Symbolic constructions - orchids, Victorian hat pins and glass cloches.

 

In the UK, the campaign for a woman’s right to vote began in the mid-19th century. It was a peaceful movement consisting of petitions, demonstrations and lobbying of MPs. But after too long, some campaigners pursued more militant methods, leading to the label of ‘Suffragettes’ in 1906.

 

In 1909 two suffragettes broke into greenhouses at Kew Gardens. They removed protective bell jars and destroyed precious orchids leaving a note saying 'Votes For Women'

 

Kew’s director, Sir David Prain, referred to this as 'wanton destruction' (which is the inspiration for the series’ title). Interestingly the word ‘wanton’ when describing a woman’s behaviour has a direct sexual overtone.

 

‘the housebreakers assuming that these plants must be of particular value took off the bell-jars and placed them on the floor... without breaking them, and confined their attention to the plants under the jars which they wantonly destroyed.’

(RBGK Metropolitan Police, Misc. Papers Volume 1845-1920, f. 51)

 

Orchidomania was a Victorian obsession with orchids.  When the suffragettes broke into the orchid house at Kew they chose this still rare and beautiful specimen for the object of their protest.  There is much conjecture as to why.

 

Technological developments, such as James Hartley’s sheet glass process of 1847 and the introduction of prefabricated cast iron enabled the wealthy to have greenhouses. ‘Exotic’ fruits and tender plants, such as orchids, brought back from the overseas expeditions of Victorian plant hunters, could be grown in the artificially warm environments provided under glass.

 

In literature, writers like Woolf and Wilde connect orchids and women by alluding to exoticism and the stifling nature of bell jars.  Victorian women were like precious flowers kept under glass to look beautiful but not act. 

 

Founded in Manchester in1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, the aim of the WSPU was to secure the right to vote for women in the United Kingdom by any means. With the motto ‘Deeds not Words’, it pioneered a campaign of civil disobedience and vandalism. Women wanted agency.

 

At this time in the UK women’s hats had become so big that they needed very long pins to hold them in place. When the suffragettes were being given negative press for increasingly militant protest, they were accused of employing hatpins as dangerous weapons.  It is actually more likely that hatpins had been used in self- defence.

 

In Jenny Uglow’s view, ‘for radical women, gardening could represent everything domineering in the British establishment…. Women, far from delicate, would not be kept under glass any more’….

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