JANE WARTON
“Under a Government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
just man (or woman) is also a prison.”
I was sent to Liverpool and Manchester to join in working an
Anti-Government campaign during a General Election in January, 1910.
Just before I went, there came the news of the barbarous ill-treatment
of Miss Selina Martin and Miss Leslie Hall, while on remand in Walton
Gaol. They had been refused bail, and, while awaiting their trial,
their friends were not allowed to communicate with them. This is
contrary to law and precedent for prisoners on remand. As a protest
they had started a hunger-strike. They were fed by force, in answer to
which they broke the windows of their cells. They were put in irons
for days and nights together, and one of them was frog-marched in the
most brutal fashion to and from the room where the forcible feeding was
performed. These facts they made known to their friends at the police
court on the day of their trial.
I heard, too, of another prisoner in Liverpool, Miss Bertha Brewster,
who had been re-arrested after her release from prison, and charged
with breaking the windows of her prison cell, which she had done as a
protest against being fed by force. She had been punished for this
offence while in prison. She did not respond to the summons, and when
arrested on a warrant, three and a half months later, she was sentenced
to six weeks’ hard labour for this offence.
I felt a great wish to be in Liverpool, if possible, to get public
opinion in that town to protest against such treatment of women
political prisoners. If I failed in this, I determined myself to share
the fate of these women.
When I was in Manchester, Mary Gawthorpe was ill with the internal
complaint which has since obliged her to give up work. She saw me in
her room one day. We had been distressed beyond words to hear of the
sufferings of Selina Martin and Leslie Hall. Mary Gawthorpe said, with
tears in her eyes, as she threw her arms round me: “Oh, and these are
women quite unknown--nobody knows or cares about them except their
own friends. They go to prison again and again to be treated like
this, until it kills them!” That was enough. My mind was made up.
The altogether shameless way I had been preferred against the others
at Newcastle, except Mrs. Brailsford who shared with me the special
treatment, made me determine to try whether they would recognise my
need for exceptional favours without my name.
Our meetings were always crowded and enthusiastic, especially in
Manchester. This was my first experience of meetings in a really
poverty-stricken district. I never shall forget one in the Salford
Division of Manchester. A small room was packed as close as it would
hold of the poorest working women. How eagerly and intelligently they
listened, and what a wonderful light came into their eyes as the hope
dawned in their minds: “Can it be that Parliament would really begin
to think of _us_ and attend to _our_ interests?” All their questions
were to the point and practical. How different was the atmosphere
from that of the typical drawing-room meeting, where many women came
together with the remark: “I am all for _propertied_ women having the
vote,” but their fear is lest the electorate should be flooded with
working women voters. I have never yet been asked by a working-class
woman whether our Bill, to give votes to women for the same reason as
men have it, would not give undue power to propertied women. That is
a man’s question, though often taken over by women of the leisured
or professional class who identify themselves with the objections of
theoretic politicians. To the working-class women the matter presents
itself easily and naturally, as it actually is--a woman’s question,
not a class question. To have their right to labour unrestricted,
their protection controlled by themselves, their economic position
independent and on the straightforward footing of being judged by its
value and by that alone; their property, earnings, and their persons
to be defended by law, and their right over their children to be
acknowledged by law. In fact, their freedom as human beings, their full
recognition as equal members of the community with men--that is how
the Votes-for-Women question appeals to them. They see it neither as a
party question nor as a class question.
Suddenly I had my opportunity. The Press and the people in each
different constituency were entirely engrossed with the elections.
Up till now, protest meetings were being held by our Union every
week outside Walton Gaol, Liverpool. These were not held during the
elections, but I told the Liverpool organiser, Miss Flatman, and the
general organiser, Mrs. Jennie Baines, that if they would have one more
of these protest meetings on Friday, January 14, it was my intention
to go in disguise, call upon the crowd to follow me to the Governor’s
house, and insist upon the release of the Suffrage prisoners who had
been tortured by forcible feeding. It was not our wont to do any
militancy or to hold any protest meetings during election time, that
being a time, as it were, when no Government is in, but it seemed to
me that this was the opportunity to make the Governor of the prison
responsible. It was a case of nothing less than cruelty and did not
specially concern, unless they chose to back it up, the Government.
I joined the W.S.P.U. again, filling up the membership card as Miss
Jane Warton. The choice of a name had been easy. When I came out of
Holloway Prison, a distant relative, by name Mr. F. Warburton, wrote
me an appreciative letter, thanking me for having been a prisoner in
this cause. I determined that if it were necessary to go to prison
under another name, I should take the name of Warburton. When I went
to Newcastle, my family raised no objection. Now nobody was to know of
my disguise, but Warburton was too distinguished a name; that would
at once attract attention. I must leave out the “bur” and make it
“Warton.” “Jane” was the name of Joan of Arc (for Jeanne is more often
translated into “Jane” than “Joan”) and would bring me comfort in
distress. A family sympathetic to our cause, who lived in the suburb
near Walton Gaol, were informed that a keen member, Miss Warton, would
call at their house in the afternoon before the protest meeting,
to investigate the outside of the gaol and the Governor’s house by
daylight, and that she was ready to be arrested if she could not obtain
the release of the prisoners.
I spent the previous day and night in Manchester where no one knew
of my intentions. In the afternoon, at a drawing-room meeting, I was
introduced, after I had spoken, to a woman who was a factory inspector.
She had very often to attend in the police courts. She said to me: “I
think it is impossible to attend these cases, and hear the other cases
while you wait, and not be a convert to votes for women if you were not
one before. The other day a man and two women were had up before the
magistrate. They had been found in the street, the man and one woman
had been cohabiting together, the other woman mounted guard. The case
was quite clear, and the facts were not denied, the man had bribed the
women. The man was let free, the two women were sent to prison. If
women had the vote such things could not be; in those countries where
women have the vote they get altered in less than a year.”
In the evening we went to a meeting in a large hall. It was full of
working men and working women; it looked as if there were not room to
move, so crowded were the seats and gangways. They were tremendously
enthusiastic, many of them shook me by the hand, and the thought of
them remained for a long time in my heart.
The next morning I took leave of my two kind hostesses. Their last
injunction to me was, the agitation of my impending task having
affected my appetite, “You should eat more; mind you eat more.”
I accomplished my disguise in Manchester, going to a different shop for
every part of it, for safety’s sake. I had noticed several times while
I was in prison that prisoners of unprepossessing appearance obtained
least favour, so I was determined to put ugliness to the test. I had my
hair cut short and parted, in early Victorian fashion, in smooth bands
down the side of my face. This, combined with the resentful bristles of
my newly-cut back hair, produced a curious effect. I wished to bleach
my hair as well, but the hairdresser refused point-blank to do this,
and the stuff that I bought for the purpose at a chemist’s proved quite
ineffective. A tweed hat, a long green cloth coat, which I purchased
for 8_s._ 6_d._, a woollen scarf and woollen gloves, a white silk
neck-kerchief, a pair of pince-nez spectacles, a purse, a net-bag to
contain some of my papers, and my costume was complete. I had removed
my own initials from my underclothing, and bought the ready-made
initials “J. W.” to sew on in their stead, but to my regret I had not
time to achieve this finishing touch.
All this sounds simple enough, but I suppose it was due to my
preoccupation of mind that I have never known a day’s shopping fraught
with such complications and difficulties. At the frowzy little
hairdresser’s shop, the only one that seemed to me inconspicuous enough
for so important a part of my disguise, the attendant was busy, and I
had to return in an hour’s time. I told him that I was going a journey
and wanted the hair short, since that would be less trouble. He cut
it off. Then I wanted what remained to be worn in a parting, with the
hair falling straight on either side. This part of the process was most
absurd, for that way of wearing my hair was obviously disfiguring to
me. “Ah! now that looks very becoming,” said the hairdresser, and with
that I left the shop in haste.
The eye-glasses I had first bought made me feel giddy from the quality
of the lens. I had to take them back and have the glasses changed to
the weakest possible. At the first place, in spite of all my protests,
the shopman insisted on elaborately testing my sight, afterwards
requiring me to wait for half an hour or so while he fitted up the
glasses. So I went to another shop, and in self-defence invented the
story that the glasses were for stage purposes, for a friend of mine
who had very good sight, and that if she was not to trip up in her part
the glasses must be as nearly plain as possible. This time I was more
successful with the lens, but the grip of the folders was still galling
to the very large bridge of my nose.
When I had finished this errand I was startled to see walking along
the street one of my kind hostesses, whom I had parted from early
that morning, professedly to return to Liverpool without delay. I took
refuge down a side-street until she had passed by. Then I had strayed
into the more opulent quarters of Manchester, in my search for another
spectacle shop. All the shops were of a high-class order, and Jane
Warton could find nothing to her requirements. On inquiry for a “cheap”
draper, three different people recommended me to a certain shop named
“Lewis.” A sale was on there and Jane found that it was the very place
for her. So many Miss Wartons were of the same mind that the street
was blocked with customers for some distance down; but I was obliged
to wait, for no other shop was of the same description. The hat was a
special difficulty; every article of millinery was of the fashionable
order, warranted to cover half the body as well as the head. This
did not suit Jane. Finally she succeeded in getting the right one of
stitched cloth, with a plait of cloth round the crown. Before leaving
Manchester I realised that my ugly disguise was a success. I was an
object of the greatest derision to street-boys, and shop-girls could
hardly keep their countenances while serving me.
I had done my shopping at last, and hurried off to the station. I took
out my box, put in it my own hat and jacket, put on the label “Miss
Jane Warton, Cloak Room,” and left it there. In the refreshment room,
where I went to take a last hurried meal, a delightful big, brown dog,
a mongrel, came and talked to me. He was with a party of two men and a
woman, who sat at a distant corner of the room. The dog came up to me
at once; he put his head on my lap and was most dear.
After this I got into the train. I finished a letter to my mother,
telling her of yesterday’s meetings and that I might not write to her
for some little time because of being so busy with the elections.
Arrived at Liverpool, and not knowing my way to Walton, I took a cab
and drove out for nearly an hour before reaching my destination. I was
already racing hard with daylight and, thanks to a damp fog, it was
already quite dark when I arrived there.
The house to which I had been directed was in a new quarter and nowhere
to be found. We drove up and down the roads and inquired at shops
and post offices. Presently I spotted the familiar sight of a woman
stooping to chalk on the pavement some announcement--it was our protest
meeting. I felt happy again, it was like seeing a friend. She turned
out to be one of the daughters of the very house I was seeking. There
were three daughters who lived with their mother. The daughters were
zealots and welcomed Jane without a sign of criticism. I saw the mother
gasp a little when I entered her drawing-room, but she was nevertheless
most courteous and kind.
I was escorted to the gaol and took my bearings. To anyone who has
been in prison, few things, I think, are more exasperating than the
unrevealing face of the outer walls. On this occasion I felt an
overmastering longing to inquire after the prisoners who had stirred
me to my coming deed. What was the degree of their suffering and
exhaustion? What should I be able to do for their release? If by some
miracle I obtained it, would it be too late to help them? I thought
more especially of Miss Selina Martin. I had seen her in Birmingham a
fortnight after her release from the weeks that she had been fed in the
prison there. She was in the nursing home, together with Mrs. Leigh,
that splendid fighter for the women’s cause and most heroic woman.
Their look of illness haunted me still. The idea that Selina Martin was
again, perhaps at that very moment, undergoing the same cruel treatment
exasperated me. I felt so feeble, had so little faith in the utility of
what I was about to do, yet I was athirst to do it, and the strength of
my wish that it should be effective made me feel, at moments, capable
of anything. But to all this the prison walls had nothing to say. They
revealed nothing. They looked angry with all the world, angry above all
because of an uneasy conscience.
I returned to the house of my friends, selected from their garden
small, flat stones in case of need, which I wrapped in paper, and
snatched a hasty meal. My kind hostess had heard that I was a
vegetarian, and had provided a most appetising dish of stewed white
pears. My mouth was parched with the weary work of the day and the
thought of what lay before me, but I had no time except to taste the
pears; the memory of them during the hunger-strike filled my dreams.
Again we set out for the prison. All through the day I had been dogged
by the nightmare thought that I should be too late for the meeting, or
for some other reason should be prevented from achieving my purpose.
As we neared the place, a crowd of between two and three hundred men
and women were following the carriage in which were our speakers.
It had been agreed that I should mix with the crowd, not join with
the speakers, but at the end of the meeting should have my say from
below. I passed the carriage to report myself to the organisers. Many
of our members were standing around, but I think most of them did not
recognise me, except from my voice later on.
Miss Flatman, Miss Patricia Woodlock and Mrs. Baines made stirring
speeches, but the crowd had mostly gathered out of curiosity and
were not many of them likely to listen to my coming appeal. I was
afraid lest they should disperse before I had my chance, so I rudely
interrupted Mrs. Baines and spoke from the outer rim of the crowd, on
the side of the Governor’s house.
I reminded the audience of how the men of Dundee, when forcible feeding
of Suffrage prisoners was threatened in that town, had assembled to
the number of two thousand and protested against it. How thereupon
the hunger-strikers had been released and no forcible feeding to our
women had been inflicted in Scotland. Could not Englishmen have done
the same? Let the men of Liverpool be the first to wipe out the stain
that had been tolerated up till now. We were outside the gaol where
these and other barbarities were actually going on. The Home Secretary
had denied responsibility and asserted that it rested with the prison
officials. Let us put this to the test and call upon the Governor of
the prison to release these women. No violence was needed, but let us
go to his house, insist upon his replying to our request and refuse to
be dispersed until he had released these women. “If there are no men
in Liverpool who will stand up for these prisoners, let the women do
their part--I call on you all to follow me to the Governor’s house.”
With this I turned towards the house, a separate building surrounded by
a little garden. To my surprise, the crowd began to follow me. Again I
shouted out to them--“No violence, remember, but call for the Governor
and refuse to be dispersed till you have secured the release of the
prisoners.”
A policeman began leisurely to follow me; there were only two or
three of them about. I took to running and urged on the crowd. The
police then took hold of me. As for once it was my object above all
else to get arrested and imprisoned, I began discharging my stones,
not throwing them, but limply dropping them over the hedge into the
Governor’s garden. One of them just touched the shoulder of a man who
had rushed up on seeing me arrested. I apologised to him. Two policemen
then held me fast by the arms and marched me off to the police station.
The crowd followed excitedly, and our members gathered round me,
appealing for my release and saying that I had done nothing.
It had been agreed with the organisers that I should be the only one
arrested. As I have said, militant tactics were in abeyance because of
the elections, the less disturbance was made, therefore, the better;
as it was, I feared lest my action, being out of the straight course,
should be displeasing to the leaders. I said to the other members: “I
am all right, don’t bother about me, but take the crowd back to the
Governor’s house.” I did not wish to be recognised.
As they marched me off at a great pace, the police, who were very civil
and considerate, questioned me: “What was you a-doin’? You weren’t in
the carriage with the others, were you? What was that you was sayin’?”
They knew they would have to make up a charge against me, and wisely
thought the best plan was to ask me direct for information! I told them
that I made towards the Governor’s house, appealed to the crowd to
follow, and refused to desist when called upon by the police. I feared
that this might not be enough to achieve a conviction. I was thinking,
“Was there nothing else?” when the man appeared whose shoulder had been
touched by my stone; he carried the missile in his hand, still wrapped
in the purple hand-bill announcing this very meeting, no doubt a most
evil-looking document in the eyes of the authorities. I knew then that
I was safe.
Presently, two others who had been arrested were brought in. It was a
most unlooked-for consolation to have their company through the night,
though I hoped, of course, that they would be let off and not share the
rest of the ordeal with me. Two of the members, on hearing my voice,
determined that I should not be alone, so they returned, and one of
them poked a flag through a window in the Governor’s house, breaking
the glass; the other mounted guard while she did this. They were both
arrested. One was Miss Elsie Howey, a valiant as well as most dear one
of our members; the other was a local member, who gave the name of Mrs.
Nugent. I had twice stayed with her and her husband when at Liverpool.
She was not only most charming, but also of attractive appearance,
which awoke a great deal of curiosity in the police as to her identity,
and luckily drew off all possible suspicions from me.
We all played up to the situation; Elsie Howey and I treated her with
deference, as a person of great importance; we nicknamed her “the
Princess.”
The police were exceptionally friendly to us, although they were
punctilious as to the regulations. For instance, Miss Howey and I were
suffering from bad colds and had eucalyptus inhalers in our pockets. We
were not allowed to keep these; they were removed with other things,
such as a purse, stylo pen, brooches, watch, etc. We were all three
allowed to be together and away from other prisoners, locked into a
cell of the usual police-station description--that is, unfurnished
but for the bare plank, serving as seat or bed, along the wall, and
about one and a-half feet from the ground, terminating in a lavatory
accommodation under a high-barred window, but now lighted by an
electric light in the wall above the door. This cell was scrupulously
clean and blankets were supplied to us. Our friends sent us some
sandwiches and fruit, and the police themselves provided us with an
evening newspaper.
We had been arrested at about 8 o’clock; the police station was some
distance from Walton, so it was getting on for 9 o’clock when we were
at last shut up after the charges were reported and entered, and we had
been stripped by a wardress of our small belongings.
The quick walk from the scene of our arrest, hurried along between two
policemen, had been a warming process, after which the cold in the
cell seemed intense. The bench being wider than most in police-station
cells, Mrs. Nugent lay down at one end, while Elsie Howey and I lay
side by side under the same blanket and warmed each other. Mrs. Nugent
and Elsie kept up an animated conversation. Elsie told anecdotes of her
former imprisonments and those of the fellow-prisoners. I was short of
breath and fearfully tired, so I rolled round and kept quite quiet.
At about 12 o’clock the husband of Mrs. Nugent had heard of her arrest,
and came off to the police station to see her. He came to the door of
our cell and was greatly distressed. It was ever so nice to see him.
His visit had caused a great deal of concern amongst the police, who
recognised him as one of the magistrates. He put himself out to do what
he could, and we offered him the comforting news that we were almost
sure that his wife would get off, as she had done nothing at all. With
that, as his wife was kept standing at the little window so long as he
was there, he felt obliged to leave us.
Towards about 3 a.m. we were taken out of the cell and ranged along a
seat by the wall of a large room; at the other end was a desk with a
policeman sitting at it. We went up in turn to give our names, ages,
etc., that is, about seven or eight other prisoners, all females, and
our three selves. It was the turn of Jane Warton. She walked across
to the policeman, one shoulder hitched slightly above the other,
her hair sticking out straight behind and worn in slick bandeaus on
either side of her face, her hat trailing in a melancholy way on her
head. The large, grey woollen gloves were drawn up over the too short
sleeves of her coat; on the collar of it were worn portraits of Mrs.
Pankhurst, Mrs. Lawrence and Christabel, in small china brooches; her
hat had a bit of tape with “Votes for Women” written on it, interlaced
with the cloth plait that went round it, and eye-glasses were fixed on
her nose. Her standing out in the room was the signal for a convulsed
titter from the other prisoners. “It’s a shame to laugh at one of
your fellow-prisoners,” said the policeman behind the desk, and the
tittering was hushed. It was all I could do not to laugh, and I thought
to myself “Is the _Punch_ version of a Suffragette overdone?” As I
got back to my companions they too were laughing, but I thought it
wonderfully kind of the policeman to have spoken on my behalf.
When this process was finished, we three Suffragettes were taken to the
policemen’s room, where there was a good fire, to wait for our Black
Maria. The other prisoners had disappeared. The police sat round and
spoke quite pleasantly; there were two or three of them at times. We
discussed the chances of women getting the vote, they seemed quite in
favour. Elsie Howey and Mrs. Nugent did most of the talking. I warmed
myself and saw the police looking at me from time to time, wondering
why I did not talk too.
At about 3.30 a.m. or 4 o’clock, Black Maria came and we were put in.
This was different from the prison vans I had hitherto seen; it was not
broken up into separate cell-like compartments, but was in the form of
a double omnibus, one side for men and the other for women, divided by
a thin wooden partition, each side having two seats facing each other
and extending the length of the carriage. There were no windows; the
light filtered in only through the grated ventilators. When we got into
this Black Maria there was no one but us three, but we were told to sit
near the door, so Mrs. Nugent sat first, then Elsie Howey, and then
myself. The jolting of the van is excessive and suggests a complete
absence of springs, the noise of its passage through the streets is
terrific, to the point of excluding all other sounds--a noise of
thundering wheels, of jolts and jars and bumps. I have not yet made out
the reason why 3.30 a.m. was selected, none was given at the time to
the prisoners.
Our destination was the Bridewell Police Station, but we called on
our way at the other police stations in the town, picking up whatever
unfortunates they had netted during the night. We called at four
different stations, if I remember right. The drive in all took about an
hour, and seemed a very long one.
We had not gone far before the rumbling and jolting ceased, the door
was thrown open with a sound of keys and great rattling, a shaft of
light fell along the ’bus, and lit up momentarily ourselves and those
who were thrown in to add to our number. These were the only moments
when the occupants had a chance of seeing each other. The door then
hastily closed again, darkness, jolting and noise reasserted their grim
influence. Drunken voices, the smell of the gin palace, an occasional
query and reply shouted through the thin wall to the men on the
other side, that was all. Knee to knee, and breath to breath we sat,
companions of this world of darkness, fellow-sisters of the order of
the outcasts. Before we had finished, we had taken up six women in all.
At the first stop, two Irish girls were let in; some men were put into
the other side. The girls were only sufficiently drunk to make them
intensely cheerful; they laughed and talked gaily at first and shouted
lustily to their companions on the other side. But the effect of the
pitch darkness was depressing, and after a time their communications
ceased. They sat opposite to us near the door, and whenever there was
a gleam of light I watched them, for they gave me immense pleasure.
They were quite young, with beautiful arms, which one could see as
their sleeves were rolled up; they had shawls on, and their faces were
fresh and strong, and pretty, too, had it not been for the effect of
the drink; they were as far removed as possible from the degraded town
type, in every way they were healthy specimens, fresh from an Irish
fishing village. They spoke to us several times, and there was a
delightful feeling that disguise or no disguise did not matter with
them, but it was difficult to hear what they said in the fearful noise
of the Black Maria, and we felt that our answers were mostly lost on
them. They put the question in a friendly way: “What did you get taken
up for?” “We’re Suffragettes,” was the all-sufficient reply. This was
very interesting, and they had to try to tell the men on the other
side, with many a laugh, as a tremendous bit of news.
At another stop, a little woman got in with fair hair, a fluttering
white boa, and in a white dress. She was dead drunk, but whereas
the others smelt of cheap drink, her breath was of good brandy. She
laughed, and now and then gave vent to a half sentence or two that
rolled in and out of her sleep.
At the next stop, two were shot in who seemed really deformed with
poverty, their complexions yellow, their hands gnarled and worn, their
faces of utmost sadness. They said something to each other as they got
in--something to give comfort, but their sentences were full of oaths
of a senseless kind, and their speech, too, was broken with drink.
Finally, it was another type altogether who was let in. A woman who
looked any age, her face of utmost melancholy had yet the appearance
of having drunk heavily; she had all the hang of an “habitual,” her
clothes were the dregs of clothes and tumbling off her. When the door
was opened for her to be put in, she murmured a few broken words to
the effect that her salvation didn’t lie in prison.
The Irish girls and the little woman with the white boa were young, the
others looked old and worn out.
I think I shall never forget the self-reproach that stung through my
whole being when I had thought my intervention necessary between one
prisoner and another. On passing some unusual light in the street,
which momentarily lit up our van, not enough to see our faces but only
to distinguish the outlines of forms, I noticed that the prisoner
opposite to Elsie Howey, my neighbour, was leaning forward and bent
towards her. The momentary flash of light was too short-lived to
judge whether this was a rapid movement perhaps, as I thought, of
assault or drunken affection, or whether it was that the position of
physical weariness could find no rest from leaning back on the walls
of the jolting van. I was unable to see Elsie, but I imagined that
she too might be scared by the attention of the prisoner opposite. As
the darkness closed in upon us, I thrust my hand into hers; it was
welcomed, but quite unnecessary. Before the end of our drive two things
were clear--the prisoners might be evil-minded towards all the rest of
the world, they might be blind drunk or raging with misery at their own
plight, but the one thing impossible to them would have been to hurt
a fellow-prisoner. Every one of those pathetic human wrecks, deformed
by drink, so that one could not tell if they were guilty of crime
besides, overtaken at a moment when their self-respect was lowest, and
captured by a punitive system which would do its utmost to dissolve
what remained of it, as they were thrust into the black cavity of the
van, made a vigorous appeal to their own courage and met with instant
response from their unknown companions. It might be only some drunken
joke, it was almost invariably accompanied by a laugh, but for each
one it had a call on their inmost strength, and it made its appeal to
those in the van. Issuing from different spheres of existence, each one
representing lives the most remote from one another, scarcely any two
alike in a single respect as to detail, their one point of similarity
being poverty and that they had given way to drink, the instinct of our
first contact, doubtless to each one of us, was repulsion, mistrust,
fear of one another. But it lasted for less than the flash of a moment,
less than the inhaling of one breath. Our differences were there,
but for the time unimportant, whereas the all-embracing fact was our
similarity of fate. No need for social laws to bind that company, no
rules of the club were necessary, the code of instinct, expediency and
honour were all one and spontaneous to us. “We are all of one blood,”
may be a great tie, but “We are all of one fate” is, while it lasts, a
better; the bond of the outcast needs no seal.
We arrived for the fifth time in a courtyard, with a deal of jolting
and din; it was the Bridewell Police Station, and we all got out. The
little woman in the white dress and fur boa tumbled from the van into
the arms of a policeman--she assured us that she loved him on finding
herself thus closely against him; he remained stalwart as a piece of
wood.
We Suffragettes were put into a cell by ourselves, it was perfectly
clean. We had not been there very long before the door was opened with
a clang and another woman was thrust in. She was reassuring to look
at, smartly dressed with fashionably-shaped brown furs draped round
her neck. She had come from Ireland that night and was terribly cold.
We gave her the blankets that had been given to us; nothing, however,
did much good. She had come over with another woman, who on landing had
been taken as “wanted by the police.” This woman had been arrested,
too, as “her friend,” but she said she was quite sure of getting off,
as she had only known the other woman quite a short time, and had no
idea that she was in any way “suspected.” The concern of this woman to
get free was natural enough, but she seemed to care not at all for the
other one, for whom my heart welled over with sympathy. I thought of
her with a more or less deceitful face, but I loved her because she was
“wanted by the police,” and this woman who was with us I wanted to get
off, of course, but that was all; I could not feel any sympathy towards
her.
We waited in this cell until it was dawning light. It was not a place
for sleep, and the cold was terrible. As it was getting towards
morning, we were taken out of the cell and led off to wash our hands
and faces in another part of the prison. It was fearfully dark in one
part, with only a light occasionally here and there, so that one could
not see where one was going. On a bench, some ten or twelve little boys
were sitting.
It was the first time I thought of children as prisoners. At Newcastle,
it was true, I had seen one little boy in the police court, but he
was enjoying himself over a cup of soup in the central room with
the police, and he was much too small to be convicted, whatever his
offences; possibly, if his parents were hopeless, he would have been
sent to a reformatory school. That, of course, was bad enough; one knew
that for half of the money that would have to be expended there was
many a woman in the country who would have cared for him with motherly
tenderness. But with these boys, who looked about nine years to fifteen
or sixteen years old, it was another matter. The place where they sat,
though public, for it was a gangway, was terrible, it was just where
the passages seemed to go underground; they were extremely dark, on
one side they abutted into a regular network of cells, with small
communicating alleys in between. There the boys sat and gazed at the
grown-up criminals who appeared from time to time; they looked at us
with the greatest curiosity. It was horrible to see them in a place so
profoundly ill-suited to children.
The Liverpool organiser, Miss Flatman, and Miss Maude Joachim came to
us with the daylight of Saturday, January 15. It was a most unexpected
joy to see them--not alone, for that was not allowed, but in one of the
many passages near a window with a policeman standing by. I was able to
write a little scrap of a letter to Mrs. Pethick Lawrence in the name
of “Jane Warton.” This made me very happy. I believe we were offered
breakfast, or should have been able to get it had we asked for it,
but, in any case, those surroundings were so wretched that we almost as
soon went without, and I was eager to begin the hunger-strike.
As the time of the assembling of the court, 10 o’clock, drew near we
waited in different parts of a large and rambling building. At last we
were conveyed, through what seemed an underground court, to the foot of
a staircase that led right up into the prisoner’s dock.
I was the first of the Suffragettes to be taken up. Mr. Shepherd Little
was the magistrate; he seemed to be thoroughly out of temper. They
took only two or three minutes convicting me. When the policeman had
done his work of charging me with urging the crowd to follow me to
the Governor’s house, with refusing to desist when called upon by the
police, and with throwing a “missile” (small stone wrapped in paper), I
put in, “I had three stones upon me which I let fall in the Governor’s
garden. A man in the crowd ran past me just as I was letting go the
third--it fell on his shoulder; I apologised to him.”
On the strength of its being my first imprisonment, I was sentenced to
a fortnight, 3rd Division, with option of a fine. Just when I had left
the court I was called back. The magistrate thought I ought to have
a longer sentence, thanks to my having thrown stones, but the clerk
thought not, and in the little altercation he got the best of it.
The women of last night were waiting on the stairs. “How long have you
got?” they all said to me. “Ah! well, buck up,” they added on hearing
of fourteen days. Miss Elsie Howey, with the admission of her former
imprisonments, got six weeks, and Mrs. Nugent was, to our great joy,
released. The policeman downstairs told me that hard labour always
accompanied the 3rd Division sentences, unless stated to the contrary.