Probably the best known object in the British Museum collection related to the campaign for Women’s Suffrage is this defaced penny coin, with the now famous strapline demanding VOTES FOR WOMEN stamped across King Edward VII’s face.

It’s what Neil MacGregor calls ‘a deft act of civil disobedience, and a brilliantly inventive piece of low-budget popular propaganda’ in A History of the World in 100 Objects.

As an example of the societal change that has taken place since the defacement of the penny in the same room at the BM, visitors can see an official Royal Mint 50p coin issued in 2003, celebrating the creation of the WSPU. How splendid that the form which was once used to call out injustice is then used to commemorate that very movement.