CHAPTER 11 THE PAN TECHNICON VAN STRATEGEM Mrs. Pankhurst first harassed Mr. Dickinson's bill, the first Albert Hall meeting and the by-election at Peckham. Incidents in the Votes for Women campaign now followed each other with such rapidity that they defied the chronicler who wishes to note them down. Because vigorous militancy was the order of the day, the press teamed with articles upon the abstract question of Votes for Women and with notices of the doings of the suffragettes. Cabinet baiting as the latest ruse, suffragettes and chains. These and others of the same nature were the startling headlines that one saw in the evening papers on January 17th and in the morning papers of the following day. It was merely that Mrs. Drummond and a number of other members of our union knowing that the cabinet was sitting to decide upon the questions which should find a place in the legislative program of the forthcoming session had made an attempt to urge upon them the necessity of dealing with the women's claim. Whilst press representatives were congregating in Downing Street to snapshot the ministers and to gain material for the foolish paragraphs, describing their appearance and manner of arrival at the First Cabinet Council of the season, and whilst police were assembling to dance attendance upon the Prime Minister and his colleagues, three or four of the women appeared to demand an interview. The police pulled them aside and the cabinet ministers brushed past as they tried to speak and when they applied at the door of the official residence, no notice was taken. Then Miss New, well-knowing that her words would be heard both inside the house and by the crowd that was collecting in the street, began to make a speech explaining what she and her friends had come for. Before beginning she changed herself to the railings beside the Prime Minister's front door, both symbolically to express the political bondage of womanhood and for the very practical reason that this device would prevent her being dragged speedily away. Her example was followed by nurse Olivia Smith and, whilst the police were struggling to break the double set of chains, the taxi cab drove up and stopped on the opposite side of the street. Suspecting more suffragettes, some of the constables rushed to the door of the cab which opened on to the pavement. At the same moment Mrs. Drummond, for it was she who had devised this stratagem, opened the cab door on the roadside and bounded across to the sacred residence where, as there was no one to bar her progress and as she now possess the secret of the little knob in the center of the door, she was inside and very near to the council chamber itself, before a number of men, some of whom she believed to be cabinet ministers, though owing to the violent and buried nature of her ejection it was impossible to make quite sure, rushed upon her and she was flung out and hurled down the steps. She was then arrested and shortly afterwards she and four of her comrades found themselves before Sir Albert de Rutsen at Bow Street Police Court, charged with disorderly conduct. They were found guilty and on refusing to be bound were sent to prison for three weeks. Instead of placing them in the first division as had been done in the case of all the suffragettes since the transfer of Mrs. Cobden Sanderson and the rest of us had taken place in October 1906, the authorities reverted to the old plan of putting them in the second class. On January 29th the king opened parliament in great state and four members of the women's freedom league rushed in to the royal procession and attempted to present him with a petition, but were dragged back and hustled aside by the soldiery and police. The king's speech did not contain any mention of votes for women, and the women's social and political union was already preparing to confer upon the subject at a women's parliament to be held in the Caxton Hall on February 11th, 12th and 13th. In the meantime the members of the women's freedom league had determined to make an immediate protest, and the day after the opening of parliament they set out to interview six members of the cabinet. Three of the ladies, Dr. Helen Borscher, Mrs. Kenningdale Cook, a well-known novelist and Miss Monroe Escoch woman from Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's constituency, visited Mr. Haldane at his house at Queen Anne's Gate at 9.30. They agreed with the butler to wait outside until Mr. Haldane could see them, but the secretary of state for war telephoned to the police who soon appeared in force and placed the women under arrest. The same sort of thing happened at the houses of Sir Edward Gray, Mr. Harcourt, and Captain Sinclair. All together seven women were arrested and sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from two to six weeks. In the afternoon of the same day Mr. Asquith received a deputation from the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. He then definitely said that the government would not introduce a vote for women measure on their own account and also refused to hold out any hope that the government would allow the passage of a private members bill. As they left the Treasury offices, the so-called constitutional suffragists agreed that Mr. Asquith's remarks would merely serve to incite the suffragettes to further militancy. They judged rightly for the next day nine members of the Women's Freedom League called at Mr. Asquith's house at number 20, Cavendish Square, and on being refused an interview with him, decorated his area railings with votes for women, banners and bills, and using his top most doorstep as a platform, proceeded to address a crowd of some 70 persons that had collected. Four arrests were the result. The women were brought up before Mr. Plowden at Mar-a-Lebon Police Court and claimed the right to speak in their own defense, but Dr. Helen Borsher, the first to utter a word, was stopped by the would-be witty Mr. Plowden, who said rudely, �Behave yourself. You are the bell-weather of the flock.� He then declared all the women guilty of obstruction, and ordered them either to pay fines of forty shillings or to undergo one month's imprisonment in the Second Division, saying that he wanted them to understand that if they thought the punishment light, it was because it was all that the law allowed him to give them, and adding, �I do not consider it by any means a fair measure of your desserts.� Meanwhile, the reversion to the policy of treating the suffragettes as ordinary criminals instead of according to them the treatment usually meted out to political prisoners was being raised in both houses of parliament. Earl Russell and others urged the government that the �blood of martyrs� is the seat of the church, but the government were deaf alike to appeal and warning. The Women's Social and Political Union had long realized this, and when the Third Woman's Parliament met in the Caxton Hall on February 11, 1908, it did so with all the splendid courage and enthusiasm for militant action that had characterized its predecessors. It was now known that an excellent place in the private member's ballot had been won, and on the Women's Bill by Mr. Stanger, a liberal, and it was realized that before February 28, when the bill was to come up for second reading, strong pressure must be brought to bear upon the government to prevent this bill being wrecked as that of Mr. Dickinson had been in the previous year. It was therefore with an added sense of immediate pressing necessity that the women set up unflinchingly for the old hard fight with overwhelming force. The motion to carry the usual resolution to the Prime Minister was moved by Ms. Marie Naylor and Ms. Florence Hague, both London members of the Union and both Chelsea portrait painters, and then the whole hall seemed to rock with the noise of the cheers as the majority of the women in presence sprang up to form a deputation. Meanwhile an extraordinary scene had taken place close to the stranger's entrance to the House of Commons. It had been anticipated, of course, that these suffragettes would make an attempt to lay their resolution before the Prime Minister, and a great force of police was massed in readiness before the House. Just about four o'clock as the long lines of men in their dark blue uniform waited there, two furniture removal vans slowly approached coming up Victoria Street and round by the green which surrounds the Abbey and St. Margaret's Church, as though they were about to make their way past the House of Commons and along Milbank towards the Tate Gallery and Westminster embankment. The first van went slowly by the house. The second crawled leisurely in its wake, and along the back ledge of the second van lay a sleepy-looking boy, his eyes idly fixed upon a little man sauntering along the pavement some distance away. Just as this van was passing the stranger's entrance, the little man dropped a handkerchief, then suddenly the boy sprang from the ledge, the back doors of the van flew open wide, and one and twenty women plunged out and made a rush for the House of Commons. They were blinded by the broad daylight after their long ride in the darkness of the van, and as they jumped, many of them fell on their knees, and groping helplessly ran the wrong way. Nevertheless there were some who headed straight for the doorway and two of them managed to get inside, only to be flung back instantly, whilst the police closed round and several arrests were made. Meanwhile the body of women who had engaged to carry the resolution to the Prime Minister had emerged from the Caxton Hall, and having formed up for a breast and orderly procession had begun to move quietly forwards towards the House of Commons. Large crowds had gathered to see them whilst the police were drawn up on either side of the road, and at one point formed a line across the thoroughfare. The constables pushed and jostled the women for some time without altogether preventing their passage, but at broad sanctuary, a large contingent of police entirely blocked the way. Undaunted, the women pressed forward, and the crowds sum with the idea of helping the suffragettes, others from curiosity pressed forward too. The police charged again and again, and there was grave danger that someone would be trampled underfoot. When at last the streets were cleared, it was found that some fifty women had been arrested. Amongst these, Miss Marie Naylor and Miss Florence Pegg, Georgina and Marie Brackenbury, both of them painters, and nieces of General Sir Henry Brackenbury, and Miss Maude Joaquim, niece of the great violinist. The suffragette cases came on next morning before Mr. Horace Smith at the Westminster Police Court. Mr. Musket, who prosecuted on behalf of the police, then announced that on this occasion the authorities had decided as before to prosecute under the Prevention of Crimes Amendment Act of 1885, which enabled the magistrate to inflict a fine of five pounds earned a fault to order imprisonment with or without hard labor for two months. Throwing down a remarkable challenge to the women, he added that there were greater and stronger powers in reserve which could be enforced to put down disorder, for there was still upon the statute book an act passed in the reign of Charles II which dealt with tumultuous petitions either to the Crown or Parliament. He recalled the fact that it had been stated by the judge at the time of the Lord George Gordon Riots that the act was still good law and he said that the dictum still applied. The act of Charles II provided that, no person whatever shall repair to his majesty or both or either of the Houses of Parliament upon pretense of presenting or delivering any petition, complaint, remonstrance or declaration or other address accompanied with an excessive number of people nor at any one time with the above number of twelve persons. These might be enforced under this act up to a fine of one hundred pounds or three months imprisonment. In holding forth this threat to women who might demonstrate in the future, Mr. Musket again appealed to the magistrate to deal with those who were now charged with all the rigor which he would apply to ordinary lawbreakers. The prisoners were then one by one brought in. Georgina Brackenbury, tall, fair and well featured, was the first to be put into the dock. The magistrate affected to take scant interest in the case that in spite of her own splendid courtesy of manner addressed her with pettish rudeness and finally interrupted her statement with, that is all nonsense. The whole of the proceedings were conducted in the same spirit. But two women out of the fifty had been imprisoned before and these two, Mrs. Rigby, the wife of a doctor in Preston and Mrs. Titterington as old offenders, were ordered either to pay fines of five pounds or to suffer one month's imprisonment in the third and lowest class. The other forty-seven women were ordered to be bound over in two charities of twenty pounds to keep the peace for twelve months or to serve six weeks imprisonment in the second division. With the exception of two whose absence from home was found to be impossible owing to the serious illness of relatives all the women chose imprisonment. All these things were of course largely discussed in the press. The furniture van incident attracted the greatest attention and the van itself was likened by almost every newspaper to the wooden horse of Troy. The Daily Chronicle said, The suffragettes are essentially heroic. First they lashed themselves to the Premier's railings, now borrowing an idea from the Trojan horse they burst forth from a pantechnicon van. A high standard of artifice has been set and it should be maintained. The Trojan horse would have been of no use if it had remained outside the walls and though curiosity could never be expected to prompt members to drag a deserted pantechnicon into the house there must be occasions when a large-sized packing case is taken into St. Stephen's. The Glasgow Evening Times called for a poet of eudobrastic gifts to rise and embody in heroic verse the deeds of the suffragettes and asserted that the daring attack yesterday evening on that citadel of democratic liberty, the House of Commons, is of itself sufficient to inspire a Homer or at least a Peter Pindar. The Evening News said that until the suffragettes had outwitted the policemen by the use of the furniture van they had never believed in the story of the Trojan horse, now they knew it to be quite possible after all. In the women's parliament it was the more serious side of the case that appealed to us. We saw that the government were preparing still further to resist our just and moderate demands and rather than concede them were even ready to revive ancient coercive statutes which the customs and principles of modern times that caused a fall into disuse. This act of Charles II with which they had threatened us had originally been passed to obstruct the growth of the Liberal Party which first came into existence in Stuart Times. It was the political descendants of those very Liberals who would now use the coercive statute against their countrywomen. Well, might Christabel Pankhurst ask in the women's parliament what would have been said if a Tory government had done this thing. This takes us back to stirring times, ladies, she told the women. At last it is realized that women are fighting for freedom as their fathers fought. If they want twelve women, I, and more than twelve, if a hundred women are wanted to be tried under that act and to be sent to prison for three months they can be found. There was no militant demonstration on that day, but everyone knew that something more was to happen and on Thursday afternoon the thirteenth of February when the women's parliament met for its concluding session a feeling of most extraordinary excitement prevailed. Mrs. Pankhurst had just returned from the by-election at South Leeds and the audience listened eagerly to her account of the campaign and especially to the story of the torchlight procession and the wonderful meeting of one hundred thousand people on Huntslet more. In spite of the fact that police protection had been refused at the last moment there had been no disorder, only sympathy and enthusiasm all along the route whilst the vast crowds that parted to let the procession through had joined on to it and added to its numbers from behind and some of the women had constantly called out in broad Yorkshire shall us have the vote to be answered by others with cries of we shall. I have come to London Mrs. Pankhurst concluded feeling as I have never felt before the seriousness of this struggle I feel that the time has come when I must act and I wish to volunteer to be one of those to carry our resolution to parliament this afternoon. My experience in the country and especially in South Leeds has taught me things that cabinet ministers who have not that experience do not know and has made me feel that I must make one final attempt to see them and to urge them to reconsider their position before some terrible disaster has occurred. Then amid some emotional excitement and cries of Mrs. Pankhurst must not go we cannot spare our leader cries which were calmly set aside by practical business like Christabel who announced that the deputation was definitely chosen and that its 13 members were all prepared to be arrested and tried under the Charles the second act. The resolution was carried and Mrs. Pankhurst Annie Kenny and 11 other women marched out of the hall whilst almost the whole of the audience flocked into the corridor and stood around the doorway to watch them go. Mrs. Pankhurst had been blamed in the cowardly attack that had been made upon her at mid-Devon and had not yet recovered. Seeing this Mrs. Drummond ran forward to get a conveyance. She saw none for hire but called to a man in a private dog cart and asked him if he would drive Mrs. Pankhurst to the House of Commons. He agreed and the other women formed up on foot behind the vehicle to and to a breast. The police were already masked around in great force and the little procession had moved but a few slow steps when a police inspector came forward and insisted that Mrs. Pankhurst should dismount. She instantly obeyed the order signing to her companions not to protest. The twelve women of the deputation at the same time hurried forward to reform and double-line behind their leader but the inspector and his men dragged them apart. Then the deputation hammed in by men, women and police on every side proceeded in single file as far as Chapel Street. There the inspector said they must not walk in procession. They therefore broken to twos and threes but when they came to the entrance of Victoria Street the police entirely barred the way and it was only after a considerable struggle that they were able to gain the main thoroughfare. There a vast concourse of people had assembled and right in the midst of it one saw Mrs. Pankhurst wearing a loose long cloak whose light gray color made her figure stand out from the darkly clad men around. She came forward with Mrs. Baldock clinging to her arm and tall, pretty, smiling young Gladys Keeville, her face a little flushed and her soft hair blowing a little in the wind walking on the other side and with the great crowd following and filling the whole street around. Scattered amongst the people behind and moving forward either sinkly or in twos the rest of the deputation followed. Close to Westminster Palace Hotel Mrs. Pankhurst who up to this point had followed in the wake of a police inspector and carefully obeyed all the instructions of the police was arrested and taken through Parliament Square on the side furthest from the house in the strong grip of two burly policemen. Clad in her heavy traveling cloak her face had grown white with exhaustion and she was evidently in pain but no heed was paid to her lameness and she was hurried along at a brisk trot and at last disappeared down the narrow lane at the top of Bridge Street which leads to Cannon Row police station. Mrs. Baldock and Gladys Keeville who had refused to leave her had for this cause been arrested and almost immediately afterwards Annie Kenny was also taken into custody. Later on the same fate befell Mrs. Curwood of Birmingham and five others some of whom were not members of the deputation. Whilst this was happening the women's Parliament was still in session and every now and then someone returned from the battle to describe how events were going. Before the meeting closed our ever-thoughtful treasurer Mrs. Pethic Lawrence urged all not on the fighting line to subscribe to the war chest. More than 400 pounds had been raised when the prisoners came back to us on bail at the rising of Parliament. In the House of Commons itself the government's hostile attitude towards the suffragettes was raised as a matter of urgency on the motion for the adjournment by Sir William Bull the Unionist Member for Hammersmith who showed genuine concern at the news of Mrs. Pankhurst's arrest. Other members of the same party followed by jeering at the government for the marked difference between their treatment of the suffragist woman and the men who had been arrested for cattle driving and similar offenses in Ireland. Why was Mr. General the Nationalist Member for Westmeath to receive the privileges of a first-class misdemeanant, they asked, while Mrs. Pankhurst and her comrades were to be treated as ordinary criminals? Lord Robert Cecil raised a laugh against the president of the local government board by pointing out that when he, Mr. John Burns, had been in prison for inciting to riot the government of the day had intervened to secure preferential treatment for him. In reply to all this Mr. Gladstone refused to take any action saying that the women could come out of prison whenever they liked. When Mrs. Pankhurst and her comrades were brought up at Westminster Police Court before Mr. Horace Smith next day, it was found that the authorities who were perhaps disappointed at the way in which their challenge had been accepted had changed their minds and instead of prosecuting the women as they had threatened under the Charles II Act had decided to revert to the old method of stigmatizing the whole affair as a mere vulgar brawl with the police. Probably thinking the true facts would arouse too much public sympathy, the prosecution put forward as evidence an absolute tissue of falsehood in which it was stated that the deputation had set out from the Caxton Hall singing and shouting in the noisiest manner and that they had knocked off the helmets of the police and had assaulted them right and left. As we have seen everything had been done most quietly and Mrs. Pankhurst herself had carefully complied with every order from the police short of abandoning her intention to reach the House of Commons. Our rebutting evidence was disregarded and Mrs. Pankhurst own statement in the dock was cut short by Mr. Horace Smith saying, I have nothing to do with that. It only amounts to another threat to break the law and it is in no way relevant here. You, like the others, must find sureties in twenty pounds for twelve months good behavior or be imprisoned for six weeks in the second division. Then, as usual, the women were hurried off in the van to prison. The hallway gates were closed upon them and the government settled down to forget them as far as it could until next time. February 28th was the day for the discussion of the Women's and Franchisement Bill. In moving its second reading, Mr. H. Y. Stanger, whilst he carefully disassociated himself from the methods of the suffragettes, reminded the House that, if in the course of a political agitation excesses were committed, the authorities should search for the cause of the discontent and apply an appropriate remedy. Mr. Kath Gart Wason, another liberal member but an anti-suffragist declared on the other hand that the suffragette movement was founded on riot and that the House should not yield to clamor. Yet, with an entire lack of consistency, he went on to extol physical force, saying that because in his opinion, women could make no contribution to this, they ought not to be allowed to vote. Evidently, he forgot that whilst the whole trend of civilization has been in the direction of mental rather than physical dominance, in the age when physical force was the governing power, women were actually members of the legislature and that they retained the right to vote for members of parliament throughout the ages when its possession was looked upon as a burden and until, having become a privilege, it was rested from them. But all this talk was mere word spinning. It was a pronouncement from the government benches that was eagerly awaited. As last time, it was Mr. Herbert Gladstone who spoke and for the ministry and he soon disclosed the fact that the government was still determined to make no move. It was the old story of opposition in the cabinet and the old excuse that no party in the house was united either for or against the question. As for the bill, he himself intended to vote for it for, he said, making an important admission which his colleagues might well have taken to heart. It may be imperfect but at any rate it removes the disqualification and an inequality which have been for so long a deep source of complaint with great masses of the people of this country. Then Mr. Gladstone went on to make some very remarkable statements of which both he and the government were afterwards to be reminded. He said, amongst other things, men have had to struggle for centuries for their political rights. On the question of women's suffrage, experience shows that predominance of argument alone and I believe that that has been attained is not enough to win the political day. In any reform movement he went on to explain various stages had to be gone through. First, there was the stage of academic discussion and the ventilation of pious opinions unaccompanied by effective action but after this he continued becoming perhaps a little carried away by his own words. Comes the time when political dynamics are far more important than political argument. You have to move a great inert mass of opinion which in the early stages always exists in the country in regard to questions of the first magnitude. Men have learned this lesson and know the necessity for demonstrating the greatness of their movement and for establishing that force major which actuates and arms a government for effective work. That is the task before the supporters of this great movement. Looking back at the great political crisis in the thirties, the sixties and the eighties it will be found that people did not go about in small crowds nor were they content with enthusiastic meetings in large halls. They assembled in their tens of thousands all over the country. But, said Mr. Gladstone, of course it is not to be expected that women can assemble in such masses. But, power belongs to the masses and through this power a government can be influenced into more effective action than a government will be likely to take under present conditions. Mr. Rees, liberal, then made an attempt to talk out this bill as he had done that of Mr. Dickinson the year before and after firing off all the jokes that he could think of, he fell back upon the scriptures saying, Jerusalem is ruined and Judah has fallen. As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks, therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion and in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments. But at this point he was interrupted by Lord Robert Cecil who moved the closure of the debate and on the speakers accepting the motion and it's being agreed to without a division a vote was taken upon the bill itself in which 271 members voted for the bill and only 92 against. There was therefore a favorable majority of 179, the largest that had ever been cast in support of women's suffrage. Unfortunately, it now appeared that Mr. Stanger had been informed beforehand that the closure resolution which would prevent the talking out of the bill would only be accepted on condition that he as the bill's sponsor would move that it be referred to a committee of the whole house instead of passing automatically to one of the grand committees. Mr. Stanger had agreed to the condition and now fulfilled the promise that had been exacted and the result was that nothing further could be done with the bill unless the government would provide time for its discussion. Had the cabinet been prepared to act honorably and to stand by the statement of their spokesman Mr. Gladstone, the position would now have been that if the woman who wanted votes could organize a series of demonstrations which could compare with those held by men in support of the various extensions of the franchise that had already taken place, the government would concede their demands and would either provide time for the passage into law of Mr. Stanger's bill or introduce and put through its various stages a measure of their own framing. The woman's social and political union were prepared to accept Mr. Gladstone's challenge. End of chapter 11 part 1. Chapter 11 part 2 of the suffragette, the history of the woman's militant suffrage movement by E. Sylvia Pankhurst. This labor box recording is in the public domain. 11 part 2 When Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women had gone to prison, their comrades of the WSPU at Mrs. Pethic Lawrence's suggestion had entered upon a week of self-denial in order to raise funds for the campaign. The thought of those who were in prison spurred on every member of the union to renew zeal. Some went canvassing from house to house for money. Others stood with collecting boxes at regular pitches in the street. At the Kensington High Street District Railway Station, for instance, four well-known women writers, Ms. Evelyn Sharp, Ms. May Sinclair, Ms. Violet Hunt, and Ms. Clemens Hausman were gathering in pennies all through those wintry days. Some women sold flowers, swept crossings, became pavement artists, and played barrel organs. Poor members obliged to work continuously for a living, deny themselves sugar and milk in their tea, butter on their bread, and walked to and from their work in order to be able to give something to the funds. The result of this week of earnest effort was to be announced at a great meeting at the Albert Hall on March 19th to advertise which a great box kite with a flag attached was hanging over the houses of parliament for a fortnight, whilst a similar flag floated over Holloway Jail to cheer the prisoners within. Every seat in the great Albert Hall was sold long before the day of the meeting, and hundreds of people were turned away at the doors. The vast audience was composed almost entirely of women, and there were 200 women stewards in white dresses. The platform was decorated with flowers enthroned with ex-prisoners and the officials of the union, but as the sentences of Mrs. Pankhurst and eight of her comrades were not to expire until the following morning, the chairman's seat which the founder of the union should have occupied was left vacant and in it was placed a large white card bearing the inscription, Mrs. Pankhurst's share. Throughout the great gathering there was a wonderful spirit of unity and not one woman there could wish in her heart as so many millions have done if I had only been a man. No, they were rather like to pity those who were not women and so could not join in this great fight, for today it was the woman's battle. The time was gone when she must always play a minor part, applauding, ministering, comforting, performing useful functions, if you will, incurring risks to and making sacrifices, but always being treated and always thinking of herself as a mere incident of the struggle outside the wide mainstream of life. Today this battle of there seemed to the women to be the greatest in the world. All other conflicts appeared minor to it. A great wave of enthusiasm had caught them up and they were ready to break out into chairs and clapping at the least excuse. Fate, in the person of the government had provided an incident entirely in keeping with their mood, for Christabel immediately announced that Mrs. Pankhurst and the remaining prisoners had been unexpectedly released and Mrs. Pankhurst herself walked quietly onto the platform to take possession of the vacant chair. Then it was a wonderful site to see the up-springing of those thousands of women from those rows and rows of seats and tears and tears of boxes and galleries sloping to the roof of the Great Circular Hall. There was a sea of waving arms and handkerchiefs and a long chorus of chairs with no greater welcome could any leader have been met. The founder of the Union stood there quite still in her dark gray dress and her face, usually pale, had that strangely blanched look which comes to prisoners. When, as the applause subsided, she stepped forward to speak to the assembled women, it was evident that she was deeply moved by their greeting and as she told how the chief wardress had come to her salad two o'clock that afternoon to tell her that an order had come for her immediate release, one felt that she was very tired and almost overwhelmed by the sharp contrast between the great brightly lighted hall with his vast seething throng of human beings and the still silence of the prison cell. She had heard, she told the women, for these things felt her even into prison, that the bill had successfully passed its second reading, but she said and all present knew that she spoke rightly that if ever the bill were to become an act, women must do ten times more yet than they had ever done in the past. Hi, for one, friends, Mrs. Pankhurst cried and we knew that she was thinking of the women she had seen in prison. Hi, for one, looking round on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex say that men have had control of these things long enough and that no woman with any spark of womanliness in her will consent to allow this state of things to go on any longer. We are tired of it. We want to be of use and to have the power to make the world a better place both for men and women than it is today. She paused then and went on to express quietly but with deep feeling her joy in this great woman's movement that a few years before she had thought she would never live to see. The old cry had been he will never rouse women. But she said we have done what they thought and what they hoped to be impossible. We women are roused. At those words they stopped her with their cheers. Then Annie Kenny rose to tell the story of her first and only other visit to the Royal Albert Hall when she had gone there to ask of the newly elected and triumphant liberal ministry a pledge for the enfranchisement of her sex. That night two years before she had been received with cries of abuse and howled down by an audience of angry men. There seemed to be thousands against one she said but I did not mind because I knew that our action that night was like summer rain on a drooping flower. It would give new life to the women's movement. And now Mrs. Pethic Lawrence our treasurer was to come forward to give yet one more proof that Annie Kenny's words were true. When the treasurer had imagined that Mrs. Pankhurst's chair was to be an empty one she had planned that those presents should place in it an offering of money for the cause but now she would be able to place that offering in the founder's hands. Towards the sum that was collected there was already the 2,382 pounds 11 shilling seven pence which had been raised by the devotion and sacrifice of members of the union during the week of self-denial a promise of 1,000 pounds a year till women were enfranchised from a lady who wished to remain anonymous of the pounds which Mrs. Lawrence herself in conjunction with her husband wished to give and now it was for the audience to do their part. Whilst the treasurer had been speaking Mr. Lawrence had been arranging a scoring apparatus then one by one 12 women rose up in the hall and each promised to give 100 pounds their example was followed by numbers of others at the same time promise cards filled out by members of the audience were constantly being handed to the platform where Mrs. Lawrence at last the sum of 7,000 pounds had been set up and with a stirring call from Christabel to work at the by elections at Peckham and Hastings in which the union was then engaging the meeting closed. As it was in London the Peckham election was of course most noticed by the press and because it was so near its headquarters the women's social and political union was able to put up the biggest fight there. On Peckham Rye a stretch of common land were hosts of preachers and speakers of all kinds are to be heard on every holiday each of the parties in the election including the suffragettes began by holding a meeting on the first Sunday of the contest. There was a good deal of rather dangerous horseplay which ominously recalled the mid-devin election the suffragettes being chief target of the disturbance. But before many days were over the situation had entirely changed. Peckham as every Londoner knows is one of that great forest of suburbs of mushroom growth on the south side of the river. It's miles and miles of dingy streets are lined with monotonous rows of ugly little houses which the Jerry builder tries to convert into villa residences by disfiguring with heavy over ornamented stonework and by planting a useless pillar on either side of the narrow doorway. A large proportion of these little dwellings are tenanted by at least two families and the district is given over to small shopkeepers and clerks, shop assistants, teachers and those who belong more frankly to the working classes.  It is full of honest, worthy people, but there is nothing romantic or attractive about it. The suffragettes open their committee rooms in the high street and soon seem to be everywhere. They were riding up and down on the noisy electric tram cars and dashing along Rye Lane where the cheap shops are and where on Saturday night you can buy everything for half the usual price at the Costamonger stalls, chalking the pavements, giving out handbills and speaking at the street corners and soon it was found that these busy active women had not only converted almost everyone in the district to the justice of their claims, but had captured the heart of the constituency. How had it happened? Partly it may be because of the romance and color that they had brought into the humdrum Peckham life, but perhaps the following impressions of an enthusiast which appeared in the daily mail in the midst of the election will best explain the mystery. Three happy girls, eyes, laughter, lit, breezy, buoyant, joyous, arm in arm, talking like three cascades are making a royal progress down the lane that leads to Rye. Such is the head of the comet, just a glance at the tail, a heterogeneous nebula of human life, all ranks and ages, both sexes and all professions, following, jostling, bustling, hustling. Ms. Christabel Panker shakes herself free from one of her supporters and takes under her wing a barefoot ragged urchin whose eyes are dancing with glee and pride for his pals are envious. Who is he that the gloved hand should rest caressingly upon his shoulder? The girl and the gammon trudge along together. Oh, ain't she just sweet? says a factory girl, and fancier are being to prison. Aren't she torque? My word, chimes in her mate.   She is so every inch alive, the very exuberance of life, body and mind. Not the racked intensity that comes of nerves, high strung, and overactive brain, but just that fingertip aliveness which comes of perfect health and perfect happiness in engrossing occupation. The girl orator and organizer, martyr and crusader holds and sways her crowds by a very network of antithesis, and her rosy face is the index of her complexity. Defiance chases Demureness. She flings a matcap word and then lectures you like a schoolmistress. One moment reticent, grave and serious, then simmering with mischief as she lays a cabinet minister or a man in the crowd safely upon his back. Oh, rash questioner. Then her willfulness, that pucker chin tells a tale, yet her willingness to listen and to learn. Her melting, comprehending sympathy for the sorrowful and heavy laden. Her rapier wit and repartee, but ever smothered in the white sugar of good humor. All these you see. Some, when sitting in the background of the trolley, she seeks to hide from the public stare, which she shrinks from with a maiden's modesty when not actually engaged in speaking. Others, when the listen figure swaying in rhythmic sympathy with the outpouring words, she fastens her mind and yours upon the pointed issue. And then her unconscious petulance, that green veil of hers tied under her chin that would forever get arry. Yes, she is very, very feminine and that is what will win the vote for women. With a voice that never tires, nor ever tires the listener, she is born to charm the ear with an ebb and flow of sweet sound. Sounds so clear, so silver, so bell-like, now rising, now falling, now rushing and tumultuous, now measured and tempered and austere. Burnest and grave, impetuous, a very voli, ardent, burning, scathing, denunciatory, then sinking to appeal to low notes and something near to sadness. Shall I speak of her logic? It is inexorable. It is not on mere smart retort that she depends when heckled. She has a good case and relies on it. She is saturated with facts and the hecklers find themselves heckled, twitted, tripped, floored. I think they like it. She does, and shows it. She flings herself into the fray and literally pants for the next question to tear to shreds. Her questioners are for the most part earthenware, and this bit of porcelain does them in the eye quaintly, datally, intellectually, glibly. Look to it, Mr. Gautry, or the witchry of Christabel will do you in the eye. No, the electors of Peckham agreed these suffragettes were not the sort of women they had read of. They were neither disorderly, shouting, abusive, unsexed, violent creatures, nor the soured, dry, and disappointed women they had been led to expect. It was not merely the enthusiasts in the Daily Mail who testified to the work that the suffragettes were doing. Conservative newspapers, though they generally preferred to ignore the suffragettes because, though opposing the government, they were not supporting either the conservative candidates or their proposals. Nevertheless, they allowed some of the truth that the special correspondent told them about the women's campaign to filter into their columns. The standard said, these women are prepared to kill themselves with fatigue and exposure, not for the vote, but for what the vote means. The bystander said, the ladies' tongues have been tireless and their brains inexhaustible. Of all the assembled bodies in their name was Legion, who thronged Peckham, theirs has been the most persistent. The Paul Maul Gazette said, everybody seems agreed that the best speeches in the election are being made by the Lady Suffragists, whilst the Daily Mail asserted that, in no contest have the suffragettes figured so largely or done such harm to the radical candidate. There is a type of man who will sometimes ask a woman's advice about politics and may even admit that she is not only a better speaker than he is, but knows more about public questions than he will ever know and who yet thinks it is quite tolerable that she should be forever debarred from voting, though he has had that privilege since he was 21. Men of this type are usually great followers of party and allow their ideas of right and wrong in politics to be almost entirely dictated by the actions of the very fallible gentlemen who happen to be their party leaders. Liberals of this type, whether editors of newspapers, journalists, members of parliament or merely rank and file had always condemned the suffragettes because the Liberal Party happened to be attacked by them. The suffragette opposition at Peckham caused them to be more indignant than ever, for Peckham was a liberal seat that had been held at the last election by the great majority of 2,339 votes. And if this big majority were to be pulled down, they feared that the House of Lords would be emboldened to throw out the government's licensing bill, which was then being debated in parliament. It was true that, though the Liberals now spoke of this bill as being of paramount importance, they had themselves been just as keen upon a host of other questions and had over and over again before this called upon the suffragettes to stand aside and refrain from pressing their claim at what on each occasion they assured them was the crisis of all crises. First it had been that the Liberal government might come safely into power that they had charged the women to wait, then that free trade might be put out of danger. Then for the passage of the Education Bill, the Plural Voting Bill and every measure put forward, in every case they assumed that the proposal advanced by the Liberal cabinet was the only possible solution of the problem and in spite of the differences of opinion amongst men, they maintained that no right-minded woman could conscientiously wish for any other. When it came to the question of the licensing bill, the Liberal politicians declared that the sole issue of the election was between the licensing bill on the one hand and in temperance on the other. This was absurd, for if the Liberals wished to be rid of the suffragette opposition, they had only to remove their veto from the woman's bill. On the morning after their release from Holloway, Mrs. Pankhurst and the other ex-prisoners drove off to Peckham in breaks and paraded the constituency holding meetings at various points and worked there incessantly until the end. A procession of their own ex-prisoners was also organized by the suffragettes of the Women's Freedom League who were also helping to fight the government in this election.  But this fell very flat. On polling day, the star showed its belief in the strong influence which women were exerting in the election by making its final appeal on behalf of the government candidate, not to the men voters but to the women of Peckham. The suffragettes were stationed at every polling booth and as the voters passed in, many of those who had hitherto voted for the Liberal Party handed their colors and polling cards to the women with a promise to vote against the government on this occasion. On seeing this, one of the Liberal officials became so angry that he threatened to prosecute a member of the Freedom League under the Corrupt Practices Act. In the evening after the poll closed, Mrs. Drummond, upon whom the organization of the suffragettes campaign had chiefly fallen and who had been too busy all day even to get a meal, repaired to the town hall where the votes were being counted. As she stood waiting on the steps, weiriness showing at last in every line of her bonny round face and sturdy little figure, the doorkeeper invited her to rest in the entrance hall until the result was known. Presently, she heard a loud burst of shouting and a number of men in the midst of whom was Mr. Winston Churchill came running down the stairs from the count. She started up eager to learn the news but was swept out into the street in the midst of those who were impetuously rushing on. At that moment there flared out a magnesium light, red, the conservative color. It was known that the government candidate had been defeated and the huge crowd outside broke into cheers. Note 25. Mr. Churchill was pushed about like anyone else and had to work his way out of the throng but the working men seeing Mrs. Drummond there, a worker like themselves who had been laboring strenuously amongst them during the past week and whom they all thoroughly respected, crowded round her cheering and as her husband's constituents did to little Scotch Maggie in Mr. Berry's play, what every woman knows, they lifted her shoulder high and bore her in triumph down the street. But Mrs. Drummond felt exceedingly uncomfortable in this exalted state and asking to be released hurriedly sped away. Now that their late majority of 2,339 had been turned into a majority for the conservatives of 2,494, the Liberals proceeded to heap abuse upon the electors and to assert that the contest had been disgraced by unprecedented corruption and insoriety. But the experience of the suffragettes was that the election was one of the most sober and orderly that they had ever attended and their feeling was that the defeat of the liberal candidate was very much more largely due to the government's refusal to grant votes to women and to its coercive treatment of the women's movement than to any other cause. This opinion was shared by many others. Dr. Robert Essler, the divisional surgeon for Peckham, wrote to the Daily Telegraph as follows. Sir, the statement was advanced several times that the new member was floated into the house on beer, lest others should infer from the words that the electors constitute a drunken community, may I, being in a position to know the facts, indicate them? During the ten days of intense tension and canvassing and speaking, there was literally no insoriety. The charges at the police station fell much below the usual low average and there was not a single assault case. In my opinion, a high moral tone was imparted at the beginning by the presence on the rye of the ladies who took part in the proceedings. Their dignified demeanor and cultured oratory made a profound impression and I think this should not be overlooked when considering the result. Mr. St. John G. Irvin wrote to the liberal organ the nation on March 28 saying, there is not a man in the National Liberal Club today who does not know that Middevin was lost to the liberals because of the adverse action of the militant suffragists, a fact which was patent even to the rowdy mob who rolled Mrs. Pankhurst in the mud when the result of the poll was declared. There is not a liberal member today who does not dread the prospect of a general election with the absolute certainty that he will have to fight not only the usual enemy but also a very determined body which at the present time has no political creed other than that expressed in the three words, votes for women. I am wrong. There is one man who does not seem to realize all this to whom Middevin was not a warning to whom Pekin will convey no sign of further trouble. The Premier-elect Mr. Asquith this Pekin election has been a revelation to me of the perfectly wonderful forces which the women's social and political union are bringing to bear on by-elections. As a purely impartial observer of the Pekin election I submit to you, sir, and to the Liberal Party that it is time they started doing something for the women. The mandate might not have been there in 1906 but it most certainly is there now. Mr. Gooch the successful candidate stated a great feature of this election has been the activity of the supporters of women's suffrage and even the Daily News which published a correspondence from its readers dealing with the liberal defeat at Pekin stated in its issue of March 31st that the majority of the letters received referred to the action taken by the suffragettes. Footnotes 25 the figures were Mr. C. A. Gooch Conservative 6970 Mr. T. Gautry Liberal 4476 Majority 2494 the figures at the general election had been Mr. Charles G. Clark Liberal 5903 Sir F. G. Banbury Conservative 3564 End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of the suffragette The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement by E. Sylvia Pankhurst This Libra Fox recording is in the public domain Chapter 12 April and May 1908 Mr. Asquith becomes Prime Minister Defeat of Mr. Winston Churchill in Northwest Manchester and his election at Dundee Mr. Asquith's offer and the women's reply Owing to Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's continued illness Mr. Asquith had been acting as his deputy for many months past and the Easter holidays were scarcely over when it was announced that he had become Prime Minister in fact for the state of Sir Henry's health that compelled him to resign. The ex-premier did not live long afterwards. Though he had been converted to women's suffrage late in life when his fighting powers were always seriously impaired there is little doubt that he spoke truly when he declared his disappointment at not being able to do anything for the suffragists when they waited upon him in deputation on the 19th of May 1906. And if ever the secret history of the government during that time comes to be written we shall probably learn that had he possessed the strength to enforce his will upon his colleagues votes would have been granted to women that very year. Once when Annie Kenney and Mary Gawther were traveling with Mr. and Mrs. Pethic Lawrence to Bardagata Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman and they chanced to enter the same train and afterwards Sir Henry happened to seat himself at the very table where Annie and Mary were taking tea. They at once introduced themselves to him and all three had a long talk in the course of which Annie naively assured him you have no one in the cabin it's so clever as Ms. Christabel Pankhurst. Other things too she must have told him out of her loyal earnest heart for as she explained to us later he looked so much happier afterwards and we have been told by some who knew him that when criticisms of the suffragettes were subsequently made in his hearing he wouldn't variably protest oh you must not say anything against my little friend Annie Kenney. Mr. Asquith who had come to take his place was a man of very different metal. He was one whom nobody seemed to like and the only reason for his having become Prime Minister appeared to be that he had the reputation of being what is called a strong man and what generally turns out to be an obstinate one. It was a significant fact that it was whilst he had held the reins of power during Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's illness that the practice of treating the suffragettes as first class misdemeanants had been abandoned. On the promotion of Mr. Asquith a general move up to better paid and more important post took place in the cabinet. According to the constitutional law of the country the newcomers into the cabinet were obliged to vacate their seats and to offer themselves for reelection. At the same time there were three elevations from the lower to the upper house curtailing a choice of new representatives in the commons by the constituencies for which the new peers had sat. Two vacancies also occurred owing to deaths and Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's own seat at Stirling Burroughs was soon vacant. Something almost like a miniature general election was therefore sprung upon the country and the suffragettes were compelled to marshal their forces simultaneously in no fewer than nine constituencies. The election at Northwest Manchester where a vigorous campaign was organized in opposition to Mr. Winston Churchill who was endeavoring to obtain the people sanctioned to his appointment as president of the Board of Trade was the most hardly fought and aroused the greatest interest. It was the scene of the first anti-government struggle during which Mr. Churchill had angrily declared that he was being hand-picked but the women had no need to go around to his meetings now as they had done then in order to attract public attention to their cause for all Manchester was now wanting to hear about it. The suffragettes had but to arrange their own meetings and the Manchester Guardian itself was ready to publish a detailed list of them in its columns. Mr. Churchill himself cabinet minister though he was to be could not obtain such crowded audiences as these suffragettes. At the same time many liberal women dissatisfied with the behavior of the government and profoundly distressed full of Mr. Asquith held almost entirely aloof from the contest while Miss Margaret Ashton, one of the most prominent publicly stated that she would work no more for the Liberal Party until the Liberal Party were prepared to give her a vote. The Manchester Guardian woefully deplored these defections declaring that the women's liberal associations were deprived in a large measure of their natural leaders and tended to become as sheep without a shepherd and Mr. Churchill now began to realize that the women's opposition was a serious matter. Therefore asked that an election meeting on April 15th what he intended to do to help women to obtain the parliamentary franchise Mr. Churchill made the following statement. I will try my best as and when occasion offers because I do think sincerely that the women have always had a logical case and they have now got behind them a great popular demand amongst women. It is no longer a movement of a few extravagant and excitable people but one which is gradually spreading to all classes of women and that being so, it assumes the same character as franchise movements have previously assumed. Some people thought that the suffragettes would be satisfied with Mr. Churchill's promise to use his influence and would accordingly withdraw their opposition to his return but Christabel Pankhurst had once addressed a letter to the Manchester press explaining that the WSPU would be satisfied with nothing less than a definite understanding from the Prime Minister and the government as a whole that the equal women's enfranchisement bill would be carried into law without delay. When polling began at eight o'clock on the morning of April 25th the suffragettes took their places at the entrance to the booth in the midst of a heavy snowstorm and remained there in spite of it throughout the day. The excitement which had been growing as the contest progressed was not confined to the poor members of the electorate but spread in all its force to the candidates themselves and one of the suffragettes was able to tell that when Mr. Churchill drove past the polling booth at which she was stationed he stood up in his open carriage shouting and shaking his fist at her. During the counting of the votes huge crowds assembled in Albert Square outside the town hall and inside there was a large gathering of the more favored persons. With pallid face the future cabinet minister walked feverishly up and down the room and when the figures were announced and it was known that Mr. Johnson Hicks had defeated him by a majority of 429 votes. These suffragettes, although they were his opponents could not refrain from pitying him for he burst into tears and hid his face on his mother's breast. As he passed out of the room Mrs. Drummond always eager and embulsive darted up to him and laying her hand on his arm said, it is the women that have done this Mr. Churchill. You will understand now that we must have our vote.  Meanwhile Mr. Johnson Hicks was outside thanking the electors who had returned him to parliament and in the course of his remarks he said, I acknowledge the assistance I have received from those ladies who are sometimes laughed at but who I think will now be feared by Mr. Churchill, these suffragists. These words were received with cheers. Next day all the newspapers were discussing Mr. Churchill's defeat and amongst others the Manchester Guardian, Liberal, the Daily News, Liberal, the Morning Leader, Liberal, the Daily Mirror, Conservative, the Daily Telegraph, Conservative, the Daily Chronicle, Liberal and the Standard, Conservative admitted that this was largely due to the opposition of the suffragettes whilst the Daily News now called upon the Liberal Party to bring this state of affairs to an end by granting the suffrage to women. Of course it was a foregone conclusion that a safe seat would now be found for Mr. Churchill and that of Dundee, which happened to be vacant was immediately offered to him. On his accepting the invitation, the suffragettes armies hastened north to oppose him and Mrs. Panker has held a great meeting in the Kinaird Hall on the evening before his arrival. One of Mr. Churchill's first acts on reaching the constituency was to address a gathering of Liberal women for he was determined to make every effort to secure their help in counteracting the influence of the suffragettes. Instead of expatiating on the greatness of the general principles of his party and calling upon his hearers to support him on those grounds, as politicians had been want to do in the past, he dealt almost entirely with votes for women saying that there was a general demand for the suffrage on the part of a very large body of women throughout the country and that the question had now come into the arena of practical politics. He asked to be considered as a friend of the movement and added, no one can be blind to the fact that the next general election, women's suffrage will be a real practical issue and the next parliament, I think, ought to see the gratification of the women's claims. I do not exclude the possibility of the suffrage being dealt with in this parliament. He refused, however, to give any pledge that those in power would take action. He went on to describe these suffragettes as hornets and presumably referring to the by-election at Peckham, he said, I have seen with regret some of the most earnest advocates of the cause aligned themselves with the forces of drink and reaction carried shoulder high, so I am informed by the rowdy elements which are always to be found at the tail of a public house-made agitation. Mr. Churchill's slanderous innuendos in regard to the women's campaign at Peckham were not considered worthy of notice by the WSPU, but Ms. Maloney, a high-spirited young member of the Women's Freedom League who had also taken part in that particular by-election, determined that she would force him to withdraw what he had said. At his next open-air meeting, she appeared brandishing a large muffin bell and warned him that unless he would apologize to the woman, she would not let him speak.  The Women's Social and Political Union regretted this action because at by-elections they preferred to fight the government with argument alone, but the Freedom League upheld Ms. Maloney and she continued to make it impossible for Mr. Churchill to speak in the open. On the eve of the poll, it came to a pitched battle between them in which Ms. Maloney triumphed. It had been arranged that Mr. Churchill should address a meeting at the gasworks and Lebel Maloney, as she was afterwards nicknamed, was speaking at the gates when he appeared. As before, she at once called upon him to apologize, but without answering, he passed on to enter the gates. She followed and though Mr. Churchill's friend strove to prevent her entering, the crowd swept her into the yard. She had lost her bell in the rush, but quite undaunted, she darted into the shed where the meeting was to take place and whilst Mr. Churchill mounted a bench to address the workman, Ms. Maloney climbed up onto a pile of boxes directly opposite him. Again she called for the apology, but he remained silent and the crowd burst into shouts and yells. At last, as the noise grew, the manager of the gasworks, a supporter of the government shouted out, hands up all those who want to hear Mr. Churchill. A few hands, half a dozen or so, were all that were raised and seeing this Ms. Maloney cried. Now friends, who wants to hear me and when a great forest of hands shot up in answer, she pressed home her advantage saying, gentlemen, the resolution has been put to the meeting and by a large majority, it has been decided in my favor. Then she went on to explain what she had come for, but in the midst of her words, Mr. Churchill jumped up and repeated his earlier statement in a modified form. For some time, she and the future cabinet minister continued shouting at each other through the uproar of the crowd. At last, white with rage, he turned tail and left the meeting to her. Thus, as the paper said, the amazing episode concluded. Meanwhile, the woman's social and political union had been holding some 200 large and enthusiastic meetings in the constituency each week and on the eve of the poll, they wound up with five monster demonstrations, four of which were in the open air and the fifth in the drill hall. Though the bulk of the press throughout the country referred to give greater space to the account of the incident between Mr. Churchill and Miss Maloney with her bell, glowing accounts of these WSPU meetings appeared in the Dundee papers. The referee for May 3rd also said, the women are doing wonderful election work and not getting half the credit for it that they deserve. Our wayward Winnie does not underestimate them as a fighting force. The war song of the conquering Christabelle to the worst at Churchill is Bonnie Dundee. And a tremble falls wig in the midst of your glee. You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me. It was perhaps to guard against any falling off in the liberal majority that on May 7th, two days before the Dundee poll, Mr. Asquith announced in the House of Commons that the establishment of old age pensions was to be the outstanding feature of the forthcoming budget. On polling day May 9th, liberal men and women stood beside the suffragettes at the polling booth with handbills which were adapted from those of the suffragettes and read vote for Churchill and nevermind the women and put Churchill in and keep the women out. As had been a foregone conclusion, Mr. Churchill was returned by a large majority, but he received more than 2,000 votes fewer than Mr. Robertson, his predecessor, had done at the last election. And whilst 50% of the recorded votes had been cast for Mr. Robertson, Mr. Churchill only received 44% of the total and therefore represented a minority of the electors. The figures were, note 26, Mr. Winston Churchill, liberal, 7,079, Sir G. Baxter, unionist, 4,370, Mr. G. H. Stewart, labor, 4,014, Mr. E. Scry-Major, prohibitionist, 655. At the general election, the figures had been, Mr. E. Robertson, liberal, 9,276, Mr. Alex Wilkie, labor, 6,833, Mr. Henry Robson, liberal, 6,122, Mr. E. Shackleton, unionist, 3,865, Mr. A. D. Smith, conservative, 3,185. The results of the other elections which had been fought meanwhile were as follows, Dewsbury polling day, April 23rd, Mr. W. Runciman, liberal, 5,594, Mr. W. B. Carpenter, conservative, 4,078, Mr. B. Turner, labor, 2,446, liberal majority, 1,516. The figures at the general election had been, Mr. W. Runciman, liberal, 6,764, Mr. W. B. Carpenter, conservative, 2,954, Mr. B. Turner, labor, 2,629, liberal majority, 3,810, King Cardinus Scher, polling, April 25th, the Honorable A. Murray, liberal, 3,361, Mr. S. G. Gannel, conservative, 1,963, liberal majority, 1,698. At the general election, the figures had been, Mr. W. J. Cromby, liberal, 3,877, Mr. S. J. Gannel, conservative, 1,524, liberal majority, 2,353, Wolver Hampton East, polling day, May 5th, Mr. G. Thorn, liberal, 4,514, Mr. L. S. Amery, conservative, 4,506, liberal majority, 8. At the general election, the figures had been, Sir H. Fowler, liberal, 5,610, Mr. L. S. Amery, conservative, 2,745, liberal majority, 2,865, Montrose Burroughs, polling day, May 12th, Mr. R. V. Harcourt, liberal, 3,083, Mr. Burgess, labor, 1,937, Mr. A. H. B. Constable, conservative, 1,576, liberal majority, 1,146. At the general election, the figures had been, Mr. J. Morley, liberal, 4,416, Colonel Sprott, conservative, 1,922, liberal majority, 2,494. In the batch of by-elections, which had occurred since Mr. Asquith had become Prime Minister, most of them, as a consequence of the change in the ministerial leadership, the government had therefore suffered a reduction of 6,663 votes, or more than 18% of the total liberal poll recorded in the same constituencies at the general election of 1906. Though the party leaders denied that the suffragette campaign had affected any of the election results, there were few who had really worked in the elections who believed this, and only cabinet ministers, newspaper editors, and the suffragettes themselves could form any impression of the large number of influential people who were writing to one or other of those three agencies to say so. At the same time, a growing spirit of disaffection towards the government was showing itself amongst liberal women, and Ms. Florence Balgarni's declaration that they had been hewers of wood and drawers of water for the liberal party too long, and that they must now look out for themselves, found a wide echo. An ominous resolution had now been set down on the agenda for the Women's Liberal Federation Conference on behalf of the Cuckfield Association, which stated that unless women's suffrage is granted before the dissolution of parliament, the time will have arrived for a definite refusal on the part of the liberal woman to work at parliamentary elections. These things doubtless led Mr. Asquith to receive on May 20th a deputation of liberal members of parliament who urged him to grant the few days required for the carrying into law of Mr. Stanger's Women's and Franchisement Bill, which earlier in the session had already passed its second reading by so large a majority. In reply, Mr. Asquith said that he himself did not wish to see women and franchised, and that it was impossible for the government to give any time for Mr. Stanger's bill, but he added, barring accidents I regarded as a duty, indeed a binding obligation on this government before the present parliament comes to an end to bring in a really effective scheme for the reform of our electoral system. Having referred to what he considered to be the defects in the existing electoral provisions, dwelling especially on that of plural voting, he explained that, though the government intended to introduce a reform bill, woman's suffrage was to have no place in it, but that when the bill had been laid before the House, those members of parliament who believed in giving votes to women might move an amendment to that effect. If this were done, he did not consider it would be any of the government's duty to oppose such an amendment because two-thirds of the cabinet were of the opinion that women should vote. But though Mr. Asquith began by stating that the government would not oppose the amendment if it were approved by the House of Commons, he went on to attach certain conditions to this promise. These were that any proposed woman's suffrage amendment must be on democratic lines and it must clearly have behind it the support, the strong and undoubted support of the women of the country as well as of the present electorate. Christabel Pankhurst at once exposed the unsatisfactory nature of Mr. Asquith's statement through the medium of the press. She pointed out that he had not shown sufficient reason for his refusal to give facilities for the discussion of the woman's enfranchisement bill and recalled the fact that after the second reading of the woman's bill had been carried, a London Electoral Reform Bill had been introduced by a private member and that the government had promised to carry this latter bill into law if it should pass the second reading. The House had, however, rejected the London Electoral Bill and at the time which the government had designed to give that measure might therefore be handed over to the votes for women bill. In regard to the details of Mr. Asquith's promise, she explained that women could not wait contentedly for the introduction of the proposed reform bill because, as Mr. Asquith had himself foreshadowed, in his words, barring accidents, some unforeseen turn of events might precipitate a general election before it had been introduced. Even if the reform bill were actually laid before parliament, the position of the government with regard to woman's enfranchisement was far from satisfactory. Apart from the fact that their refusal to make this question a part of the original reform bill was certainly insulting to women, the promise not to oppose an amendment moved by a private member and carried by the House of Commons could not be relied on because two conditions had been attached to it. The first condition was that it should be framed on democratic lines. But Mr. Asquith had not defined the term democratic and there was reason to fear that the government intended to resist the proposal to enfranchise women on the terms applying to men voters to which a majority of the House of Commons had pledged itself. Mr. Asquith was an anti-suffragist and according to the vague form of his statement, it was open to him to object to any and every amendment except one that was of so broad a nature that it could scarcely pass the House of Commons and would certainly be thrown out by the House of Lords. The second condition was that the women of the country and the present electorate should show their strong and undoubted desire for a measure of women's enfranchisement. But Mr. Asquith had neglected to indicate how this desire should be expressed. The women's social and political union contended that the women had already by demonstrating, petitioning and going to prison for their cause shown a very strong and very earnest desire for the franchise and that the electors in the by-elections had also shown their belief in the justice of votes for women.  Even if, in spite of all obstacles, the women's suffrage amendment were safely carried and secured a place in the reform bill, the bill itself was certain to prove a highly controversial measure. It was to deal with many other electoral questions besides that of women's suffrage and if, as was only too probable, it were shipwrecked upon one of these, the women's claim to vote would go down with the rest. The opinion of Christabel Pankhurst and that of the other leaders of the women's social and political union appeared in the press next morning and in the conservative papers there were other warnings. The standard plainly said, of course Mr. Asquith did not intend to carry such a change. But most of the liberal papers upheld, Mr. Asquith. The Daily News called for a cessation of the militant tactics of the suffragettes and referring to Christabel's objection said, a more mature and experienced leader than Miss Christabel Pankhurst would have understood that the pledge which Mr. Asquith has given is quite exceptionally definite and binding. The star said, the meaning of Mr. Asquith's pledge is plain, women's suffrage will be passed through the House of Commons before the present government goes to the country. Events have already proved how rightly Christabel and the other suffragette leaders had summed up the situation, for two general elections had since come and gone and still women remain unenfranchised and the promised reform bill has not yet been introduced. But at the time only too many women were deceived by Mr. Asquith's false promise. Lady Carlisle presided over the liberal women's conference which met next morning. This is a glorious day of rejoicing, she cried. Our great Prime Minister, all honored to him, has opened a way to us by which we can enter into that inheritance from which we have been too long debarred. She swept the majority of the women onward with her. A resolution of deepest gratitude to Mr. Asquith and the cabinet was carried with every sign of enthusiastic joy and the Cuckfield resolution was lost by an overwhelming majority. Whilst the liberal women were thus thanking the Prime Minister for his worthless pledge, another body of women were striving to expose his insincerity. For before 10 o'clock that morning, the member of the Women's Freedom League were at the door of number 10 Downing Street, armed with a petition asking for an assurance either that the government would give facilities for the passing of a women's suffrage measure or would promise to include women's suffrage in a general government reform bill to be introduced before the end of the parliament. Mr. Asquith refused to give an answer and sent out police to clear the women away. Eventually they were arrested and sent to prison from seven to 21 days. Meanwhile, at Sterling Burroughs, the last of the recent series of by-elections, the liberals were using Mr. Asquith's false promise to counteract the influence of the suffragettes. The Women's Freedom League had wasted no time in making their protest to expose it and the Women's Social and Political Union had also proclaimed it to be worthless but polling was already taking place and on every newspaper placard appeared the words, Premier's Great Reform Bill, Votes for Women, and there was no time for the suffragettes to undeceive the people. When the result of the poll was declared, it was found that the liberal majority of 630 that had been cast with a late prime minister in the general election had been more than doubled. The actual liberal poll had also increased from 2,715 to 3,873. Thus the constant falling off in the liberal vote which had manifested itself through so many elections was suddenly checked. Mr. Asquith's promise had done its work at the Sterling by-election and had secured the loyalty of the liberal women for another year. On Wednesday, May 27th, just a week after the day on which it had been given to the deputation of liberal members who supported women's suffrage, Mr. Asquith was questioned in the House of Commons by Mr. Alfred Hutton, a liberal member who was opposed to it. Mr. Hutton asked whether he considered himself pledged to introduce the proposed reform bill during the present parliament, whether in that event he would give an opportunity for raising the question of women's suffrage and whether if a woman's suffrage amendment to the government reform bill were carried, it would then become part of the government policy in relation to the franchise. After some close cross questioning in which he had tried hard to evade the point, Mr. Asquith finally replied, my honorable friend has asked me a contingent question with regard to a remote and speculative future. Thus was the hollowness of the vaunted pledge exposed. The liberal papers still called upon the women to support the cabinet, but in spite of this, they showed that they found it difficult to uphold the trickery of their leader and it was the liberal daily chronicle that said, the scale and dexterity of the prime minister in parrying embarrassing questions was much admired but not a few loyal supporters of the government felt that the occasion was one that demanded candor rather than a draughtness. Footnotes, 26. At the general election there were two seats to be contested and every elector had two votes but he might only give one vote to each candidate. End of chapter 12. Chapter 13 of the Suffragette, the history of the woman's militant suffrage movement by E. Sylvia Pankhurst. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 13. June, 1908. How Mr. Gladstone's challenge was accepted. The procession of 13,000 suffragists on June 13th. The great Hyde Park demonstration on the 21st of June and the demonstration of protest in Parliament Square on June 30th. The time was now approaching when the women were to take up Mr. Gladstone's challenge to them to show that they could rival the great franchise demonstrations which men had held in demanding the three reform acts of 1832, 1867 and 1885. In the autumn of 1907, long before the challenge had been made, the women's social and political union had determined to hold a record meeting in Hyde Park on Sunday, June 21st, 1908. The greatest meeting that had ever yet been held there was said to have numbered 72,000 but it was determined that at the woman's demonstration there must be gathered at least a quarter of a million people. The organization of this great project was the work of many months and a large part of this fell to the share of our devoted treasurer, Mrs. Pethic Lawrence, her husband and Mrs. Drummond who now began to be called our general. Mr. Lawrence carefully thought out the scheme for the seven great processions which were to march into Hyde Park by seven separate gates. To Mrs. Pethic Lawrence was primarily due the introduction of the colors, purple, white and green, which the union now adopted for its own. The colors at once secured a most amazing popular success for although they were not even thought of until the middle of May before the month of June arrived they were known throughout the length and breadth of the land, note 27. As treasurer of the union, Mrs. Lawrence bore upon her shoulders the special responsibility of meeting the very heavy cost of the demonstration as well as the other great expenses which were now being incurred but that magnetic power of hers which had hitherto proved so invaluable to the movement was as infallible as ever. Whatever the sum she asked, it was immediately paid down. To make the forthcoming demonstrations known to everyone an immense poster measuring 13 feet by 10 feet containing the photographs of the 20 women who were to preside at the 20 platforms from which the audience was to be addressed as well as a map showing the route of each of the seven processions and a plan of the meeting place in Hyde Park was displayed upon the hoardings in London and all the principal provincial towns at a cost to the union of more than 1,000 pounds. Our organizers stationed in various parts of the country arranged for 30 special trains to run from 70 different towns in order to carry contingents of women demonstrators from the various provincial centers. At the same time London itself was systematically organized for the demonstration. My experiences as organizer of the Chelsea district which included also Fulham and Wandsworth are vividly present with me as I write. At many of the open air pitches from which we then spoke no woman's suffrage meetings had ever been held before but wherever we went our experiences were in their main essentials always the same. Our first meeting was usually almost totally a fight to subdue a continued uproar. On more than one occasion the little box of the chair used as a platform was overturned by a gang of hooligan youths and the meeting had to be abandoned but whatever may have happened at the first meeting in a fresh place we always found that at the second meeting the majority of the audience were sympathetic. At the third meeting all was harmony and we were generally seen to our homeward trams or buses by cheering crowds. Those splendid people the suffragettes of Kensington not only contrived to carry on a constant campaign of meetings but at the same time to make all their own banners and bannerettes. In the meantime the national union of women's suffrage societies in conjunction with a number of other organizations had decided to organize a woman's procession and on June 13th a week and a day before the Hyde Park demonstration some 13,000 suffragists assembled on the embankment and marched to the Albert Hall where a meeting was held. It was a striking pageant with its many gorgeous banners richly embroidered in fashion to velvet silks and every kind of beautiful material and the small bannerettes showing as innumerable patches of brilliant and lovely color each one varying both in shape and hue. Seventy of the larger banners had been prepared by the artist's league for women's suffrage. Some were blazoned with the figures of women great in history amongst them, Bodicea, Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth. Others bore emblems commemorating women's heroic deeds or reforming achievements. Elizabeth Frye, Lydia Becker and Mary Wollstone Kraft being amongst those recalled. Walking in the procession were many of Lydia Becker's comrades and contemporaries including the aged Miss Emily Davies, Dr. Garrett Anderson and her sister, Mrs. Fawcett the president of the National Union of Suffrage Societies. After these came a contingent of international suffragists Australians, Americans with their stars and stripes headed by Dr. Anna Shaw and representatives from Hungary, Russia, South Africa and other countries each with their national flags and colors. The professional women were led by Mrs. Ayrton and other scientists and a great band of medical women in their splendid robes of crimson and black with hoods of purple, red and blue. Other graduates followed and the representatives of Newnham and Gertan were in great force. Amongst the women writers headed by the Scribner's banner were Beatrice Harriden, Elizabeth Robbins and Evelyn Sharp. Then came the artist, the actresses. Next the nurses all in uniform and after these a host of others, gardeners, pharmacists, physical trainers, typists and shorthand writers, shop assistants, factory workers and home makers. Next came the militant women's freedom league, the women's cooperative guild, the National Union of Women Workers and the members of various women's organizations connected with the political parties including the women's liberal associations and the women of the independent labor party and the Fabian society. All together the procession was acknowledged to be the most picturesque and effective political pageant that had ever been seen in this country and every newspaper spoke of its impressive dignity and beauty. Now the women's social and political union and all whom they could present to their service were busily engaged on a 10 days crusade for the winding up of the Hyde Park demonstration campaign. How the women worked. They held innumerable meetings. They went out canvassing from door to door. They stood in the streets with flags and posters. They distributed handbills broadcast, chalked announcements upon the pavements and met the workmen's trains to give out little purple, white and green mock railway tickets, a million of which had been printed. On the Thursday evening before the demonstration Mrs. Drummond and a dozen other members of the union set sail for the houses of parliament in a steam launch decorated with banners and posters announcing the demonstration. At the little tables on the terrace many members including Mr. Lloyd George were entertaining their lady friends at afternoon tea when the sound of a band playing heralded the suffragettes arrival. Everyone crowded to the water's edge as the boat stopped and Mrs. Drummond began to speak. She invited all members of parliament and especially cabinet ministers to join the women's procession to Hyde Park on the 21st of June assuring them that it was their duty to inform themselves as to the feelings of the people. She tweeted the government who were supposed to be democratic with remaining always behind barred gates under the protection of the police and urged, come to the park on Sunday. You shall have police protection there also and we promise you that there shall be no arrests. The members appeared both pleased and interested and many more came flocking out to listen but somebody, a waiter it was said, hurriedly telephoned to the police and in a few moments Inspector Scantlebury with a number of officers appeared on the terrace whilst at the same time one of the police boats hoe in sight. Seeing this the suffragettes steamed away. On Sunday the 21st we were busy early in the morning for the processions were to start between one and two. The people who were expected to begin to assemble at least a couple of hours before that time. All London seemed to have turned out to see us and all along the Chelsea embankment which was thronged with people were coffee stands, costar mongers and hawkers selling badges and programs in the purple, white and green. When the moment for starting came our Chelsea procession numbered some 7,000 people but the dense crowds of bystanders marched with us too and grew in a countless number as we moved along so that instead of one procession we had formed three. The central one being composed almost entirely of women wearing white dresses and scarves of purple, white and green and carrying banners in the same colors. The whole road was filled with people moving with us and from balconies, windows and tops of buses people cheered and waved. The same thing was happening in each of the other six districts. At the head of each procession rode policemen on horseback and numbers of constables walked on either side of the ranks in order to keep the way clear. 6,000 police in all accompanied the seven processions the police authorities being most helpful and courteous toward us throughout the arrangements. In Hyde Park, the railings for over a quarter of a square mile had been taken up for us in order to add a further open space to that which is usually open in the neighborhood of the reformers tree. In the center of this meeting ground a furniture van was stationed to serve as an impromptu conning tower. Those who stood there watching saw first the fine procession from Marlebone with great crowds marching in on either side sweep into the quiet grassy space and then one after another from the seven different gates the rest of the seven processions with their accompanying armies come streaming in. Before we arrived from Chelsea the whole ground was a surging mass of people and it was with difficulty that we made our way to the platform which had been reserved for us. Once we gained it we clambered hastily on to our lorry and looked around with wondering and astonished gaze. As far as the eye could reach was one vast mass of human beings. Not black as crowds usually are but colored like a great bed of flowers because of the thousands and thousands of women all dressed in the lightest and daintiest of summer garments whilst even the men had most of them come out in cool grays and were wearing straw hats. Over the whole of the area there was to be seen not a single blade of grass. Who could attempt to estimate the number of people that were present? They were innumerable. They defied calculation and there was no one of us who had ever imagined that we should see so many people gathered together. The sky was a perfect blue. The sun poured down on us. Everyone seemed to be in a holiday mood just as they were in holiday dress and during the time in which the people waited for the speakers to begin perfect good humor rained. Then bugles were sounded from the conning tower and the speeches at each of the 20 platforms began. Probably less than half the people could hear the speakers but that was of small account. They had come here to show their sympathy with votes for women and to take part in the greatest demonstration the world had ever seen and if they stood there the whole of the afternoon without catching a single sentence they had been well rewarded. At most of the platforms there was nothing but the kindliest sympathy except at the platforms of Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel were a number of rowdy and ignorant young men attempted to prevent the speakers from being heard. At five o'clock the bugle sounded and the resolution calling upon the government to give votes to women without delay was put and carried at every platform in most cases without dissent. Then the bugle was heard again and the cry, one, two, three and the assembled multitude as they had been asked to do shouted, votes for women, three times and then that great and a wonderful gathering began slowly to disperse. Next morning every newspaper devoted long columns to the demonstration. In the course of a long descriptive account the special correspondent of the time said, its organizers had counted on an audience of 250,000. That expectation was certainly fulfilled and probably it was doubled and it would be difficult to contradict anyone who asserted that it was troubled. Like the distances and numbers of the stars the facts were beyond the threshold of perception. The standard said, from first to last it was a great meeting daringly conceived spendedly stage managed and successfully carried out. Hyde Park has probably never seen a greater crowd of people. The Daily News said, there is no combination of words which will convey an adequate idea of the immensity of the crowd around the platforms. The Daily Express. The woman suffragists provided London yesterday with one of the most wonderful and astonishing sites that have ever been seen since the days of bodicea. It is probable that so many people never before stood in one square mass anywhere in England. Men who saw the great Gladstone meeting years ago said that compared with yesterday's multitude it was as nothing. The Daily Chronicle said, never on the admission of the most experienced observers has so vast a throng gathered in London to witness an outlay of political force. After the great meeting was over its organizers returned to Clements Inn and Christabel Pankhurst immediately wrote to the Prime Minister forwarding the resolution that this meeting calls upon the government to grant votes to women without delay which had just been carried by that great gathering. At the same time she asked what action the government would take in response to the demand. Mr. Asquith replied that he had nothing to add to the statement the so-called promise of a reform bill which he had made to the deputation of members of parliament on May 20th. The wonderful Hyde Park demonstration the greatest meeting that had ever been held and the impressive procession of the woman societies both of which had been held within a few days space had therefore it seemed made no impression upon the government. Seeing therefore that to argue further would be a mere waste of time the women's social and political union immediately decided to take action. Hitherto through all the hard battles which the suffragettes had fought outside the House of Commons they had never asked the general public to come to their aid but now that the great people's demonstration in Hyde Park had been thus contemptuously ignored it was decided to call upon both men and women to attend another monster meeting on June 30th to be held this time in Parliament Square in order that the government could not fail to see. The commissioner of police replied by issuing a warning to the public not to meet in Parliament Square on the ground that danger would necessarily arise from the assembling of a large number of persons in that restricted area through which the way must be kept for members of Parliament. Meanwhile the WSBU again and again urged Mr. Asquith to receive a deputation but he still refused and at last he was informed that the deputation would start from the women's parliament on June 30th and would wait upon him at the House of Commons at half past four that afternoon. Once more he returned a refusal to see the women but Mrs. Pankhurst herself replied as their leader that the deputation would arrive at the appointed hour. Next day Mrs. Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethic Lawrence and 11 other women set out from the Caxton Hall. At the main entrance of the building Superintendent Wells was waiting with the body of some 20 constables and at his orders as soon as the 13 women had emerged the doors were locked and even the pressmen begged in vain to be released. Then the superintendent constituted himself the leader and protector of the deputation and led them quickly through the cheering crowds who pressed forward pushing and struggling to catch a glimpse of the little band of women. Straight up Victoria Street he led them and right to the door of the stranger's entrance where they were met by the burly and familiar form of Inspector Scattlebury surrounded by his minions. He stepped forward and addressed Mrs. Pankhurst gravely. Are you Mrs. Pankhurst and is this your deputation? He asked. She answered yes and he said I have orders to exclude you from the House of Commons. Has Mr. Asquith received my letter? She questioned him in turn and replying yes the inspector drew the document from his pocket adding in response to a further inquiry that Mr. Asquith had sent no message of any kind by way of reply. Then Inspector Scattlebury turned away and walked into the house leaving behind him a strong force of police to guard the door. For an instant or two the women stood there baffled but they had to remember the resolve that this effort to interview the prime minister should be entirely peaceful. Moreover there was the mass meeting of the evening. They therefore merely turned and made their way back to the Caxton Hall. Meanwhile larger and larger crowds were flocking towards Parliament from every direction and long before eight o'clock the time at which they had been asked to assemble it was estimated by the newspapers that more than 100,000 people had collected in Parliament Square. The police had made the most extensive preparations to prevent any meeting being held and it was said that more than 5,000 ordinary constables and upwards of 50 mounted men had been requisitioned for this purpose. When at eight o'clock the women sallied forth in groups from the Caxton Hall to speak to the great multitude that had assembled in response to their appeal the scene was already becoming turbulent. There were no platforms to speak from and it would have been useless to provide them for the police would instantly have dragged them from the ground. But it is possible to hold a meeting without official sanction and to make speeches without platforms and the woman bravely essayed the task. Some of them clung to the railings of the palace yard to raise themselves above the crowd. Others mounted the steps of the offices in broad sanctuary. Others, the steps of the government buildings at the top of Parliament Street opposite the Abbey whilst others again merely spoke from the pavement wherever and whenever the police would cease for an instant from driving them along. Every woman who attempted to speak was torn by the harrying constables from the spot where she had found a foothold and was either hurled aside and flung into the dense masses that were being kept constantly on the move or placed under arrest. Meanwhile, the crowd was always surging and swaying forward shouting out mingled cheers and jeers. Some groups of the men stood with linked arms around the women who were striving to make speeches. Bodies of others pushed little bands of suffragettes forward against the rows of constables with cries of, votes for women, we'll get you to the House of Commons and back up the women and push them through. Again and again the police lines were broken and again and again the mounted men charged and beat the people back. Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, Lord Roseberry and other members of both houses stood in Palace Yard and near the stranger's entrance watching the scene. As it became dark, the disorder grew and gangs of roughs who supported neither the government nor the women kept making concerted rushes sweeping the rest of the people on before them, absolutely heedless of trampling others underfoot. In some cases, isolated women were surrounded by them and with difficulty rescued from their ill treatment by the soberer and more respectable members of the gathering. But, undaunted either by violence from the roughs or from the police, these suffragettes, though their slight frames were bruised and almost worn out by the constant battering of those who were so much heavier, stronger and more numerous than themselves still continued to address the throng. Every woman who was arrested was followed to the police station by a stream of cheering people and was saluted with raised hats and waving handkerchiefs. As Mr. Asquith passed from the House of Commons to Downing Street in his motor car, he was hooded by the crowd. He arrived home to find his windows broken for Mrs. Lee and Mrs. New had driven swiftly past the guardian policeman at the entrance to the street in a taxi cab and had each thrown two small stones through two of the lower windows of number 10 before an arm of the law had been stretched out to drag them away to cannon row. Meanwhile, Miss Mary Phillips had endeavored to dash into the House of Commons by way of palace yard in the midst of a little company of parliamentary waitresses but halfway across the yard had been seized and dragged back. Miss Lena Lambert had chartered a little rowing boat and had set off in the darkness to reach the house from the riverside. Crowds of members were lounging on the lighted terrace that hot summer's night when she and her little craft appeared out of the darkness to urge them to determine that the simple measure of justice which was being so hardly fought for should be carried into law. But not many words had she spoken when the police boat swooped down on her and she was towed away lest she should irritate and annoy the people's representatives by telling them of the battle whose dull roar and nothing could shut out. So the night wore on and that weary fight continued. Not until 12 o'clock did the police at last succeed in clearing the streets and it was then found that 29 women had been arrested. Next morning, 27 of the women were brought up at Westminster Police Court before the magistrate, Mr. Francis, and were charged with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. With the usual callous haste, their trial was hurried through. The magistrate had always had all the political rights that he cared to use and would not trouble to imagine what it is like to be without them. He testily brushed aside the defense of the women that the government had driven them to adopt these methods of obtaining the franchise and that Mr. Asquith, by his ignoring of the great Hyde Park demonstration, had taught them once and for all the uselessness of peaceful propaganda. The sentences ranged from one to three months imprisonment in the Second Division. Mrs. Lee and Ms. New were dealt with separately at Bow Street, but as this was not generally expected, very few people were present. In the dimly lighted court with the magistrate and his high back chair regarding them sternly from deep cavernous eyes, the two little women in the great dock with its heavy iron railings looked strangely forlorn. What dreadful sentence we wondered was in store for these, the first of the suffragettes to deliberately throw stones. Mr. Musket, in prosecuting them for doing willful damage to the value of 10 shillings of the Prime Minister's residence, spoke of them with extreme harshness, urging that they should be sent to prison without the option of a fine. Though the magistrate rebuked the women for the methods they had adopted, we felt that he was impressed by their demeanor and that he was loathed to sentence them. He ordered that they should go to prison for two months in the Third Division without the option of a fine. The sentence was heavy enough, but lighter than we had feared in view of the fact that many of the other women were to remain in prison for three months. When the House of Commons met on the same afternoon, several members of every party in the house asked as they had done on previous occasions that the women should be treated as political offenders. As before, however, Mr. Gladstone sheltered himself behind the statement which nobody believed that the magistrate was alone responsible for placing the women in the Second and Third Divisions and that he himself had no power to interfere. On the morning after the raid, the newspapers had mostly contented themselves with rebuking the women for what they had done and by Mr. Gladstone's refusal to mitigate the rigors of the prison treatment. The country was now overwhelmed by one of those terribly oppressive heatwaves which come upon us suddenly from time to time and are born with such difficulty in our usually temperate climate and they're gradually leaked out from Holloway accounts of the suffragist women fainting in the exercise yards and being seized with illness in their cells. Note 28. There happened to be some cases of measles in the prison hospital and Ms. Elsie Howie, having contracted the disease there, was exceedingly ill for many weeks. All these things combined to focus public attention upon the harsh treatment of the suffragette prisoners. On July 10th, the Manchester Guardian in a leading article said, "'It demands considerable obtuse-ness to believe, "'as some persons apparently do, "'that close confinement in the heat of summer "'or the cold of winter within a solitary "'and unwholesome cell, "'deprival of exercise for 23 hours out of the 24, "'subjection to menial authority, "'ignorance of the welfare of one's friends, "'the performing of dull and alien tasks, "'deprivation of writing materials, "'partial suffocation and the wearing "'of ugly ill-fitting clothing "'that has already been worn by the vilest criminals "'are for delicate and sensitive women "'the elements of a comedy. "'They compose a great and terrible torture "'because they are suffering for an idea "'their stringent imprisonment is indefensible. "'It violates the public conscience "'and the law and the courts cannot wage war "'on the public conscience without forfeiting respect "'and authority.'" Footnotes. 27. Other suffrage societies soon afterwards also adopted colors. The Women's Freedom League shows yellow, white, and green, and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Society's red, white, and green. 28. The efforts of Dr. Mary Gordon, the first lady inspector of prisons who had been appointed during the previous April, admittedly owing to the publicity given to the condition of women in prison by the suffragettes, now secured that when exercising in the future, the women should be provided with cotton sunbonnets. By her advice, the prisoners were also supplied with notebooks and pencils, but the latter privilege was afterwards withdrawn. Eventually she succeeded in abolishing the unsanitary wooden spoon at any rate for suffragette use. End of chapter 13.