My own story
at some future time, at a more convenient time, receive them, that would
have been a sufficient answer. The women would not have been justified
in refusing to accept such an answer, because the right to petition must
be exercised reasonably. But the letter contained an unqualified
refusal, and that, if we allow the right of petition to exist, was no
answer at all. Last of all Lord Robert argued that if there is a right
to petition a Member of Parliament, then it must be incumbent on the
part of a Member of Parliament to receive the petition, and that no one
has a right to interfere with the petitioner. If the eight women were
legally justified in presenting their petition, then they were also
justified in refusing to obey the orders of the police to leave the
place.
In an address full of bias, and revealing plainly that he had no
accurate knowledge of any of the events that had led up to the case in
hand, the Lord Chief Justice delivered judgment. He said that he
entirely agreed with Lord Robert Cecil as to the right to present a
petition to the Prime Minister, either as Prime Minister or as a Member
of Parliament; and he agreed also that petitions to the King should be
presented to the Prime Minister. But the claim of the women, he said,
was not merely to present a petition, but to be received in a
deputation. He did not think it likely that Mr. Asquith would have
refused to receive a petition from the women, but his refusal to receive
the deputation was not unnatural, "in consequence of what we know did
happen on previous occasions."[1]
Referring to the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839, which provides that it
shall be lawful for the Commissioner of Police to make regulations and
to give instructions to the constable for keeping order, and for
preventing any obstruction of thoroughfares in the immediate
neighbourhood of the House of Commons, and the Sessional Order
empowering the police to keep clear the approaches to the House of
Commons, the Lord Chief Justice decided that I and the other women were
guilty of an infraction of the law when we insisted on a right to enter
the House of Commons. The Lord Chief Justice therefore ruled that our
conviction in the lower court had been proper, and our appeal was
dismissed with costs.
Thus was destroyed in England the ancient constitutional right of
petition, secured to the people by the Bill of Rights, and cherished by
uncounted generations of Englishmen. I say the right was destroyed, for
of how much value is a petition which cannot be presented in person? The
decision of the high court was appalling to the members of the
W. S. P. U., as it closed the last approach, by constitutional means, to
our enfranchisement. Far from discouraging or disheartening us, it
simply spurred us on to new and more aggressive forms of militancy.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Mr. Asquith had never, since becoming Prime Minister, received a
deputation of women, nor had he ever received a deputation of the W. S.
P. U. So it was absurd of the Lord Chief Justice to speak of "what did
happen, on previous occasions."
CHAPTER V
Between the time of the arrest in June and the handing down of the
absurd decision of the Lord Chief Justice that although we, as subjects,
possessed the right of petition, yet we had committed an offence in
exercising that right, nearly six months had passed. In that interval
certain grave developments had lifted the militant movement onto a new
and more heroic plane. It will be remembered that a week before our
deputation to test the Charles II Act, Miss Wallace Dunlop had been sent
to prison for one month for stamping an extract from the Bill of Rights
on the stone walls of St. Stephen's Hall. On arriving at Holloway on
Friday evening, July 2nd, she sent for the Governor and demanded of him
that she be treated as a political offender. The Governor replied that
he had no power to alter the sentence of the magistrate, whereupon Miss
Wallace Dunlop informed him that it was the unalterable resolution of
the Suffragettes never again to submit to the prison treatment given to
ordinary offenders against the law. Therefore she should, if placed in
the second division as a common criminal, refuse to touch food until the
Government yielded her point. It is hardly likely that the Government or
the prison authorities realised the seriousness of Miss Wallace Dunlop's
action, or the heroic mould of the Suffragettes' character. At all
events the Home Secretary paid no attention to the letter sent him by
the prisoner, in which she explained simply but clearly her motives for
her desperate act, and the prison authorities did nothing except seek
means of breaking down her resistance. The ordinary prison diet was
replaced by the most tempting food, and this instead of being brought to
her cell at intervals, was kept there night and day, but always
untouched. Several times daily the doctor came to feel her pulse and
observe her growing weakness. The doctor, as well as the Governor and
the wardresses argued, coaxed and threatened, but without effect. The
week passed without any sign of surrender on the part of the prisoner.
On Friday the doctor reported that she was rapidly reaching a point at
which death might at any time supervene. Hurried conferences were
carried on between the prison and the Home Office, and that evening,
June 8th, Miss Wallace Dunlop was sent home, having served one-fourth of
her sentence, and having ignored completely all the terms of her
imprisonment.
On the day of her release the fourteen women who had been convicted of
window breaking received their sentences, and learning of Miss Wallace
Dunlop's act, they, as they were being taken to Holloway in the prison
van, held a consultation and agreed to follow her example. Arrived at
Holloway they at once informed the officials that they would not give up
any of their belongings, neither would they put on prison clothing,
perform prison labour, eat prison food or keep the rule of silence.
The Governor agreed for the moment to allow them to retain their
property and to wear their own clothing, but he told them that they had
committed an act of mutiny and that he would have to so charge them at
the next visit of the magistrates. The women then addressed petitions to
the Home Secretary, demanding that they be given the prison treatment
universally allowed political offenders. They decided to postpone the
hunger strike until the Home Secretary had had time to reply. Meanwhile,
after a vain appeal for more fresh air, for the weather was stiflingly
hot, the women committed one more act of mutiny, they broke the windows
of their cells.
We learned this from the prisoners themselves. Several days after they
had gone to prison, my daughter Christabel and Mrs. Tuke, filled with
anxiety for their fate, gained admission to an upper story room of a
house overlooking the prison. Calling at the top of their voices and
waving a flag of the Union, they succeeded in attracting the prisoners'
attention. The women thrust their arms through the broken panes, waving
handkerchiefs, Votes for Women badges, anything they could get hold of,
and in a few shouted words told their tale. That same day the visiting
magistrates arrived, and the mutineers were sentenced to terms of seven
to ten days of solitary confinement in the punishment cells. In these
frightful cells, dark, unclean, dripping with moisture, the prisoners
resolutely hunger struck. At the end of five days one of the women was
reduced to such a condition that the Home Secretary ordered her
released. The next day several more were released, and before the end
of the week the last of the fourteen had gained their liberty.
The affair excited the greatest sympathy all over England, sympathy
which Mr. Gladstone tried to divert by charging two of the prisoners
with kicking and biting the wardresses. In spite of their vigorous
denials these two women were sentenced, on these charges, one to ten
days and the other to a month in prison. Although still very weak from
the previous hunger strike, they at once entered upon a second hunger
strike, and in three days had to be released.
After this each succeeding batch of Suffragette prisoners, unless
otherwise directed, followed the example of these heroic rebels. The
prison officials, seeing their authority vanish, were panic stricken.
Holloway and other women's prisons throughout the Kingdom became perfect
dens of violence and brutality. Hear the account given by Lucy Burns of
her experience:
"We remained quite still when ordered to undress, and when they told us
to proceed to our cells we linked arms and stood with our backs to the
wall. The Governor blew his whistle and a great crowd of wardresses
appeared, falling upon us, forcing us apart and dragging us towards the
cells. I think I had twelve wardresses for my share, and among them they
managed to trip me so that I fell helplessly to the floor. One of the
wardresses grasped me by my hair, wound the long braid around her wrist
and literally dragged me along the ground. In the cell they fairly
ripped the clothing from my back, forcing on me one coarse cotton
garment and throwing others on the bed for me to put on myself. Left
alone exhausted by the dreadful experience I lay for a time gasping and
shivering on the floor. By and by a wardress came to the door and threw
me a blanket. This I wrapped around me, for I was chilled to the bone by
this time. The single cotton garment and the rough blanket were all the
clothes I wore during my stay in prison. Most of the prisoners refused
everything but the blanket. According to agreement we all broke our
windows and were immediately dragged off to the punishment cells. There
we hunger struck, and after enduring great misery for nearly a week, we
were one by one released."
How simply they tell it. "After enduring great misery--" But no one who
has not gone through the awful experience of the hunger strike can have
any idea of how great that misery is. In an ordinary cell it is great
enough. In the unspeakable squalor of the punishment cells it is worse.
The actual hunger pangs last only about twenty-four hours with most
prisoners. I generally suffer most on the second day. After that there
is no very desperate craving for food. Weakness and mental depression
take its place. Great disturbances of digestion divert the desire for
food to a longing for relief from pain. Often there is intense headache,
with fits of dizziness, or slight delirium. Complete exhaustion and a
feeling of isolation from earth mark the final stages of the ordeal.
Recovery is often protracted, and entire recovery of normal health is
sometimes discouragingly slow.
The first hunger strike occurred in early July. In the two months that
followed scores of women adopted the same form of protest against a
Government who would not recognise the political character of their
offences. In some cases the hunger strikers were treated with unexampled
cruelty. Delicate women were sentenced, not only to solitary
confinement, but to wear handcuffs for twenty-four hours at a stretch.
One woman on refusing prison clothes was put into a straightwaistcoat.
The irony of all this appears the greater when it is considered that, at
this precise time, the leaders of the Liberal Party in the House of
Commons were in the midst of their first campaign against the veto power
of the Lords.
On September 17th a great meeting was held in Birmingham, on which
occasion Mr. Asquith was to throw down his challenge to the Lords, and
to announce that their veto was to be abolished, leaving the people's
will paramount in England. Of course the Suffragettes seized this
opportunity for a demonstration. This course was perfectly logical.