The Postcard
A postcard that was published by R&K L, The card was posted in Streatham, London SW using a ½d. stamp on Tuesday the 9th. June 1914, fifty-six days before Great Britain declared war on Germany.
The card was sent to:
Miss G. Nicholls,
Scarboro House,
All Saints Road,
Wolverhampton,
Staffs.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Gertie,
Lovely weather here
today.
Heard from W. E. H.
this morning.
L. xxx"
Terrorism in Birmingham
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 9th. June 1914, militant suffragette Bertha Ryland slashed a painting in Birmingham Art Gallery in order to publicise the cause for women's suffrage.
Bertha Wilmot Ryland was born in Edgbaston on the 12th. October 1882, the youngest of five children.
Her pedigree as a campaigner for women's suffrage was long: her mother Mrs Alice Ryland of 19 Hermitage Road in Edgbaston had been a member of the executive committee of the Birmingham Women's Suffrage Society (BWSS) in the mid-1870's.
-- Bertha Ryland's Militancy
After taking part in the window-smashing campaign on Bond Street in London in March 1912 she was sentenced at the London Sessions to six months’ imprisonment, serving four months in Winson Green Prison where she was strip-searched and went on hunger strike and was force-fed 14 times, for which she received the Hunger Strike Medal from the WSPU.
In June 1914 the 31 year-old Ryland slashed the painting of John Bensley Thornhill known as 'Master Thornhill' by George Romney in Birmingham Art Gallery three times with a meat cleaver that she had concealed in her jacket, causing £50 worth of damage.
During the attack she had on her a letter containing her name and address which justified her action, stating:
'I attack this work of art deliberately as a protest
against the government's criminal injustice in
denying women the vote, and also against the
government's brutal injustice in imprisoning,
forcibly feeding, and drugging suffragist militants,
while allowing Ulster militants to go free.'
This she left behind after she left the Gallery.
Following the attack, the Gallery closed for six weeks, and on its reopening security was increased so that it not open after 5 p.m. and was closed all day on Sundays, at the same time enforcing a new rule of 'No muffs, wrist-bags or sticks'.
After her arrest Ryland appeared before magistrates for her committal hearing during which she refused to take part in the proceedings and shouted 'No surrender!' as she was taken out of court.
She again went on hunger strike while held on remand. Accepting bail, Ryland was too ill to stand trial at the July Assizes after a doctor at Queen's Hospital in Birmingham stated that her attending the hearing would cause her mental condition to deteriorate.
-- Force-Feeding
Ryland still had not received a sentence when the Great War broke out. She suffered permanent kidney damage as a result of her force-feeding in prison.
The July 1914 edition of The Suffragette contained a statement by Ryland about her force-feeding during which she was held down by four prison wardresses and a thick rubber tube forced down her nostril into her throat:
"I resisted, and was seized round the waist by
wardresses, and once tied around the waist in
the operating chair.
This mauling of the unprotected kidney together
with the retching and choking, strained and twisted
the kidney and caused chronic inflammation... the
acute agony, the inevitable retching and choking,
and the feeling of suffocation, accompanied by the
utter helplessness, all combined to make this the
most unutterably hideous experience.
I lay in bed practically all the time... feeling too ill
and exhausted to do anything. In addition to this
feeling of exhaustion there came long periods of
mental depression... Besides an unaccountable
feeling of misery and depression, my memory
seemed to be going, and it was a great effort to
think clearly or fix my attention on anything... the
mental anguish caused by forcible feeding is, of
course, quite indescribable."
-- Bertha Ryland's Legacy
Ryland received a 1953 Coronation Medal; this with her Hunger Strike Medal from the WSPU were sold by Christie's in 1999 for £6,325. Bertha Ryland never married, and died in Birmingham in April 1977.
In November 2018, in commemoration of her attack a century before, a blue plaque was unveiled in her honour by Birmingham Civic Society in the Round Room at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
The Launch of a Zeppelin
Also on that day, the SS Zeppelin was launched by Bremer Vulkan at Bremen-Vegesack, Germany.
Initially designed to be a passenger cruise ship, the SS Zeppelin was commissioned as a troop ship in 1915 during the Great War.
She was surrendered as war reparations to the UK Government, and resumed service as a cruise ship under the United Kingdom in 1920.
The Launch of HMS Gorgon
Also on the 9th. June 1914, Royal Navy ship HMS Gorgon was launched by Armstrong Whitworth at Elswick, Tyne and Wear.
She was built as a coastal defense ship for the Royal Norwegian Navy, but was re-purchased and re-outfitted by the Royal Navy during the final month of the Great War.
A Dangerous Manoeuvre
Also on that day, French Navy Lieutenant Jean de Laborde used a ramp constructed over the foredeck tender Foudre, in order to attempt France's second airplane takeoff from a ship.
The takeoff would have been the first by a French naval aviator, however he crashed.
A New Baseball Record
Also on that day, Pittsburgh Pirate Honus Wagner became the first baseball player in the 20th. century to achieve 3000 career hits.
Dietrich Peltz
The 9th. June 1914 also marked the birth in Gera, Germany of the German air force officer Dietrich Peltz.
Peltz became commander of the 9th., 2nd., and 1st. Air Corps of the Luftwaffe, and the youngest general officer of the Wehrmacht during World War II.
Peltz, who was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, died in 2001.