The Suffragette

  A loud clear woman’s voice, calling attention to the women’s demand, through a megaphone, and then crash after crash; that was what the people in the hall knew of the scene, whilst outside great crowds were surging and those who looked up could see what the Liverpool Courier called, “the frail figure of a little woman peeping out from behind a chimney stack,” who as her comrades at the windows passed ammunition up to her, hurled it onto the roof of the hall “with a dexterity which was nothing short of marvellous.” When everything that they had brought with them had been exhausted she tore the slates up from the roof and flung them after the rest.

  The police rushed to the scene and pressed a passing window cleaner into the service but his ladder was too short and the fire escape had to be sent for before Mrs. Leigh could be brought down. Then she and her six comrades were driven away in “Black Maria” to the Central Bridewell and, having been allowed out on bail at a late hour, were brought up the following morning at the Liverpool police court charged with doing wilful damage to the Sun Hall.

  They were remanded until the following Tuesday, August 24th, but refused to find bail and were detained in prison where, on being expected to conform to the ordinary rules, they began the hunger strike and were placed in the punishment cells. They had already fasted three and a half days when their trial took place. It was stated in the Court that no one had been hurt by their action on the night of the Sun Hall meeting but that damage had been done to the extent of £3. 19. o. Sentences of from one to two months’ imprisonment in the second division having been passed upon them, they were taken back to the punishment cells, where, owing to the cold and damp many of them were stricken with shivering fits. The order of release came for Miss Healiss on the following day and for the six others on Thursday evening.

  During the summer months, Mr. Asquith had been golfing at Clovelly and three of the younger Suffragettes, girls of between twenty and twenty-five, had approached him in the midst of his game and had told him pretty forcibly what they thought of him and his Government. On the first Saturday in September these same girls, Jessie Kenney, Vera Wentworth and Elsie Howey, visited Littlestone on Sea where Mr. Asquith and Mr. Gladstone were playing golf together. They caught sight of Mr. Asquith as he was leaving the club house and Elsie Howey made a dash towards him. He tried to run back into the house but was caught just as he reached the topmost step. As soon as he felt the girl’s touch on his arm, he cried out, “I shall have you locked up,” but she replied, “I don’t care what you do, Mr. Asquith,” and as Jessie and Vera also appeared, he called for help and Mr. Herbert Gladstone came to his aid. The two men then tried to push the three girls down the steps but this was not easily accomplished. As Jessie said, “There were blows received from both parties and plenty of jostling. Mr. Gladstone fought like a prize-fighter and struck out left and right. I must say he is a better fighter than he is a politician. The Suffragettes have often been called hooligans, but the two Cabinet Ministers certainly showed that they too could be hooligans when no one was looking.”

  At last two other men came to reinforce the Cabinet Ministers and the girls were all three knocked down in a heap. The two Ministers then made good their escape and Mr. Gladstone motored to Hythe police station and arranged with the superintendent of the County Police for a body of constables to be sent to guard Lympne Castle, where he was staying. Of course the Suffragettes were severely condemned for having “annoyed” the Cabinet Ministers on their holiday, and the escapade of these three girls was described as an “outrage,” but nevertheless many jokes were made on the subject, at Mr. Asquith’s expense. Several detailed accounts of his playing golf with an escort of upwards of six policemen (some of which he took the trouble to deny) appeared in the Press.

  On Saturday, September 4th, whilst Mr. Asquith was being waylaid at Lympne, scenes in which there was a curious mingling of grave and gay, were taking place in Manchester where Mr. Birrell was addressing a Budget demonstration at the White City. The platform from which he was to speak and all the neighbouring roofs had been carefully searched for Suffragettes and with 200 stewards and fifty policemen in the Hall it was thus hoped that they would be excluded. But the women entered the American Cake-Walk show which adjoined the concert hall where the meeting was taking place on the one side, and the American Dragon Slide which came next it on the other, and from these two points they threw small missiles through the glass windows and succeeded in making their voices heard. It was impossible to arrest the Suffragettes who were on the cake-walk machine without cake-walking also and when a policeman mounted the machine in order to effect their capture, he found, to the great amusement of the onlookers, that he had got on to the wrong platform and so was forced to play his part in what the Liverpool Courier described as “a spectacle, which from the point of its ludicrousness, must stand unparalleled in the annals of police adventure”; for, as he was obliged to cake-walk forwards, so the offending women were compelled to cake-walk backwards. But if, as is possible, the Suffragettes in company with the rest of the public, found the spectacle amusing, their fun was soon at an end, for on Monday, they were sentenced to from one to two months’ imprisonment in the second division.3

  At Strangeways Gaol, terrible punishments were meted out to them on the refusal to obey the rules, but these punishments were tempered by kindly acts on the part of many members of the staff. Some of the women were sentenced not only to close solitary confinement but to wear handcuffs for twenty-four hours and one of them tells that, when, after a sleepless night, the matron took pity on her and ordered the handcuffs to be removed, she nearly fainted with pain, whilst the wardress worked her arms to restore the circulation. To another prisoner who refused to wear the prison clothes, was brought a “strange unclean leather and canvas jacket with straps and buckles attached.” Into this she was forced and locked but somehow or other she managed to wriggle out, all but one arm, and the matron then appeared and ordered that the remaining strap should be unlocked. These Manchester prisoners were all released on Wednesday, the 8th September, after a four days’ fast.

  On the same day were released six women who had been arrested in Leicester on the previous Saturday for holding a meeting of protest outside that addressed by Mr. Winston Churchill in the Palace Theatre. They also had carried out the hunger strike.

  In Dundee at three o’clock on the morning of Monday, September 13th, Miss Isabel Kelley, clad in gymnastic dress, was climbing a high scaffolding erected on the Bank of Scotland from which in the darkness she let herself down some twenty-five feet onto the roof of the Kinnaird Hall where Mr. Herbert Samuel was to hold a meeting the next night. There she lay concealed for seventeen hours until the meeting began. Then by means of a strong rope about twenty-four feet in length at one end of which was an iron hook, which she attached to the roof, and at the other a running noose, she entered the building by a skylight and found herself on the stairs leading to the gallery of the hall. She was able to rush in, but before a word had passed her lips she was seized by the stewards, handed over to the police and driven off in custody.

  Meanwhile other Suffragettes were leading a great charge of people to the door of the hall, but they too were arrested. This was the second time that women had been arrested in Scotland in connection with Cabinet Ministers’ meetings. In Glasgow, as we have seen, the officials had escheated the bail and allowed the prosecution to fall to the ground. Here in Dundee Miss Kelley and Miss Fraser Smith who had also succeeded in getting into the hall, were released, whilst the women who had been arrested outside were sent to prison for from ten to seven days in default of paying fines varying from £5 to £3. They all refused to obey the prison rules and carried out the hunger strike, and were released on Friday, the 17th of September, at 10:30 P.M. after having gone without food since the time of their arrest on the Monday.

  As soon as it had been announced that Mrs. Pankhurst and those arrested with her were to go free until after their case had been discussed by the High Court, she had
made her way to Cleveland in Yorkshire where a by-election was taking place owing to Mr. Herbert Samuel’s elevation to the Cabinet as Post Master General. Mr. Samuel had hitherto acted as Under-Secretary at the Home Office, the Governmental Department which was responsible for the treatment of the Suffragettes in prison. Mr. Samuel began by scoffing at the opposition of the Suffragettes, referring to them as “wild women from Westminster”; but the people of Cleveland soon became ardent supporters of the Women’s cause and flocked eagerly to their meetings. He then found it necessary to devote large parts of his speeches to combating the Suffragette arguments. He declared that it was a “wicked calumny” to say that the Government had sent women to prison for asking for votes and specially dissociated himself from any part in the responsibility. At one moment he stated that Mr. Asquith had already promised to give women the vote and at another than the present Parliament could not do it, and again and again he accused the women of fighting with “Tory Gold.”

  All this betrayed his fear that the women were turning votes. Even The Times, that anti-Suffragist newspaper which had always condemned the Suffragette tactics and minimised the effect of their work, acknowledged now that their attack was damaging the Government candidates’ chances, and, on July 6th, the special correspondent of this paper wrote:

  The women suffragists have made a favourable impression upon the electorate and the miners specially appear to have been thoroughly converted by the new propaganda…. Some miners with whom I have talked would even vote for the candidate who was in favour of Women’s Suffrage without respect to his opinions upon other subjects. To put it more emphatically, a Women’s Suffrage candidate, pure and simple, as a third candidate, would probably have endangered Mr. Samuel’s re-election quite as much as a candidate of the Labour party.

  Finally on the eve of the poll Mr. Herbert Samuel found it necessary to draw up a special leaflet against the women, the only one on any subject which was sent out in a similar way. The result of the contest was, as the Liberals admitted, “disappointing” from their point of view, for, although Mr. Samuel was returned, in spite of his added prestige as a Cabinet Minister, his majority was enormously decreased.

  The figures were:

  At the General Election of 1906 Mr. Herbert Samuel had been returned unopposed.

  Meanwhile another by-election was being fought in Dumfriesburgh where the Liberal majority was again reduced.

  * * *

  1 Daughter of the late Sir David Brand, Sheriff of Edinburgh and Chairman of the Crofters Commission who had been knighted for his services to the Liberal party.

  2 The Scotch Fiscal is the officer who prosecutes in the case of petty criminal offences.

  3 An attempt was made to charge some of the women with unlawful wounding because a man’s hand had been cut by the falling glass, but on the wound being found to be very slight, the charge was reduced to one of common assault.

  CHAPTER XXII

  SEPTEMBER TO OCTOBER, 1909

  THE ARRESTS AT BIRMINGHAM; FORCIBLE FEEDING IN WINSON GREEN GAOL. MR. KEIR HARDIE’S PROTEST; OPINIONS OF MEDICAL EXPERTS; RESIGNATION OF MR. BRAILSFORD AND MR. NEVINSON.

  AND now on September 17th the Prime Minister was going up to Birmingham to hold a meeting of 10,000 people at the great Bingley Hall. A “bower bedecked” special train was to carry the Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament up north straight from their duties in the House, and back again. Tremendous efforts were being made to work up enthusiasm for at this meeting, Mr. Asquith was to throw down his challenge to the House of Lords, to proclaim that their power of veto should be abolished, and that the will of the people should prevail. But the Suffragettes were determined that, if the freedom to voice their will were to be confined to half the people alone, there should be no peace in Birmingham for the Prime Minister.

  Mrs. Leigh and her colleagues, who were organising there, began by copying the police methods so far as to address a warning to the public not to attend Mr. Asquith’s meeting, as disturbances were likely to ensue, and immediately the authorities were seized with panic. A great tarpaulin was stretched across the glass roof of the Bingley Hall, a tall fire escape was placed on each side of the building and hundreds of yards of firemen’s hose were laid across the roof. Wooden barriers, nine feet high, were erected along the station platform and across all the leading thoroughfares in the neighbourhood, whilst the ends of the streets both in front and at the back of Bingley Hall were sealed up by barricades. Nevertheless, inside those very sealed up streets, numbers of Suffragettes had been lodging for days past and were quietly watching the arrangements. At the same time outside in the town a vigorous propaganda campaign was being carried on by their comrades, and this culminated in an enthusiastic Votes for Women demonstration in the Bull Ring the day before the great Liberal meeting.

  When Mr. Asquith left the House of Commons for his special train, detectives and policemen hemmed him in on every side, and when he arrived at the station in Birmingham, he was smuggled to the Queen’s Hotel by a back subway a quarter of a mile in length and carried up in the luggage lift. In the hotel he took his meal alone in a private room away from his guests. Though guarded by a strong escort of mounted police he thought it wisest not to enter the hall by the entrance at which he had been expected. Meanwhile tremendous crowds were thronging the streets and the ticket holders were watched as closely as spies in time of war. They had to pass four barriers and were squeezed through them by a tiny gangway and then passed between long lines of police and amid an incessant roar of “show your ticket.” The vast throngs of people who had no tickets and had only come out to see the show, surged against the barriers like great human waves and occasionally cries of “Votes for Women” were greeted with deafening cheers.

  Inside the hall there were armies of stewards and groups of police at every turn. The meeting began by the singing of a song of freedom led by a band of trumpeters. Then the Prime Minister appeared. “For years past the people have been beguiled with unfulfilled promises,” he declared, but during his speech he was again and again reminded, by men of the unfulfilled promises which had been made to women; and, though men who interrupted him on other subjects were never interfered with, these champions of the Suffragettes were, in every case, set upon with a violence which was described by onlookers as “revengeful,” and “vicious.” Thirteen men were maltreated in this way.

  Meanwhile amid the vast crowds outside women were fighting for their freedom. Cabinet Ministers had sneered at them and taunted them with not being able to use physical force. “Working men have flung open the franchise door at which the ladies are scratching,” Mr. John Burns had said. So now they were showing that, if they would, they could use violence, though they were determined that, at any rate as yet, they would hurt no one. Again and again they charged the barricades, one woman with a hatchet in her hand, and the friendly people always pressed forward with them. In spite of a thousand police the first barrier was many times thrown down. Whenever a woman was arrested the crowd struggled to secure her release and over and over again they were successful, one woman being snatched from the constables no fewer than seven times.

  Inside the hall Mr. Asquith had not only the men to contend with, for the meeting had not long been in progress, when there was a sudden sound of splintering glass and a woman’s voice was heard loudly denouncing the Government. A missile had been thrown through one of the ventilators by a number of Suffragettes from an open window in a house opposite. The police rushed to the house door, burst it open and scrambled up the stairs, falling over each other in their haste to reach the women, and then dragged them down and flung them into the street where they were immediately placed under arrest. Even whilst this was happening there burst upon the air the sound of an electric motor horn which issued from another house near by. Evidently there were Suffragettes there too. The front door of this house was barricaded and so also was the door of the room in which the women were, but the infuriated Liberal Stewards forced
their way through and wrested the instrument from the woman’s hands.

  No sooner was this effected however than the rattling of missiles was heard on the other side of the hall, and, on the roof of a house, thirty feet above the street, lit up by a tall electric standard was seen the little agile figure of Mrs. Leigh, with a tall fair girl beside her, both of whom were tearing up the slates with axes, and flinging them on to the roof of the Bingley Hall and down into the road below, always, however, taking care to hit no one and sounding a warning before throwing. The police cried to them to stop and angry stewards came rushing out of the hall to second this demand, but the women calmly went on with their work. A ladder was produced and the men prepared to mount it, but the only reply was a warning to “be careful” and all present felt that discretion was the better part of valour. Then the fire hose was dragged forward, but the firemen refused to turn it on, and so the police themselves played it on the women until they were drenched to the skin. The slates had now become terribly slippery, and the women were in great danger of sliding from the steep roof, but they had already taken off their shoes and so contrived to retain a foothold, and without intermission they continued “firing” slates. Finding that water had no power to subdue them, their opponents retaliated by throwing bricks and stones up at the two women, but, instead of trying, as they had done to avoid hitting, the men took good aim at them and soon blood was running down the face of the tall girl, Charlotte Marsh, and both had been struck several times.