My own story
in Downing Street on March 1st, after we had broken the windows in the
Premier's house, testified that following the arrest, we had handed him
our reserve stock of stones, and that they were all alike, heavy flints.
Other prisoners were found in possession of similar stones, tending to
prove that the stones all came from one source. Other officers testified
to the methodical manner in which the window breaking of March 1st and
4th was carried out, how systematically it had been planned and how
soldierly had been the behaviour of the women. By twos and threes March
4th they had been seen to go to the headquarters at Clement's Inn,
carrying handbags, which they deposited at headquarters, and had then
gone on to a meeting at the Pavillion Music Hall. The police attended
the meeting, which was the usual rally preceding a demonstration or a
deputation. At five o'clock the meeting adjourned and the women went
out, as if to go home. The police observed that many of them, still in
groups of twos and threes, went to the Gardenia restaurant in Catherine
Street, Strand, a place where many Suffragette breakfasts and teas had
been held. The police thought that about one hundred and fifty women
congregated there on March 4th. They remained until seven o'clock, and
then, under the watching eyes of the police, they sauntered out and
dispersed. A few minutes later, when there was no reason to expect such
a thing, the noise was heard, in many streets, of wholesale window
smashing. The police authorities made much of the fact that the women
who had left their bags at headquarters and were afterwards arrested,
were bailed out that night by Mr. Pethick Lawrence. The similarity of
the stones used; the gathering of so many women in one building,
prepared for arrest; the waiting at the Gardenia Restaurant; the
apparent dispersal; the simultaneous destruction in many localities of
plate glass, and the bailing of prisoners by a person connected with the
headquarters mentioned, certainly showed a carefully worked out plan.
Only a public trial of the defendants could establish whether or not the
plan was a conspiracy.
On the second day of the Ministerial hearing, Mrs. Tuke, who had been in
the prison infirmary for twenty days and had to be attended in court by
a trained nurse, was admitted to bail. Mr. Pethick Lawrence made a
strong plea for bail for himself and his wife, pointing out that they
had been in prison on remand for two weeks and were entitled to bail. I
also demanded the privileges of a prisoner on remand. Both of these
pleas were denied by the court, but a few days later the Home Secretary
wrote to my solicitor that the remainder of my sentence of two months
would be remitted until after the conspiracy trail at Bow Street. Mr.
and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had already been admitted to bail. Public
opinion forced the Home Secretary to make these concessions, as it is
well known that it is next to impossible to prepare a defence while
confined in prison. Aside from the terrible effect of prison on one's
body and nerves, there is the difficulty of consulting documents and
securing other necessary data to be considered.
On April 4th the Ministerial hearing ended in the acquittal of Mrs.
Tuke, whose activities in the W. S. P. U. were shown to be purely
secretarial. Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and myself were committed for
trial at the next session of the Central Criminal Court, beginning April
23rd. Because of the weak state of my health the judge was with great
difficulty prevailed upon to postpone the trial two weeks and it was,
therefore, not until May 15th that the case was opened.
The trial at Old Bailey is a thing that I shall never forget. The scene
is clear before me as I write, the judge impressively bewigged and
scarlet robed, dominating the crowded courtroom, the solicitors at their
table, the jury, and looking very far away, the anxious pale faces of
our friends who crowded the narrow galleries.
By the veriest irony of fate this judge, Lord Coleridge, was the son of
Sir Charles Coleridge who, in the year 1867, appeared with my husband,
Dr. Pankhurst, in the famous case of Chorlton v. Lings, and sought to
establish that women were persons, and as such were entitled to the
Parliamentary vote. To make the irony still deeper the Attorney General,
Sir Rufus Isaacs, who appeared as Counsel for the prosecution against
women militants, himself had been guilty of remarkable speeches in
corroboration of our point of view. In a speech made in 1910, in
relation to the abolition of the Lords' veto, Sir Rufus made the
statement that, although the agitation against privilege was being
peacefully conducted, the indignation behind it was very intense. Said
Sir Rufus: "Formerly when the great mass of the people were voteless
they had to do something violent in order to show what they felt; to-day
the elector's bullet is his ballot. Let no one be deceived, therefore,
because in this present struggle everything is peaceful and orderly, in
contrast to the disorderliness of other great struggles of the past." We
wondered if the man who said these words could fail to realise that
voteless women, deprived of every constitutional means of righting their
grievances, were also obliged to do something violent in order to show
how they felt. His opening address removed all doubt on that score.
Sir Rufus Isaacs has a clear-cut, hawk-like face, deep eyes, and a
somewhat world worn air. The first words he spoke were so astoundingly
unfair that I could hardly believe that I heard them aright. He began
his address to the jury by telling them that they must not, on any
account, connect the act of the defendants with any political agitation.
"I am very anxious to impress upon you," he said, "from the moment we
begin to deal with the facts of this case, that all questions of whether
a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary franchise, whether she should
have the same right of franchise as a man, are questions which are in no
sense involved in the trial of this issue.... Therefore, I ask you to
discard altogether from the consideration of the matters which will be
placed before you any viewpoint you may have on this no doubt very
important political issue."
Nevertheless Sir Rufus added in the course of his remarks that he feared
that it would not be possible to keep out of the conduct of the case
various references to political events, and of course the entire trial,
from beginning to end, showed clearly that the case was what Mr. Tim
Healey, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's counsel, called it, a great State Trial.
Proceeding, the Attorney General described the W. S. P. U., which he
said he thought had been in existence since 1907, and had used what were
known as militant methods. In 1911 the association had become annoyed by
the Prime Minister because he would not make women's suffrage what was
called a Government question. In November, 1911, the Prime Minister
announced the introduction of a manhood suffrage bill. From that time on
the defendants set to work to carry out a campaign which would have
meant nothing less than anarchy. Women were to be induced to act
together at a given time, in different given places, in such numbers
that the police should be paralysed by the number of persons breaking
the law, in order, to use the defendant's own words, "to bring the
Government to its knees."
After designating the respective positions held by the four defendants
in the W. S. P. U., Sir Rufus went on to relate the events which
resulted in the smashing of plate glass windows valued at some two
thousand pounds, and the imprisonment of over two hundred women who
were incited to their deeds by the conspirators in the dock. He entirely
ignored the motive of the acts in question, and he treated the whole
affair as if the women had been burglars. This inverted statement of the
matter, though accurate enough as to facts, was such as might have been
given by King John of the signing of Magna Charta.
A very great number of witnesses were examined, a large number of them
being policemen, and their testimony, and our cross examination
disclosed the startling fact that there exists in England a special band
of secret police entirely engaged in political work. These men,
seventy-five in number, form what is known as the political branch of
the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police. They go about in
disguise, and their sole duty is to shadow Suffragettes and other
political workers. They follow certain political workers from their
homes to their places of business, to their social pleasures, into tea
rooms and restaurants, even to the theatre. They pursue unsuspecting
people in taxicabs, sit beside them in omnibuses. Above all they take
down speeches. In fact the system is exactly like the secret police
system of Russia.
Mr. Pethick Lawrence and I spoke in our own defence, and Mr. Healey M.
P. defended Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. I cannot give our speeches in full,
but I should like to include as much of them as will serve to make the
entire situation clear to the reader.
Mr. Lawrence spoke first at the opening of the case. He began by giving
an account of the suffrage movement and why he felt the enfranchisement
of women appeared to him a question so grave that it warranted strong
measures in its pursuit. He sketched briefly the history of the Women's
Social and Political Union, from the time when Christabel Pankhurst and
Annie Kenney were thrown out of Sir Edward Grey's meeting and imprisoned
for asking a political question, to the torpedoing of the Conciliation
Bill. "The case that I have to put before you," he said, "is that
neither the conspiracy nor the incitement is ours; but that the
conspiracy is a conspiracy of the Cabinet who are responsible for the
Government of this country; and that the incitement is the incitement of
the Ministers of the Crown." And he did this most effectually not only
by telling of the disgraceful trickery and deceit with which the
Government had misled the suffragists in the matter of suffrage bills,
but by giving the plain words in which members of the Cabinet had
advised the women that they would never get the vote until they had
learned to fight for it as men had fought in the past.
When it came my turn to speak, realising that the average man is
profoundly ignorant of the history of the women's movement--because the
press has never adequately or truthfully chronicled the movement--I told
the jury, as briefly as I could, the story of the forty years' peaceful
agitation before my daughters and I resolved that we would give our
lives to the work of getting the vote for women, and that we should use
whatever means of getting the vote that were necessary to success.
"We founded the Women's Social and Political Union," I said, "in 1903.
Our first intention was to try and influence the particular political
Party, which was then coming into power, to make this question of the
enfranchisement of women their own question and to push it. It took some
little time to convince us--and I need not weary you with the history of
all that has happened--but it took some little time to convince us that
that was no use; that we could not secure things in that way. Then in
1905 we faced the hard facts. We realised that there was a Press boycott
against Women's Suffrage. Our speeches at public meetings were not
reported, our letters to the editors, were not published, even if we
implored the editors; even the things relating to Women's Suffrage in
Parliament were not recorded. They said the subject was not of
sufficient public interest to be reported in the Press, and they were
not prepared to report it. Then with regard to the men politicians in
1905: we realised how shadowy were the fine phrases about democracy,