Pank-a-Squith

Pank-a-Squith is a political board game created around 1909 for the Women's Social and Political Union, the British suffragette organization led by Emmeline Pankhurst, and was manufactured by a German toy company on the WSPU's behalf. First advertised that year in the movement's own newspaper, Votes for Women, it plays like a race to the center in the tradition of snakes and ladders, with two to six players moving suffragette shaped tokens dressed in the union's green, white and purple sash colors from the outer ring of the spiral board, representing home, inward toward a depiction of the Houses of Parliament at the center. The squares along the spiral carry illustrations of real events and tactics from the suffrage campaign, including a square that requires the player landing on it to pay a token donation into the Suffragette Funds, turning a piece of the gameplay itself into a small act of fundraising. The WSPU sold the set through its own shops, so besides raising money directly through both purchase and in game donations, the board doubled as a piece of campaign material that walked buyers, including children, through the movement's history and goals on the way toward the symbolic seat of power the WSPU was trying to win.