My own story
the prisoners. A man fired a pistol, endeavouring to break the lock of
the van door. A policeman fell, mortally wounded, and several men were
arrested and were charged with murder. I distinctly remember the riot,
which I did not witness, but which I heard vividly described by my older
brother. I had been spending the afternoon with a young playmate, and my
brother had come after tea to escort me home. As we walked through the
deepening November twilight he talked excitedly of the riot, the fatal
pistol shot, and the slain policeman. I could almost see the man
bleeding on the ground, while the crowd swayed and groaned around him.
The rest of the story reveals one of those ghastly blunders which
justice not infrequently makes. Although the shooting was done without
any intent to kill, the men were tried for murder and three of them were
found guilty and hanged. Their execution, which greatly excited the
citizens of Manchester, was almost the last, if not the last, public
execution permitted to take place in the city. At the time I was a
boarding-pupil in a school near Manchester, and I spent my week-ends at
home. A certain Saturday afternoon stands out in my memory, as on my way
home from school I passed the prison where I knew the men had been
confined. I saw that a part of the prison wall had been torn away, and
in the great gap that remained were evidences of a gallows recently
removed. I was transfixed with horror, and over me there swept the
sudden conviction that that hanging was a mistake--worse, a crime. It
was my awakening to one of the most terrible facts of life--that justice
and judgment lie often a world apart.
I relate this incident of my formative years to illustrate the fact that
the impressions of childhood often have more to do with character and
future conduct than heredity or education. I tell it also to show that
my development into an advocate of militancy was largely a sympathetic
process. I have not personally suffered from the deprivations, the
bitterness and sorrow which bring so many men and women to a realisation
of social injustice. My childhood was protected by love and a
comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began
instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own
home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal.
This vague feeling of mine began to shape itself into conviction about
the time my brothers and I were sent to school. The education of the
English boy, then as now, was considered a much more serious matter than
the education of the English boy's sister. My parents, especially my
father, discussed the question of my brothers' education as a matter of
real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely
discussed at all. Of course we went to a carefully selected girls'
school, but beyond the facts that the head mistress was a gentlewoman
and that all the pupils were girls of my own class, nobody seemed
concerned. A girl's education at that time seemed to have for its prime
object the art of "making home attractive"--presumably to migratory male
relatives. It used to puzzle me to understand why I was under such a
particular obligation to make home attractive to my brothers. We were on
excellent terms of friendship, but it was never suggested to them as a
duty that they make home attractive to me. Why not? Nobody seemed to
know.
The answer to these puzzling questions came to me unexpectedly one night
when I lay in my little bed waiting for sleep to overtake me. It was a
custom of my father and mother to make the round of our bedrooms every
night before going themselves to bed. When they entered my room that
night I was still awake, but for some reason I chose to feign slumber.
My father bent over me, shielding the candle flame with his big hand. I
cannot know exactly what thought was in his mind as he gazed down at me,
but I heard him say, somewhat sadly, "What a pity she wasn't born a
lad."
My first hot impulse was to sit up in bed and protest that I didn't want
to be a boy, but I lay still and heard my parents' footsteps pass on
toward the next child's bed. I thought about my father's remark for many
days afterward, but I think I never decided that I regretted my sex.
However, it was made quite clear that men considered themselves superior
to women, and that women apparently acquiesced in that belief.
I found this view of things difficult to reconcile with the fact that
both my father and my mother were advocates of equal suffrage. I was
very young when the Reform Act of 1866 was passed, but I very well
remember the agitation caused by certain circumstances attending it.
This Reform Act, known as the Household Franchise Bill, marked the first
popular extension of the ballot in England since 1832. Under its terms,
householders paying a minimum of ten pounds a year rental were given the
Parliamentary vote. While it was still under discussion in the House of
Commons, John Stuart Mill moved an amendment to the bill to include
women householders as well as men. The amendment was defeated, but in
the act as passed the word "man," instead of the usual "male person,"
was used. Now, under another act of Parliament it had been decided that
the word "man" always included "woman" unless otherwise specifically
stated. For example, in certain acts containing rate-paying clauses, the
masculine noun and pronoun are used throughout, but the provisions apply
to women rate-payers as well as to men. So when the Reform Bill with the
word "man" in it became law, many women believed that the right of
suffrage had actually been bestowed upon them. A tremendous amount of
discussion ensued, and the matter was finally tested by a large number
of women seeking to have their names placed upon the register as voters.
In my city of Manchester 3,924 women, out of a total of 4,215 possible
women voters, claimed their votes, and their claim was defended in the
law courts by eminent lawyers, including my future husband, Dr.
Pankhurst. Of course the women's claim was settled adversely in the
courts, but the agitation resulted in a strengthening of the
woman-suffrage agitation all over the country.
I was too young to understand the precise nature of the affair, but I
shared in the general excitement. From reading newspapers aloud to my
father I had developed a genuine interest in politics, and the Reform
Bill presented itself to my young intelligence as something that was
going to do the most wonderful good to the country. The first election
after the bill became law was naturally a memorable occasion. It is
chiefly memorable to me because it was the first one in which I ever
participated. My sister and I had just been presented with new winter
frocks, green in colour, and made alike, after the custom of proper
British families. Every girl child in those days wore a red flannel
petticoat, and when we first put on our new frocks I was struck with the
fact that we were wearing red and green--the colours of the Liberal
party. Since our father was a Liberal, of course the Liberal party ought
to carry the election, and I conceived a brilliant scheme for helping
its progress. With my small sister trotting after me, I walked the
better part of a mile to the nearest polling-booth. It happened to be in
a rather rough factory district, but we did not notice that. Arrived
there, we two children picked up our green skirts to show our scarlet
petticoats, and brimful of importance, walked up and down before the
assembled crowds to encourage the Liberal vote. From this eminence we
were shortly snatched by outraged authority in the form of a
nursery-maid. I believe we were sent to bed into the bargain, but I am
not entirely clear on this point.
I was fourteen years old when I went to my first suffrage meeting.
Returning from school one day, I met my mother just setting out for the
meeting, and I begged her to let me go along. She consented, and without
stopping to lay my books down I scampered away in my mother's wake. The
speeches interested and excited me, especially the address of the great
Miss Lydia Becker, who was the Susan B. Anthony of the English movement,
a splendid character and a truly eloquent speaker. She was the secretary
of the Manchester committee, and I had learned to admire her as the
editor of the _Women's Suffrage Journal_, which came to my mother every
week. I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist.
I suppose I had always been an unconscious suffragist. With my
temperament and my surroundings I could scarcely have been otherwise.
The movement was very much alive in the early seventies, nowhere more so
than in Manchester, where it was organised by a group of extraordinary
men and women. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Bright, who were
always ready to champion the struggling cause. Mr. Jacob Bright, a
brother of John Bright, was for many years member of Parliament for
Manchester, and to the day of his death was an active supporter of woman
suffrage. Two especially gifted women, besides Miss Becker, were members
of the committee. These were Mrs. Alice Cliff Scatcherd and Miss
Wolstentholm, now the venerable Mrs. Wolstentholm-Elmy. One of the
principal founders of the committee was the man whose wife, in later
years, I was destined to become, Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst.
When I was fifteen years old I went to Paris, where I was entered as a
pupil in one of the pioneer institutions in Europe for the higher
education of girls. This school, one of the founders of which was Madame
Edmond Adam, who was and is still a distinguished literary figure, was
situated in a fine old house in the Avenue de Neuilly. It was under the
direction of Mlle. Marchef-Girard, a woman distinguished in education,
and who afterward was appointed government inspector of schools in
France. Mlle. Marchef-Girard believed that girls' education should be
quite as thorough and even more practical than the education boys were
receiving at that time. She included chemistry and other sciences in her
courses, and in addition to embroidery she had her girls taught
bookkeeping. Many other advanced ideas prevailed in this school, and the
moral discipline which the pupils received was, to my mind, as valuable
as the intellectual training. Mlle. Marchef-Girard held that women
should be given the highest ideals of honour. Her pupils were kept to
the strictest principles of truth-telling and candour. Myself she
understood and greatly benefited by an implicit trust which I am sure I
could not have betrayed, even had I felt for her less real affection.
My roommate in this delightful school was an interesting young girl of
my own age, Noemie Rochefort, daughter of that great Republican,
Communist, journalist, and swordsman, Henri Rochefort. This was very
shortly after the Franco-Prussian War, and memories of the Empire's
fall and of the bloody and disastrous Commune were very keen in Paris.
Indeed my roommate's illustrious father and many others were then in
exile in New Caledonia for participation in the Commune. My friend
Noemie was torn with anxiety for her father. She talked of him
constantly, and many were the blood-curdling accounts of daring and of
patriotism to which I listened. Henri Rochefort was, in fact, one of the
moving spirits of the Republican movement in France, and after his
amazing escape in an open boat from New Caledonia, he lived through many
years of political adventures of the most lively and picturesque
character. His daughter and I remained warm friends long after our
school-days ended, and my association with her strengthened all the
liberal ideas I had previously acquired.
I was between eighteen and nineteen when I finally returned from school