George. With sources like this one, it is important to consider the limitations of what we know. We are unsure who Pumfrey was, what social and political groups she felt part of, and whether her views were widespread amongst women at this time. In the letter she also expresses her views on a number of other political issues.
It is important to consider the context that has made Pumfrey write this letter: a national newspaper had started an organised campaign to stir up anti-women sentiments to prevent the franchise being widened. This suggests that many people in Britain had not changed their attitudes towards women after 1918; however it also reveals that women’s enfranchisement was becoming a serious political issue in the late 1920s, despite Churchill’s claim in Source 2, a point further revealed by the fact that no major party put it in their manifesto that they didn’t want to widen the franchise.
