by Megan Rix
Hampton Court Palace had been closed to the public in February ‘owing to fear of damage by women suffragists’ and there were extra policemen guarding it, but on the road outside Alfie saw Princess Sophia selling copies of the WSPU newspaper, The Suffragette.
‘Votes for Women!’ the princess shouted as she rang a handbell. ‘Votes for Women!’
The people walking past did not look very pleased with the bell ringing or the shouting.
Alfie squeezed the bicycle’s brakes as he skidded to a stop beside her.
‘Alfie?’ the princess said, when she saw him.
Rascal jumped out of her basket and ran over to be stroked.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ the princess asked.
‘Miss Davison,’ Alfie gasped. ‘Ran in front of the king’s horse, Anmer, at the Derby.’
‘Oh, no! Is she all right?’ the princess asked, her hand going to her throat and deep worry lines appearing on her brow.
Alfie shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. She’s been taken to Epsom hospital. We have to let the WSPU London office know.’
‘Come back with me to Faraday House,’ the princess said. ‘I can telephone them from there.’
Manna was in the kitchen.
‘Alfie!’ he said, his face breaking into a huge grin when he saw him.
‘Alfie needs some mint tea with lots of honey and Rascal some water,’ the princess said. Manna hurried to make the tea while the princess went to telephone Lincoln’s Inn House.
‘Maybe if I’d got there earlier I could have stopped her – could have done something,’ Alfie said. It all felt so hopeless.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Manna told him. ‘Truly it wasn’t. You weren’t to know what she planned to do.’
But Alfie still felt terrible.
Four days later there was a telephone call to the WSPU headquarters at Lincoln’s Inn House: Miss Davison had not survived her injuries.
A suffragette named Miss Roe organized the funeral and Alfie and Rascal followed the five thousand women who marched in the solemn funeral procession to Bloomsbury. Some of the ladies wore black and carried purple irises; some wore white and held white lilies. Silent crowds watched on the pavements as the procession marched past.
Emily Wilding Davison’s coffin was draped in a purple cloth with two broad white arrows. The arrows were a reminder of the many times she’d been sent to prison for the suffragettes’ cause.
Was having the vote worth Miss Davison’s life? Alfie wondered, as he remembered Emily laughing and giving Rascal a tummy rub. But in his heart he knew she would have thought it was worth dying for. Now, surely, women’s right to vote would be taken seriously by everyone. The story of Emily’s death was in the newspapers all over the world.
In the procession was a carriage for Mrs Pankhurst, but Mrs Pankhurst wasn’t in it. The moment she’d left her flat with her daughter Sylvia and Nurse Pine to join the funeral, she’d been arrested by the police.
Chapter 13
1914
‘I’m in!’ Daisy announced one late January morning when Alfie came into the tiny kitchen of their flat at the WSPU headquarters. Her smile was huge.
‘In what?’ Alfie asked her, while Rascal sniffed the air.
‘Mrs Pankhurst’s bodyguard,’ Daisy told him, putting a plate of crumpets on the table in front of Alfie. She gave Rascal one of the crumpets that she’d made to celebrate.
As soon as she’d gulped it down, Rascal looked up, licking her lips and hoping for some more.
‘Good for you!’ Alfie told his sister.
Daisy had been working at her jiu-jitsu for months and months, hoping Mrs Garrud would pick her. Sometimes she practised with Alfie but mostly she used the hatstand in the hallway or practised break-falls on the bed.
‘Nearly at Mouse Castle,’ Daisy said a few evenings later as they travelled in the back of the WSPU car.
‘Why are you calling it that?’ Alfie asked her. They’d often been to Mrs Brackenbury’s house before and he’d never seen a mouse there.
‘Rascal’s good at catching mice,’ he said, and Rascal, who was on the floor next to Alfie’s feet, looked up.
‘No, that’s not why it’s got the name,’ Daisy said, lowering her voice as she looked over at Mrs Pankhurst, who’d only just been released from prison again and appeared to be asleep. ‘It’s because of the Cat and Mouse Act that was passed by Parliament. Suffragette prisoners who go on hunger strike are allowed to go free until they’ve built up their strength, then they’ll get re-arrested as soon as they’re strong enough to go back to prison and finish their sentence.’
Alfie looked over at Mrs Pankhurst’s pale, exhausted face. The government was playing with the suffragette prisoners like a cat with a mouse. By letting them out of prison when they were weak and putting them back when they’d recovered a little, the government was like a cat torturing a mouse.
‘We’ll triumph in the end because we have right on our side,’ Mrs Pankhurst said, as Alfie, Daisy and Nurse Pine helped her to her room, where Dr Flora Murray was waiting. Rascal ran ahead and lay down next to Mrs Pankhurst’s bed so she’d be there, ready to be stroked, when Mrs Pankhurst needed her.
Once Mrs Pankhurst was feeling a bit better she wanted to be moved from Mouse Castle.
‘Having the police here all the time is too stressful for the other suffragettes trying to recover,’ she said. ‘And wherever I am the police follow these days, waiting to re-arrest me.’
If they saw she was strong enough to leave Mouse Castle, they’d put her back in prison.
‘You have to stay here,’ Dr Murray said.
But when Mrs Pankhurst wanted something done, she usually wanted it done straight away. So Alfie was sent to the editor of the Globe in Fleet Street with Mrs Pankhurst’s written announcement in time for the evening edition:
This evening Mrs Pankhurst will
be speaking at a public open-air
meeting at Campden Hill Square.
‘What’s going on?’ Alfie asked when he got back. There was something different about Daisy. From the strange way she was smiling, it was as if she had a secret she was bursting to tell him but wasn’t allowed to.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Right,’ said Alfie. He could always tell when Daisy wasn’t telling him the whole truth.
Rascal stood on her hind legs and had a quick lick of the plates that had been left on the table before Daisy saw her and told her to get down.
The evening edition of the Globe was printed at 5 p.m. and available for people to buy from 6 p.m. A little later Alfie looked out of the window and saw people arriving to hear Mrs Pankhurst speak.
‘Come on, Rascal,’ Alfie said, and they went down to join the crowd.
Outside Rascal immediately started wagging her tail and trotted over to a lady in a fur coat with her back to them.
‘Rascal, come back!’ Alfie called, but then the lady turned and he realized it was Princess Sophia.
‘Hello, Alfie.’ She smiled as he hurried over to her.
‘I didn’t expect you to be here, your … your Highness,’ Alfie said.
The princess put her finger to her lips. ‘I don’t want anyone to know who I am. I came with my friend, Ada Wright.’
Alfie remembered Ada Wright from Black Friday, when Daisy had treated her injuries.
‘We thought we’d come and show our support. Mrs Pankhurst is such a fine speaker,’ Ada said.
By seven o’clock, there was a crowd of over a thousand pro-suffragists, who wanted women to have the vote, and anti-suffragists, who didn’t, crammed into the square. At eight o’clock, a slim figure dressed all in black, and wearing a large fashionable hat with a veil over her face, appeared at the first-floor window.
‘There she is,’ Alfie said, pointing upward.
Some people cheered and others booed as they too spotted her.
The lady came out and stood on the balcony. Around Alfie the throng hushed as p
eople stared up at the woman in the large hat and veil that hid her face. Alfie frowned. It was Mrs Pankhurst, wasn’t it? The crowd pushed forward, trying to get a better look. Around him, Alfie heard people asking the same question.
Rascal whined and Alfie wished he’d left her safely in the house. He didn’t want her soft paws getting stepped on by heavy boots. Fortunately the princess and Ada Wright were standing next to Rascal, helping to block people from accidentally treading on her.
The lady lifted her veil and now Alfie could see that she was indeed Mrs Pankhurst.
‘Now, my friends, I want to challenge the government …’ Mrs Pankhurst said. Pro- and anti-suffragists grew quiet as they strained to hear her words. When she said that she refused to be put back in prison to finish her sentence because of the horror of the Cat and Mouse Act, the police tried to push through the crowd of people in the square to arrest her.
But the next moment Alfie saw a dozen women coming out of the front door. In the middle of them was Mrs Pankhurst, dressed all in black with the veil over her face.
The twelve women linked arms and shoved their way through the crowd. Alfie gasped when he saw that one of them was Daisy.
‘Help us!’ she called to Alfie as the police tried to break the circle and the women struggled to hold on to each other to protect Mrs Pankhurst.
Alfie, Rascal, Princess Sophia and Ada Wright ran forward with other suffragettes to form a second ring outside the first. They too linked arms to stop the police and anti-suffragists from reaching Mrs Parkhurst.
One of the policemen drew out his truncheon and swung it at Daisy.
‘We won’t let you take her!’ Daisy screamed, as she ducked.
Rascal ran at the policeman and started barking and growling.
‘No, Rascal,’ Alfie said, grabbing her and pulling her away.
If Mrs Pankhurst got arrested, she’d be put back in prison – but a dog that was arrested for showing aggression, even if it was only trying to protect an innocent person, that would be a whole different story.
Rascal broke free from Alfie and dashed over to the policeman now holding the veiled woman in black. She barked and barked.
‘Get out of it, dog,’ the policeman said, kicking at Rascal.
Another policeman lunged at Rascal, his truncheon swinging.
‘Run, Alfie!’ the princess cried.
Alfie grabbed Rascal by her collar and ran round to the back of the house and in through the kitchen door, just as a woman in black came down the back stairs, helped by Nurse Pine.
Rascal wagged her tail.
‘See you soon, Alfred,’ Mrs Pankhurst whispered as Nurse Pine helped her to the waiting WSPU car.
Rascal and Alfie ran up to the first floor and from there they watched as Daisy and some of the other bodyguards pulled out Indian clubs hidden in their long skirts.
But it was no use. The police now had hold of the woman in black and they carried her away.
‘They’ve got her!’ Daisy said, in tears, when she came back. But Alfie shook his head.
‘No, they haven’t,’ he told her.
Alfie found out the next day that the decoy pretending to be Mrs Pankhurst was a fifty-seven-year-old suffragette called Florence Evelyn Smith.
Both Ada Wright and the princess were arrested, along with lots of other women. But only Ada Wright and six others were sent to prison.
‘It’s not fair,’ the princess told Alfie at the WSPU headquarters. ‘Ada shouldn’t be suffering in prison while I’m free. I’m going to pay her fine and set her free, even though she won’t like it one little bit, and I want to make a donation to the WSPU too.’
She gave Alfie fifty pounds for the WSPU, then she added a one-pound note to it.
‘For good luck.’
And then she gave Alfie two more pennies. ‘One for you and one …’
‘To spend on Rascal,’ Alfie grinned.
Once Mrs Pankhurst had left Campden Hill Square, Rascal spent more time visiting the other suffragette ‘mice’ staying at Mouse Castle.
‘It’s as if your little dog knows what an important role she has, Alfie,’ said Dr Murray as she watched the women petting Rascal. ‘The children at my Women’s Hospital for Children would love her.’
Alfie felt very proud of Rascal and thought she’d like to be petted by the children at the hospital, which had been set up by Dr Murray and her friend Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson for poor children. Its motto was ‘Deeds not Words’, just like the WSPU’s.
‘When would you like us to come?’ he asked, and Rascal looked up at Dr Murray and wagged her tail.
Daisy’s next mission was a month later. As one of Mrs Pankhurst’s thirty bodyguards, or ‘Amazons’ as they were being called in the press, she had to travel all the way to Scotland, where Mrs Pankhurst was due to give a speech. Alfie and Rascal went with Daisy on the train.
‘We look much less suspicious as a family group,’ she said, as people petted Rascal and said what a good dog she was. ‘But make sure you don’t join in, Alfie, or let Rascal try to protect me if it gets at all rowdy. I don’t want you to get hurt, and we can’t afford to have you arrested. Mrs Pankhurst would never forgive me if I got her messenger boy and dog sent to prison.’
Mrs Pankhurst was still on the run from the police after her speech in Campden Hill Square in February, so there were bound to be police trying to catch her at the meeting in Glasgow. But Mrs Pankhurst had said she would speak there and she was determined to keep her word.
When they arrived at St Andrew’s Hall in Glasgow on 9 March 1914, Rascal sniffed at the pots of flowers that surrounded the stage.
‘Don’t let her put her nose too close,’ The General warned Alfie. She looked terrifically fierce in her favourite red military coat. ‘Those flowers look pretty but they’ve got barbed wire hidden inside them. If the police storm the stage to arrest Mrs Pankhurst, they’ll know all about it.’
Shortly after Mrs Pankhurst began speaking to the audience of five thousand, the police rushed the platform. Alfie was shocked to hear a shot ring out. He looked up to see one of the suffragettes holding a revolver!
‘Get out of here, Alfie!’ Daisy shouted as she threw flowerpots at the police. ‘Get out!’
Alfie grabbed hold of Rascal’s collar and pushed his way out through the crowd.
The bodyguards did their best, but Alfie watched as the police came out with Mrs Pankhurst and pushed her into a waiting car.
‘They’ve taken her to the Central Police Office,’ a man said, when Daisy came to join Alfie and Rascal. They followed Mrs Pankhurst’s supporters to the police station where she was being held. But once they got there, hundreds of police, both on horse and on foot, poured out of the station.
Alfie grabbed Daisy and Rascal and ran as the police scattered people in all directions.
‘Look, we’re even in the paper!’ Daisy said proudly the next morning, showing Alfie the headline, MRS PANKHURST’S AMAZONS. ‘We’ll never give up until the government gives women the vote.’
Alfie was worried. Daisy had a black eye and a cut on her face, and those were the injuries he could see. He didn’t want his sister getting hurt. They could have all been badly injured last night for nothing. Mrs Pankhurst was still in prison.
But in the summer everything changed.
Chapter 14
1914–18
On 4 August 1914 Britain declared war on Germany.
‘Germany’s wartime army is 3.7 million. Britain’s army has 700,000 available men,’ Alfie read in the paper, as Rascal kept dropping her ball beside him, wanting to go out and play.
More, many more, soldiers were needed if Britain was going to win the war, and Alfie wanted to be one of them.
‘I’m going to enlist,’ he told Manna when he and Rascal went to see him at Faraday House.
‘Me too,’ Manna said.
But Alfie shook his head.
‘You’re too young,’ he said. Manna was only thirteen.
‘So are you,’ said Manna. But Alfie was older – fifteen in a few more weeks. ‘I don’t want to be given one of the white feathers for cowardice,’ Manna admitted.
Alfie wished Mrs Pankhurst didn’t insist on the suffragettes giving out the white feathers to men who hadn’t enlisted yet. Now that she’d called a truce with the government over the Votes for Women issue because of the war, she was determined to get every man to fight and every woman to do her part. The government had let all of the suffragettes out of prison so they could help.
At the recruitment centre in Hampton Town Hall, Alfie just reached the minimum height of five feet three inches. But Manna wasn’t five feet yet. He was bitterly disappointed as they headed back to Faraday House with Rascal.
‘Alfie’s allowed to enlist but I’m not,’ Manna told Princess Sophia.
The princess put her hand to her throat.
‘Oh, Alfie, are you sure that’s a good idea? Your sister will be so worried. And what about dear Rascal? What will she do without you?’
Rascal looked from the princess to Alfie and gave a whine.
‘We could look after her!’ Manna said. ‘They say it will all be over by Christmas, so you’ll be back soon, anyway, Alfie.’
The princess nodded. She looked Alfie straight in the eye for a long moment and said: ‘You and dear Rascal have made such a big contribution to our efforts. If today is going to be your last day together for a while, it should be a very special day. Has Rascal been to the seaside yet?’ she asked.
When Alfie said no, she gave Manna some money for the three of them to go to Brighton.
‘I lived there as a child with my sisters and brother,’ she said, adding an extra penny to the money. ‘On a day like today, there isn’t anywhere finer in the world.’
Rascal enjoyed the feel of the pebbles under her feet on Brighton beach, but the sea terrified her. She stared at the vast expanse of water and the waves that came washing in. She gave a bark but the waves didn’t stop coming. She gave another bark to tell Alfie to stop putting his toes in the water and then, worse, wading out into the sea. But Alfie didn’t stop. Rascal barked again and ran away from the waves to show Alfie what she wanted him to do. Then she stopped and looked back at him. Why didn’t he come?