CHAPTER VII

NOVEMBER, 1906, TO FEBRUARY, 1907

FURTHER ARRESTS. THE "MUD MARCH."

Whilst their comrades were in Holloway, the W. S. P. U. members were putting forth redoubled efforts to press forward the work outside. A manifesto explaining the objects of our movement and calling upon the women of the country to stand by those who had gone to prison and to fight with them to secure enfranchisement was posted upon the walls and circulated broadcast as a leaflet. This appeal met with a far readier response than any that had yet been made. Amongst people of all parties, there was a growing feeling that the imprisoned Suffragettes should receive the treatment due to political offenders. The Liberals, large numbers of whom knew her personally, found an especial difficulty in reconciling themselves to the idea that Richard Cobden's daughter should be thrown into prison and treated by a Liberal government as though she had been a drunkard or a pickpocket. Mr. Keir Hardie, Lord Robert Cecil and others, raised the matter in the House of Commons, and drew comparisons between our lot and that of the Jameson raiders, Mr. W. T. Stead and others who had been imprisoned for political reasons. In reply to this, Mr. Gladstone, the Home Secretary, began by saying that he had no power to take action. On October 28th, however, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence left Holloway owing to serious illness. On the following day, Mrs. Montefiore was also released for the same reason, and a day or two afterwards it became known that Mrs. How Martyn and Mrs. Baldock had been removed to the prison hospital. Protests against the treatment of the Suffragettes daily became more and more insistent, and at last, on October 31st, Mr. Herbert Gladstone changed his mind and ordered,[18] or as he put it, "intimated his desire" that the Suffrage prisoners should be transferred to the first class.

On the eighth day of our imprisonment my cell door was flung open suddenly and the Matron announced that an order had come from the Home Office to say that I was to be transferred to the first class. I was then hurriedly bustled out of my cell and a few minutes afterwards as, in charge of a wardress, I was staggering along the passage carrying my brush and comb, the sheets that I was hemming, and all my bed linen, I met my comrades going in the same direction.

We were ushered into a row of rather dark cells adjoining each other in an old part of the prison, which is chiefly occupied by prisoners on remand who have not yet been tried. These women, we were horrified to find, are treated exactly like second class prisoners, except that their dress is blue instead of green, and that some to whom permission has been given are allowed to wear their own clothes, and to have food sent in to them at their own expense. We were now offered the same privileges, but these we declined. On consulting the prison rules, however, I found that first class misdemeanants are entitled to exercise their profession whilst in prison, if their doing so does not interfere with the ordinary prison regulations. I therefore applied to the Governor to be allowed to have pen, pencils, ink and paper, and after a day's waiting my request was granted. For me prison had now lost the worst of its terrors because I had congenial work to do.

We were now able to write and to receive a letter once a fortnight, and to have books and one newspaper a day sent in by our friends. The food served out to us was exactly like that of the second class except that instead of oatmeal gruel, a pint of tea was substituted for breakfast and a pint of cocoa for supper. As the second class is that into which the majority of the Suffragettes have been relegated, it is useful to give the table of dinners here.

_Monday_, 8 oz. haricot beans, 1 oz. fat bacon, 8 oz. potatoes, 6 oz. bread.

_Tuesday_, 1 pt. soup, 8 oz. potatoes, 6 oz. bread.

_Wednesday_, 8 oz. suet pudding (exactly like that served in the third class), 6 oz. bread, 8 oz. potatoes.

_Thursday_, 6 oz. bread, 8 oz. potatoes, 3 oz. cooked meat--a kind of stew.

_Friday_, Soup 1 pt., 6 oz bread, 8 oz. potatoes.

_Saturday_, Suet pudding 8 oz., bread 6 oz., potatoes 8 oz.

_Sunday_, bread 6 oz., potatoes 8 oz., 3 oz. meat "preserved by heat" _i. e._, some kind of preserved meat slightly warmed.

The soups or meat for each prisoner was served in a cylindrical quart tin into the top of which, like a lid, was fitted another shallow tin holding the potatoes. One did not clean these tins oneself as one did the other utensils, and probably because the kitchen attendants were overburdened with work, they were always exceedingly dingy and dirty-looking. Everything was as badly cooked and as uninviting as it could be. The cocoa, which was quite unlike any cocoa that I have ever tasted, had little pieces of meat and fat floating about in it. It was evidently made in the same vessel in which the meat was cooked. To cut up our meat, in addition to the wooden spoon, which is common to the second and third classes, we were now provided with "a knife." This knife was made of tin. It was about four inches in length and Mrs. Drummond later on aptly described it as being "hemmed" at the edge. There was no fork.

On November 6th my sentence came to an end, and the newspaper representatives were all eager to hear from me what the inside of Holloway was like. I was thus able to make known exactly what the conditions of imprisonment had been both before and after our transfer to the first division and to show that even under the new conditions, the treatment of the Suffragettes was very much more rigorous than that applied to men political prisoners in this and other countries.

Next day, November 7th, Mr. Keir Hardie introduced a Women's Suffrage Bill into the House of Commons under "the ten minutes rule." It had only two chances of passing into law; the first that the Government should provide time for it and the second that not one single Member of Parliament should oppose it in any of its stages. The Government refused to give the time, and the second chance was destroyed by a Liberal Member, Mr. Julius Bertram.

On November 19th another demonstration was therefore held outside the House of Commons as a result of which Miss Alice Milne of Manchester was arrested, and imprisoned for one week. Public sympathy was still daily turning more and more to the side of the Suffragettes and when a by-election became necessary at Huddersfield, Mr. Herbert Gladstone decided to release Mrs. Cobden Sanderson and her colleagues, though they had served but half their sentences and, on November 24th they were set free after one month's imprisonment. They were not only welcomed with enthusiasm by their fellow militant Suffragettes, but a dinner was given in their honour by the older non-militant Suffragists at the Savoy Hotel.

Believing that it was to the Huddersfield by-election that they owed their unexpected freedom, a number of the released prisoners at once hurried off to the constituency where Mrs. Pankhurst and a band of other women were strenuously working against the Government and had already become the most popular people in the election.

Though the train by which the prisoners arrived was more than two hours late, they were welcomed at the station by cheering crowds, and found that a great meeting of women, which had been called for the due time of their arrival, was still patiently waiting to hear them speak.

The three candidates, Liberal, Unionist and Labour were now, because of its extraordinary popularity, all anxious to be known as supporters of Women's Suffrage and they went about wearing the white Votes for Women buttons of the W. S. P. U. Mr. Sherwell, the Liberal, tried to sidetrack the Suffragettes' appeal to the electors to vote against him because he was the nominee of the Government, by constantly announcing that he was in favour of Women's Suffrage, and that the Liberal Party was the best of all parties for women. The following handbill issued from his committee rooms:

"_MEN OF HUDDERSFIELD, DON'T BE MISLED BY SOCIALISTS, SUFFRAGETTES, OR TORIES._

_VOTE FOR SHERWELL._"

Polling took place on November 28th, and when the votes were counted, it was found that the Liberal poll as recorded at the General Election had been reduced by 540. The figures were:--

Arthur Sherwell (L.) 5,762 T. R. Williams (Lab.) 5,422 J. Foster Fraser (U.) 4,844 _____ Liberal Majority. 340

At the General Election the figures had been:--

Sir J. T. Woodhouse (Lib.) 6,302 T. R. Williams (Lab.) 5,813 J. Foster Fraser (U.) 4,391 _____ Liberal Majority 489

Meanwhile the Government had been pushing on with its Bill for the abolition of plural voting, to which the Women's Social and Political Union had persistently claimed that a clause providing for the registration of qualified women voters should be added. When the Bill reached the Report stage on November 26th, Lord Robert Cecil moved and Mr. Keir Hardie seconded and Mr. Balfour supported an amendment to postpone the operation of the Bill until after the next General Election, unless in the meantime the franchise had been given to women on the same terms as men. The object was, of course, to call attention to the need of Votes for Women, and this somewhat round-about way had been adopted because it was ruled out of order to simply suggest that votes for Women should be enacted as a part of the Plural Voting Bill. The amendment was opposed by the Government, and defeated by 278 votes to 50.

Our Manchester Members were now anxious to organise a protest on their own account and it was agreed that they should have their way. Accordingly, on December 13th, a valiant little army of some twenty or thirty North Country women came down to London and proceeded straight to Parliament Square, carrying a small wooden packing case which they set down in the gutter opposite the stranger's entrance. The box was mounted by Mrs. Jennie Baines of Stockport, a fragile little woman, who had begun her strenuous life as a Birmingham child home-worker, rising early in the morning in order to help her mother to stitch hooks and eyes on to cards before going to school, snatching a few moments for the same task in the dinner hour and on returning home in the evening, working far into the night. In her girlhood she had been a Salvation Army "Captain." Later she had married a journeyman bootmaker, and though, in addition to caring for her home and her children, she had been forced to toil in the factory, in order to keep the home together, she had still managed to work as a Police Court Missionary and Temperance and Social reformer.

Therefore, it was with the knowledge born of much experience, that Mrs. Baines now pleaded for the enfranchisement of her sex. Within a few moments a strong force of police came hurrying up and she was roughly dragged down and hustled away. Her place was instantly taken by Mrs. Morrissey of Manchester, whilst the other women linked arms and pressed closely round to form a guard, but after a short hard struggle the police broke through, tore the speaker from the box, and made five arrests. One woman was thrown to the ground and lay unconscious, and Mrs. August MacDougal, an Australian,[19] knelt on the ground beside her, raised her head and held a cup of water to her lips. Then a heavy hand was laid upon Mrs. MacDougal's shoulder and a rough voice ordered her to go, but she remained to attend to the injured woman. For this offence she was arrested, whilst Mrs. Knight, the woman who had been hurt, was removed to Westminster Hospital.

Next day the five women who had been taken into custody were at Westminster Police Court each ordered by Mr. Horace Smith either to pay a fine of twenty shillings or to go to prison for fourteen days, in the first class. They all chose the latter alternative and were taken to the cells. Two days afterwards some of our members attempted to hold a meeting in the Strangers' Lobby. As a result of this eleven of them were sent off to join their comrades in gaol for fourteen days.

Still the Government refused to withdraw their hostility to votes for women, Parliament remained apathetic, and still the majority of the general public were content to allow things to remain as they were. Therefore we felt that yet another protest must be made before the year 1906 should come to an end, and on December 20th, the eve of Parliament's rising for the Christmas holidays, Mrs. Drummond, who had now settled in London, organised a third attack upon the House. Whilst her followers were attempting to speak in the Lobby, she succeeded in entering the House unobserved and in making her way by the back passages to within a few yards of the sacred chamber of debate itself. Here she was captured by the police, but she resisted their efforts to remove her with so much spirit that she won the sympathy and admiration of the constables; one of whom was heard to say, "I wish the members of Parliament would come here and do their own dirty work!"

Next day as the evening-paper boys were eagerly crying the news that another five women were gone to join those already in prison and that twenty-one Suffragettes would now be spending Christmas there, Parliament rose for the holidays. As the Members left the House, comrades of the imprisoned women handed each one an envelope inscribed:--"What a woman really wants for a Christmas box," and within was a small slip of paper bearing the words, "A vote."

For the first batch of Suffragettes to be released from prison in January, a Christmas dinner was provided by Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence at the Holborn Restaurant, and for Mrs. Drummond and those of the Suffragettes who were set free later, the first of the public welcome breakfasts, which have since become an institution, was held at Anderton's Hotel. The released prisoners were able to tell us that Christmas day in Holloway is, except that one goes twice to Chapel, exactly like all the other days of the year and that the Christmas dinner, of which so very much is thought outside, is just the usual one that would naturally fall at any other season to that particular day of the week. But as Mrs. Hillier on their release, said, they went to prison for "a cause that they held dear," and so, as Mrs. Martha Jones added, they regarded having gone there, "not as a sacrifice, but as an honour." What they had seen in Holloway had more than ever convinced them of the pressing need that women should be enfranchised. "The stories that I have heard in the Prison hospital," said Mrs. Baines, "have reached to the bottom of my heart. I have come out with the firm resolve to work on."

So the year 1906, the first year of the Union's work in London came to an end. In October, the step of opening a permanent central office had been decided upon and a large general office having a small private room opening out of it was taken in Clement's Inn, Strand. It seemed a big undertaking at first, but the offices were indispensable. The small room was considered chiefly as Christabel's office, but all private business was transacted there, whilst the large room was used for general clerical work and as a meeting place. Weekly Monday afternoon and Thursday evening At Homes, were held there and all those who had joined the Union in those early days can remember Mrs. Sparborough making tea and handing round bread and butter and biscuits, and Christabel, with a sheaf of newspaper cuttings in her hand, standing up on one of the chairs to furnish the latest news of the militant campaign and to explain the next move in the plan of action.

On the following February 4th, Mr. Winston Churchill spoke in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, and he bargained beforehand with the Suffragettes that they should not interrupt him during his speech, on condition that he would answer a question on Women's Suffrage before he left the platform. At the close of the meeting he accordingly did so by saying definitely that he would not vote for a Bill to enfranchise women on the same terms as men. He added that he greatly regretted that "earnest, good-hearted women should pursue courses which brought them suffering and humiliation," but "God forbid" that he should "mock" them by concealing his opinion. My sister Adela then rose to ask if he had intended to speak for himself alone, or on behalf of the Government, an exceedingly important point. What followed is best described in the words of an eye witness who wrote at once to Christabel at Clement's Inn: "Last night's affair was terrible. It was a wonder someone was not killed. Your sister was thrown down and kicked by several men. The attack was really unprovoked; the stewards had made up their minds to do it before the meeting. Your sister has a black eye, Mrs. Chatterton's throat was hurt and Miss Gawthorpe would have been seriously handled but that some men came to her rescue."

Many women who had long felt that there was "something wrong" with the position of their sex, but had not realised that the possession of the Parliamentary franchise could do anything to remove the disabilities both of law and custom from which they suffered, were now being awakened by the much-talked-of militant tactics to a knowledge of what the vote could do for them. Moreover, many who for years had been nominal adherents of the Suffrage movement, now began to feel that if some other women cared so passionately for the cause that they were prepared to throw aside all the usual conventions of good manners and to thrust themselves forward to meet ridicule, scandalous abuse, ill usage and imprisonment, it was surely time that they too should make sacrifices. Their hearts smote them that they had not done more for it in the past. But most of them as yet thought only of bolstering up and stirring to new activity the old National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies for they still looked upon the militant women as a rather dreadful body of fanatics who could have no notion either of systematic organisation or the prudent laying-out of money. Therefore, though the W. S. P. U. was already growing largely, the N. U. W. S. S. was as yet benefiting most largely from its activities. But times had changed and even the most old-fashioned of the Suffragists were now ready to copy the first non-militant doings of the Suffragettes and, in order to prove that they really wanted the franchise, they too determined to march in procession through the London streets. Therefore on February 9th, 1907, three days before the opening of Parliament, a crowd of the non-militants assembled close to the Achilles statue at Hyde Park Corner. It was a dismal wet Saturday afternoon, but in spite of the rain and the muddy streets a procession of women half a mile in length was formed and marched steadily on to attend meetings in Exeter Hall in the Strand and in Trafalgar Square. This procession was afterwards known as the "Mud March."

At the Exeter Hall the principal speakers who had been chosen to address the gathering of women were Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Israel Zangwill. Mr. Hardie devoted himself to urging the women to place the question of their enfranchisement before all other party considerations. Meanwhile a most extraordinary scene occurred, for, whilst his remarks were punctuated by volumes of cheers from the great body of the audience, a number of Liberal ladies on the platform set up a hissing chorus.

When Mr. Zangwill came to speak, he, too, declared himself to be a supporter of the militant tactics and the anti-Government policy, and the same Liberal ladies, although they had themselves asked him to speak for them, expressed their dissent and disapproval as audibly as though they had been Suffragettes and he a Cabinet Minister. From Mr. Zangwill's brilliant speech--his maiden speech as a politician as he said it was--which has since been published under the title "One and One are Two," I can but quote an extract to conclude this chapter:

What is it that prevents the Prime Minister bringing in a Bill for Female Suffrage at once, in this very Parliament that is opening? He is in favour of it himself, and so is the majority of the House. The bulk of the representatives of the people are pledged to it. Here, then, is a measure which both parties deem necessary. A sensible woman would think that the first thing a Parliament would do would be to pass those measures about which both parties agree. Simple female! That is not man's way. That is not politics. What is wanted in Parliament is measures about which both parties _disagree_, and which, in consequence, can never be passed at all. I declare I know nothing outside Swift or W. S. Gilbert to equal the present situation of Women's Suffrage.... The majority have promised to vote for Women's Suffrage. But _whom_ have they promised? Women. And women have no votes. Therefore the M.P.s do not take them seriously. You see the vicious circle. In order for women to get votes they must have votes already. And so the men will bemock and befool them from session to session. Who can wonder if, tired of these gay deceivers, they begin to take the law into their own hands? And public opinion--I warn the Government--public opinion is with the women.... They _are_ unwomanly--and therein consists the martyrdom of the pioneers. They have to lower themselves to the manners of men; they have to be unwomanly in order to promote the cause of womanhood. They have to do the dirty work. Let those lady suffragists who sit by their cosey firesides at least give them admiration and encouragement. "Qui veut la fin, veut les moyens." And undoubtedly the means are not the most ladylike. Ladylike means are all very well if you are dealing with gentlemen; but you are dealing with politicians.... In politics only force counts, but how is a discredited minority to exercise force?... There is a little loophole. Every now and then the party in power has to venture outside its citadel to contest a by-election. The ladies are waiting. The constituency becomes the arena of battle, and every Government candidate, whether he is for female suffrage or not, is opposed tooth and nail. For every Government--Liberal or Conservative--that refuses to grant Female Suffrage is ipso facto the enemy. The cause is to be greater than mere party. Damage the Government--that is the whole secret. Are these tactics sound? In my opinion, absolutely so. They are not only ladylike, they are constitutional. They are the only legitimate way in which woman can bring direct political pressure upon the Government.... Far better than to put yourself in prison is to keep a man out of Parliament.... What Christianity cannot do, what charity cannot do, what all the thunder of your Carlyles and your Ruskins cannot do, a simple vote does. And so to these myriads of tired women who rise in the raw dawn and troop to their cheerless factories, and who, when the twilight falls, return not to rest but to the labours of a squalid household, to these the thought of Women's Suffrage, which comes as a sneer to the man about town, comes as a hope and a prayer. Who dares leave that hope unillumined, that prayer unanswered?... For fifty years now woman has stood crying: "I stand for justice--answer, shall I have it?" And the answer has been a mocking "no" or a still more mocking "yes." With this flabby friendliness, this policy of endless evasion. To-day she cries: "I _fight_ for justice and I answer that I _shall_ have it."

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Speaking at Leicester on January 30th, the Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, was proceeding to extoll the promptitude and care with which, he asserted, the Home Office inquired into alleged cases of miscarriage of justice, when he was interrupted by cries of protest from Annie Kenney and a band of other Suffragettes. Whilst they were being speedily ejected, Mr. Gladstone tried to curry favour with the audience by saying that he particularly regretted what had taken place because his action in regard to the Suffragettes had been to reduce the sentences passed upon them and to ameliorate their prison treatment. As we have seen the change was only made in response to an unmistakable public demand, and after Mr. Gladstone had begun by saying he had no power to effect it.

[19] A cultured literary woman, who, with her husband, had recently published two anthologies of music.