In Britain's December 1918 general election, women voted in a national election for the first time. A contemporary Manchester Guardian report said women voted in crowds and, in some London constituencies, greatly outnumbered men, forming queues at busy polling stations. An archive photograph records women waiting to cast their first votes on 18 December.
The franchise still did not include every woman. Even so, an order of waiting now appeared at a doorway from which women had previously been excluded.
The queue was not merely a metaphor for gaining rights. It was the physical entrance through which a newly granted right had to be exercised, one voter at a time.