The Suffragette

  That note was struck again and again, and it was upon that note that the whole meeting rested. Loyalty, enthusiasm, courage, belief in a great cause, the joy of fighting for it, these things filled the air. No one could fail to be impressed by them. When Mrs. Pankhurst rose to speak someone stepped forward and pressed into her hand a replica of a medal struck to commemorate the fall of the Paris Bastille in the French Revolution, because she had been born on the anniversary of that day. She was weakened and worn by her imprisonment, but her speech, brief and somewhat hesitating as it was, contained a pronouncement heralding important events, for it foreshadowed the hardest and bitterest struggle to secure the rights of Political Offenders to British women political prisoners that had yet been fought.

  Two further events must be chronicled before closing the story of the year 1908. The first is the fight of the Scottish women graduates for the recognition of their claim to vote under the Scottish University Franchise which they carried right through to the House of Lords. Though they failed to establish their claim, they yet brought to light many valuable new facts in regard to the rights and privileges of their countrywomen in ancient times. One of their contentions was that the question as to whether they might vote should be decided according to the actual wording of the University Franchise Act and not according to the known, or supposed, intentions of Parliament, for that is the rule which the British Courts have agreed to be always the just and proper one to adopt. There was nothing in the words of the Act to prevent women graduates from voting on equal terms with men, and even if it were held that this had happened because when the Act was passed the legislature had not foreseen the possibility of there ever being women graduates, the right course to pursue (because it was the accepted course when such questions in regard to Acts of Parliament arose) was for the women to be allowed to vote until Parliament, if it chose to do so, should carry an amending statute. The graduates pointed out that this had been done in the case of the first woman who had graduated in medicine, in the Netherlands where, as in England, graduation carried with it the right to vote. This lady had claimed her right and not being allowed to exercise it had taken her case to the Courts. For technical reasons the case had been postponed and during the postponement the Legislature had brought in a repealing enactment to prevent women graduates voting and had succeeded in carrying it. The reason for the refusal of the English authorities to take this course is clearly apparent, for it would have been difficult indeed for our Parliament to carry such a repealing measure in the face of the tremendous Suffragette and Suffragist agitation.

  The second of these two important happenings and perhaps the most auspicious one of the whole year, was the granting of votes to women in Victoria where, after struggling for many years, the Suffragists had at length succeeded in inducing their Government to take the matter up and had secured their enfranchisement on November 18th, 1908.

  * * *

  1 Miss Ogston acted upon her own initiative in using the dog whip, and her intention was not known to the committee of the W. S. P. U. who felt, however, that they could not condemn her for seeking to protect herself. She employed the whip as a protest, not against ejection, but against the unnecessary violence to which she herself and other women had been subjected.

  CHAPTER XIX

  JANUARY TO MARCH, 1909

  REMINDING THE CABINET COUNCIL OF VOTES FOR WOMEN. ATTEMPTS BY THE WOMEN’S FREEDOM LEAGUE TO INTERVIEW MR. ASQUITH. ARREST OF MRS. DESPARD. THE SEVENTH WOMEN’S PARLIAMENT. ARREST OF MRS. PETHICK LAWRENCE AND LADY CONSTANCE LYTTON. MR. GEOFFREY HOWARD’S REFORM BILL. THE EIGHTH WOMEN’S PARLIAMENT.

  SPEAKING in December, 1908, on the policy of his Government in the New Year, Mr. Asquith had declared that the stream of advice as to what he should do next session was pouring in upon him “both night and day,” and that he was constantly receiving deputations who came to him “from all quarters and in all causes, on an average of something like two hours on three days in every week.” These deputations all asked for different things, but were all agreed that “their measure must be mentioned in the King’s Speech, and that the best hours, or at all events some of the best hours, of the session must be given to its special consideration. And the worst of it is,” he went on, “that I am disposed myself to agree with them all, for, as each group in their turn come to me, I recognise in them some of our most loyal and fervent supporters.”

  Thus Mr. Asquith was constantly receiving deputations of men and, as he here admitted, the deputations were helping him to decide what measures he must include in the next King’s Speech, but he again refused to receive a deputation of the women. Therefore, when the first Cabinet Council of the season met on January 25th, members of the Women’s Social and Political Union called at No. 10 Downing Street to urge their claims again as they had done last year. For knocking at the door, four of them were arrested, and at Bow Street, where for administrative reasons all Suffragette cases were in future to be tried, they were ordered to go to prison for one month. They went cheerfully, for Mrs. Clark, a sister of Mrs. Pankhurst, voiced the feelings of all when, during her trial, she said, “I felt that it was not I who was knocking at the Prime Minister’s door, but the great need of women knocking at the conscience of the nation, and demanding that justice shall be done.”

  Mrs. Pethick Lawrence’s release, April 17th.

  Next day it was the members of the Women’s Freedom League who strove to obtain an interview with Mr. Asquith, and, in consequence, six of their number were arrested in Victoria Street, on their way to the Official residence; sixteen at the entrance to Downing Street; and six, including Mrs. Despard and Mr. Joseph Clayton, a journalist, who protested on their behalf, at the door of the Stranger’s Entrance to the House of Commons. The resulting sentences varied from one month to fourteen days’ imprisonment.

  Little notice was given of these imprisonments, the Press evidently thinking such sensations stale; but those active inventive brains at Clement’s Inn were determined not to be check-mated and were ever devising new stratagems and new surprises as a means of pushing the cause forward. When Mr. Churchill visited Newcastle to inspect a battleship, on December 4th and 5th, he was approached on the first of these days no fewer than fifteen times, and on the second almost constantly, by women who met him at the station, at the door of his hotel, at a reception held in his honour, on the pier, on the launch, on the ship itself, and again at every turn on landing, and who presented him with copies of “Votes for Women,” urged the cause upon him in brief hurried reminders, and made speeches to him from neighbouring boats. Every other Minister was similarly waylaid.

  When Parliament met, and the King’s Speech was found to contain no mention of “Votes for Women,” the W. S. P. U. decided that another Woman’s Parliament must be held and another deputation of women must be sent out from it. Then again something that had never been done before had to be contrived for focussing public attention upon this event. Quite opportunely the Post Master General happened to issue new regulations making it possible to post “human letters.” Of course it was at once determined to post some Suffragettes as letters to Mr. Asquith in Downing Street. Accordingly, on Tuesday morning, January 23rd, Jessie Kenney dispatched Miss Solomon and Miss Mc-Clellan from the Strand post office. Then, in charge of a little messenger boy, one carrying a placard inscribed “Votes for Women, Deputation to the House of Commons, Wednesday” and the other, to the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, 10, Downing Street, S. W., the two ladies marched off to the official residence. When they arrived the messenger boy was invited inside, and the door was shut, but, after a few moments, it was opened again and an official appeared, saying to the women, “You must be returned.” “But we have been paid for,” they protested, and he replied, “The Post Office must deliver you somewhere else, you cannot be received here.” “An express letter is an official document,” they persisted, “and must be signed for according to the regulations.” But the official replied, “You cannot be signed for; you must b
e returned; you are dead letters.” So there was nothing for it but to go back to Clement’s Inn.

  The arrest of Miss Dora Marsden, the Standard Bearer, March 30th, 1909

  Another day a facsimile of “Black Maria,” the van which takes the prisoners to Holloway, was seen driving through the town. It bore the inscription E. P. for Emmeline Pankhurst, instead of E. R., Edward Rex, and a man dressed almost exactly like a policeman rode on the back step. When the van reached Regent Street a body of women in imitation prison dress emerged and proceeded to distribute handbills to the passers-by and to chalk announcements of the forthcoming deputation to Mr. Asquith upon the pavement. The members of the Women’s Freedom League also hit upon a new and striking advertisement, for Miss Matters, the heroine of the Grille scene, floated over the House of Commons in a cigar-shaped dirigible balloon painted with the fateful words, “Votes for Women.”

  Ridiculous, petty, even unworthy of serious people, you may think, were some of these methods of propaganda and advertisement, but the Suffragettes knew only too well that the cause which does not advance cannot remain stationary, but slips back into the limbo of forgotten things. On February 24th, the seventh Women’s Parliament met in the Caxton Hall. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence sallied forth from it with a number of women in her train, but she and twenty-eight of her comrades, including Lady Constance Lytton and Miss Daisy D. Solomon, the daughter of the Late Prime Minister of the Cape, were soon arrested. Their trial took place before Sir Albert de Rutzen at Bow Street next day, and on refusing to be bound over to keep the peace they received sentences of from one to two months’ imprisonment.

  There were now many members, both of the Women’s Social and Political Union and of the Women’s Freedom League, in Holloway, and one day, whilst they were exercising together, a member of the latter organisation, Mrs. Meredith Mac-Donald, a lady in middle life, fell on the frosty stones. Two of her fellow prisoners ran to help her, but the wardress forced them away and, though she said she believed her thigh to be injured, she was forced to drag herself unaided to her cell. Her request to see her own doctor was refused and not until she became unable even to turn in her bed was she removed to the prison hospital. When, at last, the ex-rays were applied, it was found that her thigh was fractured, and that, owing to the long delay and lack of proper treatment, she would be lame for life. The matter was reported to the Home Secretary with a demand for redress, but no result followed until June, 1910, more than a year afterwards, when, legal proceedings having been instituted, the authorities at last agreed to pay Mrs. MacDonald £500 damages and her legal costs, amounting to an equal sum.

  Meanwhile a place for a Women’s Suffrage measure had been won in the private Members’ ballot by Mr. Geoffrey Howard, a Liberal Member of Parliament and son of the Countess of Carlisle. Mr. Howard and the Women’s Suffrage Committee of Liberal Members with whom he was working, decided to abandon the old equal Bill and to introduce a complicated Reform measure, on the lines of that foreshadowed by Mr. Asquith in his famous promise of the previous year, except that, in this case, Votes for Women was to form part of the original measure, instead of being left to come in as an amendment. Under this Private Members’ Reform Bill the only condition required for registration as a Parliamentary voter was to be that the person registered, whether man or woman, should be of full age and have resided for not less than three months within the same constituency. It was estimated that the Bill would qualify some fifteen million new voters, twelve million of whom would be women,1 and would thus nearly treble the number at present entitled to exercise the franchise. It would at the same time abolish plural voting. The professed object of bringing forward this measure was to meet the stipulation put forward by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George that votes should not be given to women except on “democratic lines.”

  Elsie Howey as Joan of Arc, who rode at the head of the procession formed to celebrate Mrs. Pethick Lawrence’s release from prison

  On Friday, March 19th, the Bill came up for Second Reading and Mr. Howard, in explaining its provisions, said that he had no hope of carrying it into law, but merely wished to “clear the air” for the Reform Bill promised by the Government. Sir Charles M’Laren said that he hoped this Bill might help the Government to come to some decision as to the manner in which they would deal with the Women’s Suffrage question next year, but when Mr. Asquith arose to make the expected Government pronouncement, he declared that the opinion of the Government was unchanged and entirely unaffected by the introduction of this Bill. He added, however, that there were certain proposals contained in the measure of which he approved, but carefully explained that his approval only extended so far as the Bill referred to men. Though he was aware that the measure would not be pressed beyond a Second Reading, he stated that the members of the Government would abstain from voting either for or against it. The whole debate, therefore, ended in fiasco, and had been merely a wasted opportunity. After Mr. Asquith’s pronouncement the House divided and there voted,

  It will be thus seen that this Bill of Mr. Howard’s secured a very much smaller measure of support than that which had been accorded to the equal Women’s Enfranchisement Bill in the previous year, for the figures had then been: For the Bill 271, against 92. Majority for the Bill 179.

  The Women’s Social and Political Union now decided that another deputation should attempt to obtain an interview with Mr. Asquith, and an eighth Women’s Parliament was held on March 30th. Mrs. Saul Solomon, widow of the Governor General of South Africa, an elderly, motherly figure, volunteered to lead its deputation of thirty women who were to carry the usual resolution to the House, whilst Miss Dora Marsden, B.A., of Manchester, looking exactly like a Florentine angel, marched before with a purple-white-and-green standard announcing the arrival of the deputation. As soon as the women reached the street, the usual pushing and hustling by the police began, and after an hour’s brave struggle, eleven of them were arrested. Next day nine of those who had not been taken again returned to the charge, and eventually the twenty women were sent to prison at Sir Albert de Rutzen’s orders, nineteen of them for one month and Patricia Woodlock, because she had served several sentences already, for three.

  On April 16th, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, our dear treasurer, was released, and we were able to tell her that no less than £8,000 had been collected by the sacrifice of our members during self-denial week. A great procession was formed in her honour and marched from the Marble Arch to the Aldwych Theatre, where she was to speak. What a day it was to welcome anyone from prison! The trees were just bursting into leaf, and the brilliant April sunshine glistened on the silver armour of Elsie Howey, who represented Joan of Arc, the warrior maid, whose Beatification was taking place that very day, and rode at the head of the procession, astride her great white charger, with the brisk wind blowing back her fair hair, and gaily fluttering the purple-white-and-green standard which she bore. Then came women and girls with flowers and banners, and Mrs. Lawrence’s own carriage covered with flags, and everywhere were the purple-white-and-green colours, except at one point where the American delegates to the International Women’s Suffrage Congress, then sitting in London, rode in a carriage draped with their own stars and stripes. Inside the theatre the platform was covered with flowers sent by hundreds of members and friends, and there too the American delegates had added their tribute, a little silk copy of their national flag.

  It was a wonderful speech that Mrs. Lawrence then delivered, full, not only of enthusiasm and deep feeling, but of logic and common sense, and of unanswerable arguments for the women’s cause. She reminded us that she and her fellow Suffragists had gone to prison in support of the old English Constitutional maxim that taxation and representation should go together. Before she had gone to prison, she told us, a birthday book had been shown to her that had been got out for a Church bazaar. In that book Mr. Asquith had been asked to write his favourite quotation with his signature, and this favourite quotation of Mr. Asquith’s had turned out to be, “Tax
ation without representation is tyranny.” Many stories she told us of what she had seen and heard in prison. One morning the Chaplain had come into the hospital where she was, and had called up an old woman to speak to him. Everyone there had heard the conversation that passed between them, and had learnt in reply to his peremptory questioning her name, her age, the length of her sentence, and so on. She was seventy-six, unmarried, and for the first time in her long life she was now imprisoned because she could not pay her rent and taxes £3 16s. “I keep a lodging house for workingmen,” she said. “It has been a very bad winter for my lodgers, and they have not been able to pay me.” “This woman was quite good enough to pay taxes,” said Mrs. Lawrence, “this old woman of seventy-six, and to go to prison when she could not meet the taxes, and yet she was not counted fit to exercise a vote.”

  A part of the decoration of the Exhibition held in the Prince’s Skating Rink, May, 1909

  Mrs. Lawrence also told us of a conversation between herself and the chaplain. “I have heard a great deal of you, Mrs. Lawrence,” he had said. “You have started holiday homes for girls. I wish you would start a holiday home for wardresses. You see they work very hard — twelve hours a day. They very often break down, and then they have not enough money to go away for a holiday.” “I looked at him in amazement,” Mrs. Lawrence told us, “to think that a Government servant should come to me, a voteless woman, and suggest that I should supply a deficiency created because our legislators do not pay their women servants enough.” So argument followed argument, and there were many Suffragettes who joined the Union on that day.

  Ever since the night on which the members of the Freedom League had chained themselves to the grille and pieces of that historic monument of prejudice had been taken down, whilst two men in the Stranger’s Gallery had loudly demanded votes for women, the galleries had been closed and though Press representatives had still leave to come and go, as far as the general public was concerned, the House had sat in secret conclave for six months. Members of Parliament found the exclusion of all visitors to the House to be exceedingly inconvenient, and at last the Government introduced what it called a “Brawling Bill “which was to settle the question by providing that: —