My own story
Denied the right of petition, shut out now from every Cabinet Minister's
meeting, the women were forced to take whatever means that remained to
urge their cause upon the Government. Mrs. Mary Leigh and a group of
Birmingham members addressed a warning to the public not to attend Mr.
Asquith's meeting as disturbances were likely to happen. From the time
that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet left the House of Commons until
the train drew in to the station at Birmingham they were completely
surrounded with detectives and policemen. The precautions taken to
guard Mr. Asquith have never been equalled except in the case of the
Tsar during outbreaks of revolution in Russia. From the station he was
taken by an underground passage a quarter of a mile in length to his
hotel, where he dined in solitary state, after having been carried
upstairs in a luggage lift. Escorted to the Bingley Hall by a strong
guard of mounted police, he was so fearful of encountering the
Suffragettes that he entered by a side door. The hall was guarded as for
a siege. Over the glass roof a thick tarpaulin had been stretched. Tall
ladders were placed on either side of the building, and firemen's hose
were laid in readiness--not to extinguish fires, but to play upon the
Suffragettes should they appear at an inaccessible spot on the roof. The
streets on every hand were barricaded, and police, in regiments, were
drawn up to defend the barricades against the onslaughts of the women.
Nobody was allowed to pass the barricades without showing his entrance
tickets to long files of police, and then the ticket holders were
squeezed through the narrow doors one by one.
Their precautions were in vain, for the determined Suffragettes found
more than one way in which to turn Mr. Asquith's triumph into a fiasco.
Although no women gained access to the hall, there were plenty of men
sympathisers present, and before the meeting had proceeded far thirteen
men had been violently thrown out for reminding the Prime Minister that
"the people" whose right to govern he was professing to uphold, included
women as well as men. Outside, mingling in the vast crowds, bands of
women attacked the barricades, the outer barricades being thrown down in
spite of the thousands of police. From the roof of a neighbouring house
Mrs. Leigh and Charlotte Marsh tore up dozens of slates and threw them
on the roof of Bingley Hall and in the streets below, taking care,
however, to strike no one. As Mr. Asquith drove away the women hurled
slates at the guarded motor car. The fire hose was brought forth and the
firemen were ordered to turn the water on the women. They refused, to
their credit be it said, but the police, infuriated by their failure to
keep the peace, did not scruple to play the cold water on the women as
they crouched and clung to the dangerous slope of the roof. Roughs in
the streets flung bricks at them, drawing blood. Eventually the women
were dragged down by the police and in their dripping garments marched
through the streets to the police station.
The Suffragettes who had rushed the barricades and flung stones at Mr.
Asquith's departing train received sentences from a fortnight to one
month, but Miss Marsh and Mrs. Leigh were sent to prison for three and
four months respectively. All of the prisoners adopted the hunger
strike, as we knew they would.
Several days later we were horrified to read in the newspapers that
these prisoners were being forcibly fed by means of a rubber tube thrust
into the stomach. Members of the Union applied at once both at the
prison and at the Home Office to learn the truth of the report, but all
information was refused. On the following Monday at our request, Mr.
Keir Hardie, at question time in the House, insisted on information from
the Government. Mr. Masterman, speaking for the Home Secretary,
reluctantly admitted that, in order to preserve the dignity of the
Government and at the same time save the lives of the prisoners,
"hospital treatment" was being administered. "Hospital treatment" was
the term used to draw attention from one of the most disgusting and
brutal expedients ever resorted to by prison authorities. No law allows
it except in the case of persons certified to be insane, and even then
when the operation is performed by skilled nursing attendants under the
direction of skilled medical men, it cannot be called safe. In fact, the
asylum cases usually die after a short time. _The Lancet_, perhaps the
best known medical journal in the language, published a long list of
opinions from distinguished physicians and surgeons who condemned the
practice as applied to the suffrage prisoners as unworthy of
civilisation. One physician told of a case which had come under his
observation in which death had occurred almost as soon as the tube had
been inserted. Another cited a case where the tongue, twisted behind the
feeding tube, had, in the struggle, been almost bitten off. Cases where
food had been injected into the lungs were not unknown. Mr. C.
Mansell-Moullin, M.D., F.R.C.S., wrote to _The Times_ that as a hospital
surgeon of more than thirty years' experience he desired indignantly to
protest against the Government's term "Hospital treatment" in connection
with the forcible feeding of women. It was a foul libel, he declared,
for violence and brutality have no place in hospitals. A memorial signed
by 116 well-known physicians was addressed to the Prime Minister
protesting against the practice of forcible feeding, and pointing out to
him in detail the grave dangers attaching to it.
So much for medical testimony against a form of brutality which
continued and still continues in our English prisons, as a punishment
for women who are there for consciences' sake. As for the testimony of
the victims, it makes a volume of most revolting sort. Mrs. Leigh, the
first victim, is a woman of sturdy constitution, else she could scarcely
have survived the experience. Thrown into Birmingham prison after the
Asquith demonstration, she had broken the windows of her cell, and as a
punishment was sent to a dark and cold punishment cell. Her hands were
handcuffed, behind her during the day, and at night in front of her body
_with the palms out_. She refused to touch the food that was brought to
her, and three days after her arrival she was taken to the doctor's
room. What she saw was enough to terrify the bravest. In the centre of
the room was a stout chair resting on a cotton sheet. Against the wall,
as if ready for action stood four wardresses. The junior doctor was also
on hand. The senior doctor spoke, saying: "Listen carefully to what I
have to say. I have orders from my superior officers that you are not to
be released even on medical grounds. If you still refrain from food I
must take other measures to compel you to take it." Mrs. Leigh replied
that she did still refuse, and she said further that she knew that she
could not legally be forcibly fed because an operation could not be
performed without the consent of the patient if sane. The doctor
repeated that he had his orders and would carry them out. A number of
wardresses then fell upon Mrs. Leigh, held her down and tilted her chair
backward. She was so taken by surprise that she could not resist
successfully that time. They managed to make her swallow a little food
from a feeding cup. Later two doctors and the wardresses appeared in her
cell, forced Mrs. Leigh down to the bed and held her there. To her
horror the doctors produced a rubber tube, two yards in length, and this
he began to stuff up her nostril. The pain was so dreadful that she
shrieked again and again. Three of the wardresses burst into tears and
the junior doctor begged the other to desist. Having had his orders from
the Government, the doctor persisted and the tube was pushed down into
the stomach. One of the doctors, standing on a chair and holding the
tube high poured liquid food through a funnel almost suffocating the
poor victim. "The drums of my ears," she said afterwards, "seemed to be
bursting. I could feel the pain to the end of the breast bone. When at
last the tube was withdrawn it felt as if the back of my nose and throat
were being torn out with it."
In an almost fainting condition Mrs. Leigh was taken back to the
punishment cell and laid on her plank bed. The ordeal was renewed day
after day. The other prisoners suffered similar experiences.
CHAPTER VI
The militant movement was at this point when, in October, 1909, I made
my first visit to the United States. I shall never forget the excitement
of my landing, the first meeting with the American "reporter," an
experience dreaded by all Europeans. In fact the first few days seemed a
bewildering whirl of reporters and receptions, all leading up to my
first lecture at Carnegie Hall on October 25th. The huge hall was
entirely filled, and an enormous crowd of people thronged the streets
outside for blocks. With me on the stage were several women whom I had
met in Europe, and in the chair was an old friend, Mrs. Stanton Blatch,
whose early married life had been spent in England. The great crowd
before me, however, was made up of strangers, and I could not know how
they would respond to my story. When I rose to speak a deep hush fell,
but at my first words: "I am what you call a hooligan--" a great shout
of warm and sympathetic laughter shook the walls. Then I knew that I had
found friends in America. And this all the rest of the tour
demonstrated. In Boston the committee met me with a big grey automobile
decorated in the colours of our Union, and that night at Tremont Temple
I spoke to an audience of 2,500 people all most generous in their
responsiveness. In Baltimore professors, and students from Johns
Hopkins University acted as stewards of the meeting. I greatly enjoyed
my visit to Bryn Mawr College and to Rosemary Hall, a wonderful school
for girls in Connecticut. In Chicago, I met, among other notable people,
Miss Jane Addams and Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools.
My visit to Canada will always be remembered, especially Toronto, where
the mayor, dressed in the chains of his office, welcomed me. I met too
the venerable Goldwin Smith, since dead.
Everywhere I found the Americans kind and keen, and I cannot say too
much for the wonderful hospitality they showed me. The women I found
were remarkably interested in social welfare. The work of the women's
clubs struck me very favourably, and I thought these institutions a
perfect basis for a suffrage movement. But at that time, 1909, the
suffrage movement in the United States was in a curious state of
quiescence. A large number of women with whom I came in contact appeared
to think it only just that they should have a vote, but few seemed to
realise any actual need of it. Some, it is true, were beginning to
connect the vote with the reforms for which they were working so
unselfishly and so devotedly. It was when talking with the younger women
that I came to feel that under the surface of things in America, a
strong suffrage movement was stirring. Those young women, leaving their
splendid colleges to begin life were realising in a very intelligent
fashion that they needed and would be obliged to secure for themselves a
political status.
On December 1st I sailed on the _Mauretania_ for England, and on
arriving I learned that the prison sentence which hung over me while the
petitions case had been argued, was discharged, some unknown friend
having paid my fine while I was on the ocean.
The year 1910 began with a general election, precipitated by the House
of Lords' rejection of Mr. Lloyd-George's 1909 budget. The Liberal Party
went to the country with promises of taxes on land values. They promised
also abolition of the veto power of the Lords, Irish Home Rule,