3-028-593 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ladies' Gallery, House of Commons, [London], 1870. '...ladies are admitted...on the utmost sufferance...above the Speaker's chair...there has been scooped a small suite of apartments, which have been fitted up on the architectural principle which applies to dens...[and] to the cages in which Oriental women are...generally confined. A gilt latticed screen is erected in front of the...[seats], through which it is possible to hear, but through which, at one time, it was not easy to see, owing to the thick network of ornamentation of which the lattice was composed...the ladies were in the habit of forcing bits of the brasswork, such as fleurs-de-lys, roses, thistles, and shamrock, out of their place, which fell in a gentle shower into the gallery beneath....There is great competition for places in the Ladies' Gallery, and members are obliged to enter their names in a book kept by the Sergeant-at-Arms, sometimes weeks before admission can be obtained...[The mandate that silence be observed] is curiously disregarded; and sometimes the chatter...is such as to overpower the voices of orators...there have been overt demonstrations in the Ladies' Gallery...[with] loud applause, feminine cheering, clapping of hands, and rapping of fans'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.