My own story
with rage and humiliation. One of them pointed to us, crying: "They did
it! Those women did it!" A yell went up from the crowd, and we were
deluged with a shower of clay and rotten eggs. We were not especially
frightened, but the eggs were unbearable, and to escape them we rushed
into a little grocer's shop close at hand. The grocer's wife closed and
bolted the door, but the poor grocer cried out that his place would be
wrecked. I did not want that to happen, of course, so I asked them to
let us out by the back door. They led us out the door, into a small back
yard which led into a little lane, whence we expected to make our
escape. But when we reached the yard we found that the rowdies,
anticipating our move, had surged round the corner, and were waiting for
us.
They seized Mrs. Martel first, and began beating her over the head with
their fists, but the brave wife of the shopkeeper, hearing the shouts
and the oaths of the men, flung open the door and rushed to our rescue.
Between us we managed to tear Mrs. Martel from her captors and get her
into the house. I expected to get into the house, too, but as I reached
the threshold a staggering blow fell on the back of my head, rough hands
grasped the collar of my coat, and I was flung violently to the ground.
Stunned, I must have lost consciousness for a moment, for my next
sensation was of cold, wet mud seeping through my clothing. Sight
returning to me, I perceived the men, silent now, but with a dreadful,
lowering silence, closing in a ring around me. In the centre of the ring
was an empty barrel, and the horrid thought occurred to me that they
might intend putting me in it. A long time seemed to pass, while the
ring of men slowly drew closer. I looked at them, in their drab clothes
smeared with yellow pit-clay, and they appeared so underfed, so puny and
sodden, that a poignant pity for them swept over me. "Poor souls," I
thought, and then I said suddenly, "Are none of you _men_?" Then one of
the youths darted toward me, and I knew that whatever was going to
happen to me was about to begin.
At that very moment came shouts, and a rush of police who had fought
their way through hostile crowds to rescue us. Of course the mob turned
tail and fled, and I was carried gently into the shop, which the police
guarded for two hours, before it was deemed safe for us to leave in a
closed motor-car. It was many months before either Mrs. Martel or I
recovered from our injuries.
The rowdies, foiled of their woman prey, went to the Conservative Club,
smashed all the windows in the house, and kept the members besieged
there through the night. The next morning the body of a man, frightfully
bruised about the head, was found in the mill-race. Throughout all this
disorder and probable crime, not a man was arrested. Contrast this, if
you like, with the treatment given our women in London.
The King opened Parliament in great state on January 29, 1908. Again his
speech omitted all mention of woman suffrage, and again the W. S. P. U.
issued a call for a Women's Parliament, for February 11th, 12th and
13th. Before it was convened we heard that an excellent place in the
ballot had been won by a friend of the movement, Mr. Stanger, who
promised to introduce a suffrage bill, February 28th was the day fixed
for the second reading, and we realised that strong pressure would have
to be brought to bear to prevent the bill being wrecked, as the
Dickinson bill had been the previous year. Therefore, on the first day
of the Women's Parliament, almost every woman present volunteered for
the deputation, which was to try to carry the resolution to the prime
minister. Led by two well-known portrait painters, the deputation left
Caxton Hall and proceeded in orderly ranks, four abreast, toward the
House of Commons. The crowds in the streets were enormous, thousands of
sympathisers coming out to help the women, thousands of police
determined that the women should not be helped, and thousands of curious
spectators. When the struggle was over, fifty women were locked up in
police-court cells.
The next morning, when the cases were tried, Mr. Muskett, who prosecuted
for the Crown, and who was perhaps a little tired of telling the
Suffragettes that these scenes in the streets must cease, and then
seeing them go on exactly as if he had not spoken, made a very severe
and terrifying address. He told the women that this time they would be
subject to the usual maximum of two months' imprisonment, with the
option of a fine of five pounds, but that, in case they ever offended
again, the law had worse terrors in store for them. It was proposed to
revive, for the benefit of the Suffragettes, an Act passed in the reign
of Charles II, which dealt with "Tumultuous Petitions, either to the
Crown or Parliament." This Act provided that no person should dare to go
to the King or to Parliament "with any petition, complaint,
remonstrance, declaration or other address" accompanied with a number of
persons above twelve. A fine of one hundred pounds, or three months'
imprisonment, might be imposed under this law. The magistrate then
sentenced all but two of the women to be bound over for twelve months,
or to serve six weeks in the second division. Two other women, "old
offenders," were given one month in the third division, or lowest class.
All the prisoners, except two who had very ill relatives at home, chose
the prison sentence.
The next day's session of the Women's Parliament was one of intense
excitement, as the women reviewed the events of the previous day, the
trials, and especially the threat to revive the obsolete Act of Charles
II, an act _which was passed to obstruct the progress of the Liberal
party, which came into existence under the Stuarts, and under the second
Charles was fighting for its life_. It was an amazing thing that the
political descendants of these men were proposing to revive the Act to
obstruct the advance of the women's cause, fighting for its life under
George V and his Liberal government. At least, it was evidence that the
Government were baffled in their attempt to crush our movement.
Christabel Pankhurst, presiding over the second session of the Women's
Parliament, said: "At last it is realized that women are fighting for
freedom, as their fathers fought. If they want twelve women, aye, and
more than twelve, if a hundred women are wanted to be tried under that
act and sent to prison for three months, they can be found."
I was not present at this session, nor had I been present at the first
one. I was working in a by-election at South Leeds, the last of several
important by-elections in great industrial centres, where our success
was unquestioned, except by the Liberal press. The elections had wound
up with a great procession, and a meeting of 100,000 people on Hounslet
Moor. The most wonderful enthusiasm marked that meeting. I shall never
forget what splendid order the people kept, in spite of the fact that no
police protection was given us; how the vast crowd parted to let our
procession through; how the throngs of mill women kept up a chorus in
broad Yorkshire: "Shall us win? Shall us have the vote? We shall!" No
wonder the old people shook their beads, and declared that "there had
never been owt like it."
CHAPTER II
With those brave shouts in my ears, I hurried down to London for the
concluding session of the parliament, for I had determined that I must
be the first person to challenge the Government to carry out their
threat to revive the old Act of Charles II. I made a long speech to the
women that day, telling them something of my experiences of the past
months, and how all that I had seen and heard throughout the country had
only deepened my conviction of the necessity for women's votes. "I
feel," I concluded, "that the time has come when I must act, and I wish
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 had 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."
Amid a good deal of excitement and emotion, we chose the requisite
thirteen women, who were prepared to be arrested and tried under the
Charles II "Tumultuous Petitions" Act. I had not entirely recovered from
the attack made upon me at Mid-Devon, and my wrenched ankle was still
too sensitive to make walking anything but a painful process. Seeing me
begin almost at once to limp badly, Mrs. Drummond, with characteristic,
blunt kindness, called to a man driving a dog-cart and asked him if he
would drive me to the House of Commons. He readily agreed, and I mounted
to the seat behind him, the other women forming in line behind the cart.
We had not gone far when the police, who already surrounded us in great
force, ordered me to dismount. Of course I obeyed and walked, or rather
limped along with my companions. They would have supported me, but the
police insisted that we should walk single-file. Presently I grew so
faint from the pain of the ankle that I called to two of the women, who
took hold of my arms and helped me on my way. This was our one act of
disobedience to police orders. We moved with difficulty, for the crowd
was of incredible size. All around, as far as eye could see, was the
great moving, swaying, excited multitude, and surrounding us on all
sides were regiments of uniformed police, foot and mounted. You might
have supposed that instead of thirteen women, one of them lame, walking
quietly along, the town was in the hands of an armed mob.
We had progressed as far as the entrance to Parliament Square, when two
stalwart policemen suddenly grasped my arms on either side and told me
that I was under arrest. My two companions, because they refused to
leave me, were also arrested, and a few minutes later Annie Kenney and
five other women suffered arrest. That night we were released on bail,
and the next morning we were arraigned in Westminster police court for
trial under the Charles II Act. But, as it turned out, the authorities,
embarrassed by our readiness to test the act, announced that they had
changed their minds, and would continue, for the present, to treat us as
common street brawlers.
This was my first trial, and I listened, with a suspicion that my ears
were playing tricks with my reason, to the most astonishing perjuries
put forth by the prosecution. I heard that we had set forth from Caxton
Hall with noisy shouts and songs, that we had resorted to the most
riotous and vulgar behaviour, knocking off policemen's helmets,
assaulting the officers right and left as we marched. Our testimony, and
that of our witnesses, was ignored. When I tried to speak in my own
defence, I was cut short rudely, and was told briefly that I and the
others must choose between being bound over or going to prison, in the
second division, for six weeks.
I remember only vaguely the long, jolting ride across London to Holloway
Prison. We stopped at Pentonville, the men's prison, to discharge
several men prisoners, and I remember shuddering at the thought of our
women, many of them little past girlhood, being haled to prison in the
same van with criminal men. Arriving at the prison, we groped our way
through dim corridors into the reception-ward, where we were lined up
against the wall for a superficial medical examination. After that we
were locked up in separate cells, unfurnished, except for low, wooden
stools.
It seemed an endless time before my cell door was opened by a wardress,
who ordered me to follow her. I entered a room where another wardress