Author: Anne Ewbank / Source: Atlas Obscura
In 1918, certain British women— those who were aged 30 or older, owned property, and university graduates—won the right to vote and stand for Parliament. It was a victory, of sorts. Yet British suffragettes, some of whom had been imprisoned, force-fed, or fined while forcibly agitating for rights, weren’t satisfied.
They wanted equal voting rights for all, not just the older and wealthy. (Women of color were largely overlooked during the British women’s suffrage movement). So they started campaigning once more. This time, their headquarters was centered at a club with a vegetarian café, which was owned and run by suffragettes.
The Minerva Café, which opened in 1916, was part of a larger facility of meeting rooms and lodging, all under the banner of the Women’s Freedom League. A surprising number of British suffragettes were vegetarians, and had been even before campaigning for the vote, writes historian Leah Leneman. While fighting for the right to vote, many passionately argued against vivisection, wearing fur coats and stuffed-bird hats, and eating meat.
At the time, home cooking was considered to be almost exclusively a feminine task. So some suffragettes thought that cooking the likes of beans and grains, instead of meat, would make it less time-consuming. Others empathized with the subservient roles of animals in human society. One suffragette speaker, quoted by Leneman, argued that feminism and vegetarianism were entwined: so much so, that if a woman was unable to help the movement outside the home, even cooking vegetarian food for her family was a step…
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