{"product_id":"suffragette-cat-tea-towel","title":"Suffragette Cat Tea Towel","description":"The image on this tea towel was intended by its original publishers in the early 20th century to rubbish the cause of women’s suffrage. It shows a cat wearing the Suffragette colours of purple, white and green. It was thought that portraying a campaigner as a cat would show the idea of women voting to be equally absurd: the cat was seen as passive, feminine and ineffectual.\n\nThere may also have been an oblique reference to the UK’s so-called Cat-and-Mouse Act of 1913, which permitted women’s suffrage hunger strikers to be released from prison in order to recover before being re-arrested and continue serving their sentence (likening the legislation to the way a cat plays with a mouse).\n\nThe image on this tea towel is based on a postcard from c.1908. Postcards were used both by suffrage campaigners and their detractors in support of their cause.","brand":"Radical Tea Towel North America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45967716024506,"sku":"T0669","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0435\/6417\/1424\/files\/f9dc9e3a428554cd81e27d0dade4bab9a741e20ac1d6fcca19b8ce9bc1ec136e.jpg?v=1780937865","url":"https:\/\/portsmouthhistoryshop.org\/products\/suffragette-cat-tea-towel","provider":"PortsmouthHistoryShop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}