These pins, awarded to Louise Parker Mayo (left) and Josephine Collins (right) of Framingham, are two of 81 original jail door pins designed by Alice Paul — founder of the National Woman’s Party — and presented to all the American women who were imprisoned in the fight for women’s suffrage. Paul modeled the design on the British “Holloway broach,” which she was awarded after she was jailed in Holloway Prison alongside British suffragists.
The first pins were awarded to each “prisoner of freedom” in December 1917 at a meeting held to honor suffragists jailed after arrests in Washington, D.C. the previous July. Mayo was awarded her pin for her imprisonment at the Occoquan Workhouse after picketing outside the White House on July 14, 1917. Collins was awarded her pin for her imprisonment in the Charles Street Jail after picketing President Wilson at the Massachusetts State House on February 24, 1919.
Only five of these pins are known to survive in public institutions. Two of those are here at the Framingham History Center