Lady Constance Lytton

by Lyndsey Jenkins

  Jane made less and less effort to keep up her pretence. It was too much trouble to style her hair differently, especially when it dragged into her sick. The glasses were painful and she abandoned them. She would have been terribly tired and weak, certainly light-headed and possibly delusional as well. Above all, she was cold, despite the heat in the cell, despite wearing her flannel nightdress in the day, and despite three blankets. It required incredible mental strength to submit to repeated force-feeding. She had little left for lying and deception. Meanwhile, her condition deteriorated.

  After six feedings, Jane felt she could stand no more and longed for death. But the words ‘no surrender’ came to mind and she was ashamed of giving in. Jane forced herself to get up and walk up and down the cell until she felt half-alive again. The next day, for the first time, she cried after the feeding: deep, wracking sobs that convulsed her body.

  The prison governor came to see her again. Jane repeated her accusations: that the doctor had hit her, that she was being fed even while being sick, that there was too much food. ‘I am an abnormal looking woman with short hair and a moustache … and it is understandable that he should consider me fair game for his contempt,’ she said. ‘But this is not quite the right mood for an official, and what he could do to one woman, no matter of what type, he might possibly do to another.’17 The governor ignored her complaints but was said that she would be allowed to write to her mother. After struggling with the practical difficulties – how could she let her mother know she was all right without giving away where she was, when her family would immediately demand that she were let out? – the temptation was too much for her. She took a little bread and milk to gain enough strength to write lucidly, then wrote a letter to a Mrs Sleath, the Lutyens family nanny, so that it might indirectly reach Edith Lytton. The prison authorities noted that she appeared ‘to be in a more manageable condition and temper’.18

  Back in London, Emily was having dinner with a family friend, Arthur Chapman, when she received a telegram meant for Victor. It was from the Daily News, enquiring whether the rumours that Lady Constance Lytton was in prison in Liverpool were true. Chapman got on the telephone to the prison at once and the pieces of the puzzle were quickly put together. The prison authorities said that Jane was due to be released the next morning anyway. Emily caught the midnight train to Liverpool, where she met with the prison governor. He had suspected this was no ordinary prisoner and had been making enquiries with the Home Office. The governor told Emily that ‘he had never seen such a bad case of forcible feeding … she was practically asphyxiated each time’.19 Apparently, this was not enough to make him stop.

  ‘She is terribly thin, her face so drawn and pinched, but a good colour and I think very pretty with her short hair. Her body just like pictures of famine people in India,’ Emily reported to Betty.20 Constance was five feet eleven inches tall – she is easily recognisable in photographs of the suffragette because she towers above the rest – and usually weighed just over nine stone. On her release from prison, she weighed only seven and a half stone.21 Constance talked non-stop on the journey and was in half-hysterical fits of giggles most of the time. She was now a member of the only elite worth anything to her: not the social elite, but the suffragette elite – a true martyr to the cause. After a short rest, she stayed up all night to compose her experiences for The Times, Votes for Women and, most importantly, a speech to her fellow suffragettes.

  On 31 January, Constance stood before a packed Queen’s Hall to share her experiences. She was not a natural speaker and always relied on emotion rather than argument. She had once told Aunt T, ‘I am in no way equipped to impress people, to convert them, or to stir them.’22 Now, though, she didn’t need to say a word. Her skeletal body told its own story. ‘We are like an army … we are deputed to fight for a cause, and for other people, and in any struggle or any fight, weapons must be used,’ she proclaimed.23 Constance struggled to convey the enormity of the degradation she had experienced. The pain of the force-feeding was bad enough. But the anticipation of the force-feeding, the agony of hearing others being tormented, and the ‘moral blindness’ of a system in which wardens, doctors and governors all treated prisoners as worse than human: all these were worse still. Many in the crowd openly wept.

  Constance always insisted that she planned and executed the Jane Warton escapade entirely on her own. ‘My leaders do indeed feel for you. They have not ordered or led me. I did this thing absolutely on my own responsibility,’ she told her mother, who of course believed exactly the opposite.24 Constance wished to avoid any impression of a conspiracy to deliberately entrap the authorities. It certainly wasn’t unusual for suffragettes to strike out on their own without the Pankhursts knowing. Marion Dunlop’s hunger strike, Emily Davison’s postbox fires and Ellen Pitfield’s arson campaign were all started on their own initiative and only later got the stamp of approval from headquarters.

  There are, however, hints that others may have known, or at least suspected, what she was up to. The Ker family, who hosted Jane before her arrest and gave her the stewed pears, knew Constance Lytton and had hosted her before. It is difficult to imagine that Alice Ker, a doctor, didn’t see through Constance’s ramshackle disguise. Constance knew Ada Flatman, too, from her days in Holloway.25 There is also a letter from Constance which was annotated by Ada in 1936 as ‘for my use, being the organiser in Liverpool who planned & carried through the protest at Walton Gaol with her’.26 In a letter to Ada Flatman on 19 January 1910, Christabel implored her ‘not to tell a soul about our friend. It had better go on to the end. She is willing we know.’27 Christabel may not have directly given the go-ahead, but this is surely an indication that she knew what was going on. On 23 January, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence wrote to Victor to tell him that she had been moved by Constance’s action and to say that ‘your sister was not led to take this action by any influence of ours’.28 If it looked to the public that the leaders had endorsed or encouraged Constance to become Jane, it would seem as though she had been thrown to the lions.

  In a campaign marked by daring feats of bravery, great moments of theatre and spectacular leaps of imagination, this act of Constance Lytton/Jane Warton still stands out. The suffragettes immediately turned her act into the stuff of legend. Votes for Women spoke of Constance in the most glowing terms (it sounds very much as though Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence wrote this):

  In her and in her deed the human race is ennobled. We can forget the ugly, the base, the mean of less souls in the knowledge that such beauty, grandeur and strength can exist in being made in the same likeness as ourselves. And wherever the annals of the human race are preserved, this deed of hers will be treasured up as a priceless possession.29

  It was as if Constance/Jane had carried out a secular miracle and was being beatified. Having gone so far beyond the call of duty, she was now well on the way to becoming a suffragette saint. But still she wanted to give more. As she said at the Queen’s Hall,

  Women have for so long thought it almost a virtue to despise themselves, and now they are being told that that is all wrong, that they have got something to do, that they have got to come into this movement, and not only draw their life from it, but also to give their life to it.30

  The suffragettes had changed her life so much that she could only thank them by giving her life away. Perhaps she was even a little disappointed that she hadn’t quite managed it.

  NOTES

  1 Constance Lytton, speech to the Queen’s Hall, 30 January 1910, reported in Votes for Women, 3 February 1910, Vol. 4, p. 288.

  2 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 236.

  3 Quoted in Joyce Marlow, Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes, p. 113.

  4 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 235.

  5 To read how this unfolded in Constance’s own words, see Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, Chapters 12 and 13.

  6 Constance Lytton to Lady Lytton, 14 January 1910, Suffragette Fellowship Coll
ection 50.82/1119.

  7 Ada Flatman to Jane Warton, 14 January 1910, Suffragette Fellowship Collection 50.82/1119.

  8 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 268.

  9 Barbara Green, Spectacular Confessions, p. 3.

  10 Constance Lytton, speech at the Queen’s Hall on 31 January 1910, quoted in Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp, Speeches and Trials of the Militant Suffragettes, p. 107.

  11 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 271.

  12 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, pp. 272–4.

  13 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 274.

  14 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 281.

  15 Constance Lytton, speech at the Queen’s Hall on 31 January 1910, quoted in Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp, Speeches and Trials of the Militant Suffragettes, p. 110.

  16 Constance Lytton, The Times, 26 January 1910, Knebworth Archive, 41960.

  17 I, Constance Lytton (privately printed, 1987).

  18 Home Office Records 187986/3 National Archives.

  19 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 298.

  20 Emily Lutyens to Betty Balfour, 24 January 1910, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 189.

  21 From Constance’s own notes on her health in the Suffragette Fellowship Collection 50.82/1119.

  22 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 5 November 1908, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 152.

  23 Constance Lytton, speech at the Queen’s Hall on 31 January 1910, quoted in Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp, Speeches and Trials of the Militant Suffragettes, p. 108.

  24 Constance Lytton to Lady Lytton, January 1910, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 194.

  25 There is a photograph of them together in 1909 in the Suffragette Fellowship Collection 56.59/9. They were also correspondents, as Ada was an organiser and often requested that Constance should speak at her meetings.

  26 In the Suffragette Fellowship Collection, Ada Flatman note, 13 October 1936.

  27 Christabel Pankhurst to Ada Flatman, 19 January 1910, in the Ada Flatman Papers, Suffragette Fellowship Collection, Museum of London.

  28 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence to Victor Lytton, 23 January 1910, Knebworth Archive, 41930.

  29 Votes for Women, 28 January 1910, Vol. 3, p. 274.

  30 Votes for Women, 3 February 1910, Vol. 4, p. 288.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CONCILIATION

  ‘Who has the “weak heart,” Lady Constance Lytton or the Liberal Government?’ 1

  The papers called it ‘Lady Constance Lytton’s latest Freak’2 and for once Constance revelled in the attention. Though she had deliberately set out to see what she could accomplish under another name, once released she took full advantage of all the benefits of being Lady Constance Lytton. The public knew about the hunger strikes and the forced feeding, of course, but for the first time they now put a name and a face to the policy. And what a name! With her profile, connections and influence, Constance could do what none of the other nameless, powerless hunger strikers could do. She could turn her personal suffering into political advantage and make the government squirm.

  ‘She has indeed gained a victory over the Government which will make it much more difficult for them to continue forcible feeding,’ wrote a gleeful Christabel to Betty.3 On 10 February, The Times published a prim letter from Sir Edward Troup, Gladstone’s private secretary at the Home Office. He said that ‘Jane Warton’ was already going to be released before her identity was discovered. As for the difference in treatment, he said that Constance Lytton was expected to resist force-feeding, which would have been bad for her heart. Jane Warton was not expected to resist and had refused medical examination which would have uncovered her weak heart. It was important to the government to make the issue one of resistance rather than of force-feeding. They stubbornly tried to keep up the pretence that force-feeding was mildly unpleasant rather than physically damaging.

  Victor was appalled. He sent Constance’s statement to the Home Office, saw Edward Troup, a junior Home Office minister, for a private interview and then requested a public inquiry. He wrote to Gladstone:

  This denial on the part of the Home Office implies that my sister either is not in possession of her faculties or has deliberately published a statement which she knows to be untrue. My sister is unfortunately too ill to defend herself and I have therefore undertaken the task of vindicating both her sanity and her veracity.4

  What Victor said was true: Constance was very ill and certainly did not have the strength for a battle with the Home Office. She could barely sit down and ate her meals knelt on a cushion instead. Her jaw was sore from the gag which had held her mouth open and the crown of a tooth fell off. Her legs were swollen and her heart was erratic, sometimes trembling, sometimes racing. The formal diagnosis was ‘mitral disease of the heart, with parasystolic murmur’,5 which affected the way blood was being circulated around the body. She was forbidden letters and visitors by her doctor, Marion Vaughan, and was even told to walk up the stairs backwards to avoid straining her heart. She did, however, summon the strength to write a note to Gladstone vindicating herself: ‘It has been suggested that I acted as I did with a view to playing a kind of practical joke. Even if that kind of thing were in my line I could not have faced the strain and suffering entailed for such a purpose.’6 She also wrote to her co-conspirators in Liverpool. ‘The experience in prison this time was intensely grim and dreadful but now the reward seems indescribably great,’ she told Alice Ker. ‘To think I had who endured by far the least of all the forcibly fed should be making people wake up more than all of them.’ She wrote to Ada Flatman, optimistic that Jane Warton would make a lasting difference: ‘What hope that at least this feeding business will be heard of no more.’7 She had given everything to this heroic effort: she had to believe that it was worth it.

  While Constance had been in prison, the election had produced a hung parliament, with no party winning an outright majority: the Conservatives had won more votes though the Liberals had won more seats. The Liberals now had to rely on the Irish Parliamentary Party to govern. This election had only been called so that the Liberals could strengthen their hand against the intransigent House of Lords. It was a terrible miscalculation and this result was a disaster for them; they were in no mood to compromise with the suffragettes. On 19 February, Asquith sacked Gladstone as Home Secretary and installed Winston Churchill in his place. Gladstone had been public enemy number one for the suffragettes for some time. ‘The record of this man – his cruelty, his petty meanness, his wilful and deliberate misrepresentations – form a sordid chapter in this country’s history, and sully a name which had been made world famous by his father by for traditions of liberty and honour,’ said Votes for Women.8 But Churchill was also detested by the suffragettes and had long been singled out for particularly nasty heckling. On the other hand, he was a close friend of Victor Lytton. Would this be an advantage or not, in a case which hinged on accusations of special treatment for the privileged?

  Prison bureaucracy swung into motion and, as Victor had requested, the Chief Commissioner of Prisons, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, began an internal inquiry. The Home Office files bulge with testimonies from prison staff rejecting Constance’s accusations. The doctor had tested her pulse. He had not slapped her, though he had once patted her cheek to offer comfort. She had not been sick. Any food which came up was residue from the tube. Medical and bureaucratic jargon are mustered to explain how all the doctors could have missed the prisoner’s obvious illness in the meantime. ‘It is well known to medical observers that a murmur of this kind varies greatly in intensity at different times and in different positions of the patient and that its audibility bears little relation to the symptoms of heart-disorder, if any, which may be present.’ It all sounds very convincing. They even consider going on the offensive, wondering whether the doctor might sue The Times for printing the accusation that he had slapped the prisoner.9

 
One piece of evidence, though, is damning. The prison doctor had drafted a letter to The Times to explain what, in his view, had happened. He sent it to the Home Office for approval, and the draft has been altered by a Home Office official. The doctor says there was ‘some dry retching’, but the Home Office corrects this to ‘much’. The doctor says his assistant tested Jane’s pulse: the Home Office changes this to ‘senior colleague’.10 In the event, the letter was not published, but the Home Office certainly seems nervous. Nevertheless, the Commissioner concluded that

  no case exists for a special or formal inquiry. Such allegations, if made by an ordinary prisoner on discharge, and when disposed of by such inquiry as has been made in this case, would not be deemed to call for any further action … in this case the discharged prisoner is of gentle birth, highly educated and thus enabled to make public her alleged grievances through the medium of the Press and of her influential friends.11

  The establishment liked to pick and choose its moments to be snobbish.

  This was not good enough for Victor, and he turned once more to The Times to put his case before the public. As Constance Lytton, his sister had been judged too ill for force-feeding. As Jane Warton, she was not. There could not be a clearer case of double standards. The fact that Jane Warton refused to answer questions about her medical history did not absolve the prison staff from their responsibility to investigate her health. Moreover, he was not asking for special treatment for Constance – quite the reverse. Rather, he wanted to make sure other ‘Jane Wartons’ would be treated the same as Constance Lytton. ‘Your readers will form their own opinions of the justice of a Government Department which brings accusations of untruthfulness against an individual whilst refusing the only means by which the truth can be established,’ he concluded, with a flourish.12