I’ve been browsing through a collection of more than a century old Russian magazines Printing Art. I found some interesting statistics concerning the book industry of the early 20th century in Russia. And this curiosity as well.

It was posted in a section dedicated to miscellaneous stuff. That’s an editor’s comment dedicated to the contemporary usage of suffragette stamps in France.

Here is a translation:

Unofficial Postal Stamp

If in the recent time someone would decide to correspond with a Parisian advocatess for the women’s emancipation, they would shortly receive a letter holding an unknown stamp near the official one. Official stamps, as it is known, hold an image of a sitting woman (the Republic), to whose left leg leans a stone slab with an inscription «Droits de l’homme». As «homme» in the French language means both ‘human’ and ‘man’, fiery advocatesses of the the women’s [rights] movement are outraged by the postal representation of the ‘male’ yoke and add to their correspondence an additional stamp that depicts a standing female figure with a look of decision and a stone slab with inscription «Droits de la femme».

As far as I understand, that ‘recent usage’ may be dated as early as a decade or two before the publication. However, it was quite interesting to see it mentioned, as I have never seen that sort of rogue stamps used so long ago.

Here is the stamp, by the way: