I recently watched the Great Performances broadcast (available for free online here ) of the Broadway musical Suffs. The musical centers on the career of suffragist Alice Paul, mostly focusing on the period 1913-1920, the formation of her militant National Women’s Party and their the fight to get an amendment passed to give women the right to vote.
{Spoiler: they were succressful, as the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote}.
Chris and I looked into finding out more about “Edith Derwent” to see if she was an early women artisan photographer (EWAP) of the type typically profiled here on Photographs, Pistols & Parasols. We ran into numerous challenges tracking down information about this photographer, though. However, Chris triumphed in the end.
Let’s take look at what he found:
Sounds promising, eh? Mrs. Luther Derwent took a photo of Alice Paul, Mrs. Luther Derwent could be “Edith Derwent”. Here’s the photo of Alice Paul from “Everbody’s Magaine” in 1919; let’s see if it looks like the same photo as in the book::
OK, that looks like the same photo that’s in the book, albeit cropped and presented in an oval “frame”. So it looks like Mrs. Luther Derwent should definitely be Edith Derwent, ©ED…