Jessica Long

Some old chap by the name of Sir George Whitmore, a long-serving member of New Zealand’s Legislative Council and before that a military man, seemed to think women’s brains worked like a jar of pickles.

Anyone who gobbled up gobbledygook like the idea that women should have the right to vote was preserving progress in a vinegary brine that would ferment the nation’s development and ultimately descend the country into an indigestible chaos.

He would ‘‘rather see democracy run wild, and degenerate into anarchy and communism’’, than live behind the conservative lines (he was totally thinking ‘‘skirts’’) of its women’s votes.

Women, he gushed, could not bear arms so should not have a voice in the governance of the country.

Yes, men like Whitmore were really angry about the prospect of a woman voting, and 125 years on there are probably still some vinecreeping vegetables out there who think doomsday came on September 19, 1893.

But suffrage didn’t spring to life overnight. The idea was first sown in 1878 by a group of politicians led by MP Charles Bowen whose progressive ideals bittered over time. It came down to the feared loss of beer o’clock.

To win the vote women had to overcome a barrage of sexism, fake petitions and decoys by alcohol lobbyists. It was a vegetable patch of angry voices fertilised by rational, independent thought. The movement, which ultimately saw the beginning of the country’s progressive global role, divided New Zealand.

Dunedin MP Henry Smith Fish became foe after he hired men to circulate anti-suffrage petitions in pubs, as Christchurch’s suffrage leader, Kate Sheppard, joined forces with Jane Plimmer of Wellington to gather more than 32,000 pro-suffrage signatures.

Despite Canterbury being home to Sheppard, the country’s most famous suffragist, The Press condemned the ‘‘shrieking sisterhood’’ in the aftermath of the 1893 vote, calling the ministers who voted in favour ‘‘weak-kneed’’.

‘‘It has been forced upon the colony, the majority of the electors in which are opposed to the revolution,’’ The Press said. ‘‘All this might have been avoided had Ministers only had the