JULY TO SEPTEMBER, 1909
MR. LLOYD GEORGE AT LIME HOUSE; TWELVE WOMEN SENT TO PRISON; ANOTHER
STRIKE. HUNGER STRIKERS IN EXETER GAOL. THE SCENES AT CANFORD PARK AND
RUSHPOOL HALL. MRS. LEIGH ON THE ROOF AT LIVERPOOL; LIVERPOOL HUNGER
STRIKERS. MANCHESTER HUNGER STRIKERS; LEICESTER HUNGER STRIKERS;
DUNDEE HUNGER STRIKERS. THE CLEVELAND BY-ELECTION.
The vindictive attitude of the Government and the sufferings and
heroism of the women in prison, spurred on their comrades outside to
deeds of renewed bravery and daring. Everywhere vast throngs of people
supported the Suffragettes in their protests and no precautions,
however great, or barricades, however high and strong, could keep the
women's voices out. "Shame on you, Mr. Asquith," they cried, as he was
unveiling a statue in the Embankment Gardens. "Shame on you for putting
women in dark cells instead of treating them as political prisoners.
Why don't you give us the vote and end it?" "Ladies and gentlemen,"
thoughtlessly began Mr. Gladstone at a Reading meeting from which all
women had been excluded, and when there were shouts of, "Where are
they?" he answered, "Not far off, anyway." He was right, for soon their
speeches, delivered at a meeting in the street outside, were to be
heard within, competing dangerously with his own.
When, on July 15th, Mr. Lewis Harcourt was speaking at the Co-operative
Hall, Leigh, Lancashire, the Suffragettes rushed towards the doors.
Thousands of people cheered them on, crying: "We will help you to get
inside," and though the police arrested Miss Florence Clarkson of
Manchester, Mrs. Baines and three other women, all but the first were
rescued by the crowd.
On July 17th, Adela Pankhurst held a great meeting outside Mr. Winston
Churchill's meeting in Edinburgh and afterwards, amid the enthusiastic
plaudits of the crowd, she and Bessie Brand[37] made a dash for the
doors, followed and supported by hundreds of men and women. They
were arrested by detectives in plain clothes and taken to the police
station, whilst cheering men raised their hats and women waved their
scarves and handkerchiefs. A second charge led by Miss Eckford of
Edinburgh was beaten back by mounted police, and when Mr. Churchill
emerged he was greeted with a storm of groans. Those who had been
arrested were released after the meeting.
Numbers of men, most of them members of the Men's Political Union, were
now also coming forward to demand justice for women at the meetings
from which the women were excluded. If they had gone there to heckle
Cabinet Ministers on any other question nothing very much would have
happened, but now most terrible violence was turned upon them.
At Mr. Herbert Samuel's meeting in the Corn Exchange, Bedford, on
the 22nd July, four men undertook to make the protest. At the first
sound of the word "Women" two whole rows of seats were overturned,
and the interrupter was immediately rushed out, whilst Mr. Samuel
remarked with a sneer that he was interested to meet "a Suffragist of
the male persuasion," but that he suspected the interrupter of being
a "Conservative hireling." A second man rose up and cried: "I am a
Liberal and _I_ protest," but the stewards at once set upon him and he
was thrown through a door at the back of the platform and fell some six
or seven feet to the ground floor, where he lay insensible for nearly
half an hour; two other men, one of them a retired naval officer,
met with a similar fate. At the same time four of the women who were
holding a meeting outside the hall, were arrested and kept at the
police station until Mr. Samuel had left the town.
When the same Cabinet Minister spoke at Nottingham the police again
arrested, and subsequently released, four women, one of whom was Miss
Watts, the daughter of a well-known local clergyman. A like procedure
was adopted in numberless cases afterwards. Inside the hall, an
unexpected protest was made by Mr. C. L. Rothera, the City Coroner
for Nottingham and a prominent Liberal, but in spite of the fact that
he was one of the most familiar and respected figures in the town, he
narrowly escaped ejection.
At Northampton, Mr. Samuel again encountered the women, for a plucky
little band, led by Miss Marie Brackenbury, attempted to rush the
strong iron gates of the hall. They were flung back by the police, but,
nothing daunted, Miss Brackenbury climbed to the top of a forty-foot
scaffolding adjoining the Exchange, and, though the rain poured
continuously, addressed the crowd from that great height.
But the most extraordinary scenes were perhaps those that took place
when Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Sydney Buxton spoke at Limehouse on July
30th. Some twenty men were there determined to see that the women's
cause should not be overlooked, and as soon as the singing of, "For
he's a jolly good fellow," which heralded Mr. Lloyd George's appearance
on the platform had died away, a man was seen climbing up one of the
pillars at the back of the hall. Having mounted some fifteen feet from
the ground, he uncoiled a rope from around his waist, contriving a sort
of swing seat for himself, and, unfurling a purple-white-and-green
flag, hung there above the meeting. Numbers of stewards at once rushed
from every direction to haul him down, but more than a dozen of his
friends had already gathered around the pillar. Instead of beginning
their speeches, the Cabinet Ministers sat whispering together. Then
one of them went across to Mrs. Lloyd George and a companion, and
immediately these two, the only women present, left the meeting
and the struggle began. Gradually the defenders of the pillar were
wrenched from their posts. An eye-witness declared that he saw "one
man frog-marched out by half a dozen stewards between two rows of
infuriated blackguards, who were raining blows with their fists on his
defenceless face." A gentleman, quite unconnected with the Suffragists
men, who had taken no part in the struggle, protested against this
excessive and cowardly violence, but was at once set upon and himself
flung outside. One man, home from the Colonies, had his shoulder
fractured, another had one wrist broken and the other sprained; another
received black eyes and a broken nose; whilst a Cambridge undergraduate
had his collarbone broken and a dozen other men needed medical
attendance, one fainting through loss of blood some time after he had
been ejected. At last the stewards reached the pillar, the rope was cut
and the man aloft with the flag was hauled down and set upon by the mob
of stewards, who tumbled over each other in the attempt to kick and
strike at him; one man deliberately hit him over the face with a glass
bottle. When finally he was thrown outside, the police carried him to a
doctor.
Now the Cabinet Ministers proceeded with their speeches, but when
Mr. Lloyd George began to speak of the "people's will," there came a
megaphone chorus from a little workman's dwelling close to the hall
where the Suffragettes were lying concealed, "Votes for Women," "Votes
for Women," "Votes for Women." The stewards rushed to the windows on
that side of the hall and shut them hurriedly, but the sound penetrated
still for the people of the neighbourhood joined in and supported the
megaphones with cheers and cries of "Stick to it, miss, stick to it."
Even this was not all, for a desperate charge was being led against the
police cordon that guarded the doors of the Hall and in this struggle
thirteen women were placed under arrest.
These women were summoned to appear before Mr. Dickinson at the
Thames Police Court on the following morning, when they were charged
with obstruction and as a result, twelve of them were taken on to
Holloway for terms varying from ten days to two months. They were all
determined to protest as those who had gone before them had done,
against the prison treatment, and when ordered to undress and to
proceed to the cells, they refused and linking arms stood with their
backs to the wall. The Governor then blew his whistle and a great crowd
of wardresses appeared. They fell upon the women and after a long
struggle dragged them apart, forced them into the cells, and ordered
them to change into prison clothes. Worn out as they now were with vain
resistance, they still bravely refused to give in and their clothes
were literally torn from their backs.
Who would not shrink from such an ordeal! Who would not rather huddle
quietly into the prison clothes, however ill-fitting, coarse and
objectionable they might be than be subjected to such a thing as this,
well knowing that whatever happened one must be overpowered in the
end? And these women did shrink from the ordeal, but bore it for all
their shrinking. "A long file of wardresses fairly ripped my clothes
off, leaving me only half covered," says Lucy Burns; "I counted twelve
wardresses in my cell. They tried to taunt and goad me," says Mable
Capper, "but I bit my lips."
When the prison clothes had been forced onto them or they had been left
half covered with the garments lying beside them, to put them on as
best they might, even then they went on bravely with their protest. The
ventilation of the cells was inadequate--it was their duty to break
the panes, and, though they well knew that as a consequence they would
be taken where the want of air was even greater and where they could
not break the glass, not one of the twelve shrank back. The windows
were scarcely broken when vengeance followed. They were dragged away to
the punishment cells and in these unwholesome dungeons they carried out
the Hunger Strike, some of them under conditions even worse than those
borne by their previously imprisoned comrades.
In some of the punishment cells, including that of Mrs. Leigh, a
sanitary convenience, in appearance exactly like an ordinary closet
without a lid, was fixed against the wall. There was no water supply
for keeping this clear, the inner vessel being withdrawn through the
wall from the corridor outside, when it required emptying. When it
is realised that the prisoner remained in the cell both night and
day without a moment's intermission, and that the ventilation was in
any case absolutely inadequate, the objectionable character of this
arrangement will be clearly understood. When the matter was made public
and commented upon afterwards, Mr. Gladstone stated that this closet
was only put there in case of emergency and that in every case the
prisoner would be readily allowed to go to the W. C. in the corridor on
ringing her bell. Unfortunately none of the Suffragettes who had been
placed in the cells in which these closets were, had tested the matter,
but those who are familiar with the Holloway régime, will, for various
reasons, doubt the truth of this statement, though Mr. Gladstone
probably believed it. When a prisoner is told that she will not be
allowed to leave her cell at all for several days and instead of being
sent each morning to fetch her own washing water, as is usual, she has
it brought to her by a wardress; when at the same time she finds a
sanitary convenience in her cell and the usual cry of "lavatory," is
omitted, she naturally concludes that the receptacle is there for her
use, and that she will not be permitted to use any other. Anyone who
has asked questions in Holloway, where questions are discouraged, knows
that, especially if the prisoner were under punishment, questions upon
this point would probably not receive either polite or pleasant replies.
For two nights Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Leigh were denied even a mattress
and were obliged to sleep on the hard wooden plank. The long sleepless
nights were for all the prisoners the hardest part of the trial and as
they grew weaker, their minds, as happens to people during illness,
were often filled with strange fancies which could only with difficulty
be subdued. They feared that they might walk in their sleep and eat the
food which was always left in their cells during the night. Threats to
feed them forcibly were constantly being made and the horror of being
suddenly overpowered was always upon them. Lucy Burns tells how once
in the night she heard a sudden scream. "That cannot be one of our
women," she thought, "it is too incoherent," but holding her breath she
listened with quickly beating heart. The cry came again and again and
at last she heard quite plainly, "No, no, take it away." Then she leapt
from her bed and stood at the door hour after hour waiting for what
might come, until at last, worn out and stiff with cold she wrapped
herself in her blanket and fell asleep with her head against the door.
Saturday evening, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday passed.
On Wednesday the visiting magistrates came round. The prisoners whom
they had come to punish were now all weak and haggard and some were
unable to rise from their beds. Nevertheless further sentences of close
confinement in the punishment cells, which they had never yet left,
were passed upon them all. But the authorities dared not attempt to
carry out these sentences. The chances of life and death had become too
evenly balanced now, and Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Leigh were set free that
evening and the remainder of the women on Thursday and Friday, August
5th and 6th.
Meanwhile three young Suffragettes, Vera Wentworth, Mary Phillips and
Rose Howey had gone through the hunger strike in Exeter having been
arrested in that town on Friday, July 30th, whilst leading a crowd of
2,000 people to the doors of Lord Carrington's Budget meeting in the
Victoria Hall there. Their arrest had excited great popular indignation
and with shouts of "Let them go, you cowards," the people had rushed to
their rescue but the soldiery had been called out to beat them back.
Suffering born for a cause begets sympathy with that cause and coercion
arouses sympathy with the coerced. Nevertheless tyranny and cruelty
beget their like, a crowd, however hostile, will hesitate to throw the
first stone but when that has been flung, many missiles will often
follow. Thus, when it was shown that rather than do them justice the
Government was prepared to thrust women into unwholesome dungeons
and to leave them to starve there for many days, a more brutal and
vindictive temper began to manifest itself amongst the more disorderly
sections of its supporters than had ever before been shown.
On August 2nd, a great Liberal fête was held at Canford Park, near
Poole in Dorsetshire. There were sports and games and Mr. Churchill was
to deliver an address on the Budget. Annie Kenney with three companions
attended the fête and the story of what took place is best told in her
own words. She says:
As we entered the Park together we saw two very young girls being
dragged about by a crowd of Liberal men, some of whom were old enough
to be their fathers. They had thrown a pig net over them, and had
pulled down their hair. We heard afterwards that these girls came from
a village near by, but the Liberals suspected them to be Suffragettes
and ordered them out of the Park. Before Miss Brackenbury and I had
been in the place many minutes, though we had never opened our lips,
we were followed by a howling mob of Liberal men. We thought we could
get away from them if we went and watched the sports instead of going
direct to Mr. Churchill's meeting, but they crowded round us and
the language they used is not fit for print. After a time a police
officer came up and told us that we must clear out of the place, as
we were causing all the trouble, though we had never replied back to
anything that had been said. As soon as the crowd saw the police were
against' us the trouble began. There seemed to be thousands of them
surging round us and they divided Miss Brackenbury and myself, but
she tried to keep me in view as much as she could. They did not seem
to want to do anything to her, because she looked strong and big, but
they all came and attacked me. They were calling out to each other
to get hold of me and throw me into the pond which was very near. I
shall never forget at this point seeing a carriage in which were two
old ladies come driving up. The carriage was almost turned over and
the two women were white with fright and breathing very quickly, but
though I appealed to the men on behalf of the two ladies they took no
notice. Luckily the crowd just swerved round the corner and I consider
the lives of the two women were saved not through good management or
through any feeling on the part of the Liberals, but it was just a
piece of luck. After that they seemed to become more enraged. I then
turned and faced the crowd, and, strange to say, when I could turn
round and face them they never attempted to do anything to me, but
as soon as my back was turned they started dragging me about in a
most shameful way. One man who was wearing the Liberal colours pulled
a knife out of his pocket, and to the delight of the other staunch
Liberals, started cutting my coat. They cut it into shreds right from
the neck downwards. Then they lifted up my coat and started to cut
my frock and one of them lifted up my frock and cut my petticoat.
This caused great excitement. A cry came from those Liberals, who are
supposed to have high ideas in public life, to undress me. They took
off my hat and pulled down my hair, but I turned round upon them and
said that it would be their shame and not mine. They stopped then for
a minute, and then two men, also wearing the Liberal colours, got hold
of me and lifted me up and afterwards dragged me along, not giving me
an opportunity to walk out in a decent way.
So they dragged her out, the little fragile woman with her torn
garments and her masses of golden hair falling below her waist, her
sensitive face flushed and her blue eyes, wide with pain and horror.
They dragged her close past the house of the great Wimbourne family who
owned Canford Park, but though the guests and members of the family
who were watching from the balcony and from the lawn in front, were
appealed to by others, they made no attempt to intervene and saw the
great gates opened and the little ragged, exhausted figure with her
streaming hair, thrust outside, well knowing that the nearest railway
station was more than three miles away.
Truly it needed some courage to face things like this for the sake of
any cause, and this was not an isolated happening.
On August 8th, Miss Helen Tolson had a similar experience at Rushpool
Hall, Saltburn by the Sea. This is her own description:
The day was beautiful and the private grounds in which Mr. Churchill
and Mr. Samuel were to speak were thronged with a great crowd of their
supporters, a large number of whom were miners. About ten of us had
obtained admission in one way or another and had stationed ourselves
at different points. As each woman spoke there was a great roar from
the crowd, who nearly all left the speaker to follow and ill-treat her
as she was being taken out. When my own turn came I started to ask
a question, but was stopped by the hand of a Liberal steward, which
was thrust into my mouth. The next thing I remember is two stewards
holding my arms and a third coming up and deliberately kicking me in
the body. This was a sign to the crowd to do what they liked with me
and they thrust me forward with cries of "Throw her in the pond." They
dragged me to a steep bank above the pond and here three men, seeing
that my hold upon a small tree was giving way, tried to help me.
Nothing of what happened during the next ten minutes is at all clear
in my memory. I was often full length on the ground and I know I was
bruised from head to foot. The crowd abated their efforts to trample
me underfoot when the word was passed that the police were at last
coming. When I was pulled up the bank again I found that my skirt and
underclothing had been nearly torn off.
A Miss De Legh, daughter of Dr. De Legh of Coatham, a guest at Rushpool
Hall, quite unconnected with the Suffragettes, was set upon by one man
who pushed her into some bushes and blew tobacco smoke into her face.
She afterwards brought an action for assault against her assailant and
he was fined £3. His defence was that she had cried "cowards" to those
who were ejecting the Suffragettes and had thus angered the crowd so
that if he had not seized her she would probably have been swept into a
pond.
On August 20th, when Lord Crewe spoke at the great St. Andrew's Hall,
Glasgow, Miss Alice Paul succeeded in climbing to the roof and in the
hope of being able to speak to the Cabinet Minister from this point,
she lay there concealed for many hours in spite of a downpour of rain.
When she was discovered and forced to descend she was heartily cheered
for her pluck by a crowd of workmen, one of whom came forward and
apologised for having told a policeman of her presence, saying that he
had thought she was in need of help.
Later, when the women attempted to force their way into the building,
the people needed no urging to lend their aid, and the police who were
guarding the entrance were obliged to use their truncheons to beat them
back. When the officers of the law attempted to make arrests, the women
were rescued from their clutches again and again. Eventually Adela
Pankhurst, Lucy Burns, Alice Paul and Margaret Smith were taken into
custody, but even when the gates of the police station were closed upon
them, the authorities feared that they would not be able to hold their
prisoners for the crowds shouted vociferously for their release and
twisted the strong iron gates. It was only when the women themselves
appealed to them that they consented to refrain from further violence.
When Lord Crewe had safely left the town, the friends of the women were
allowed to bail them out, on the understanding that they would appear
at the police court at nine o'clock the following morning. Nevertheless
though they arrived before the appointed time, there was no one to show
them the Court room and whilst they wandered about in the passages,
trying to find their way, their case was disposed of behind locked
doors and with the public excluded. The bail was escheated and a
warrant was issued for their arrest before five minutes past nine. At
this Mr. Thomas Kerr, one of the bailees, rose to protest and asked two
minutes leave to find the defaulting prisoners, saying that he was sure
they were already in the building, but he was abruptly told that the
court was closed. He went outside and immediately met the ladies and
brought them in before Bailie Hunter, who presided, had left the Bench,
but though the Bailie saw them he hurried away, whilst the Fiscal[38]
tried to put all the blame upon him. The bail was never refunded and
the women never answered to the warrants and so the matter dropped.
The same Friday, August 20th, on which Lord Crewe had spoken at
Glasgow, Mr. Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, was addressing
a meeting at Liverpool and Mrs. Leigh, who was in command of the
Suffragette army there had organised her forces in such a way as to
give an effective reply to his jeering reference to what he described
as the "bodkin tactics." Early in the day she and a number of others
had taken up their quarters in an empty house separated from the hall
by a narrow passage only. When the meeting began she clambered through
the window and swung herself on to the roof with the most extraordinary
agility at so great a height and with so slender a foothold, that
observers were thrilled with horror.
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. 0. 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
Heallis 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.[39]
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 that 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:
Mr. H. Samuel, Liberal 6,296
Mr. Windsor Lewis, Conservative 5,325
_____
Liberal majority 971
At the General Election of 1906 Mr. Herbert Samuel had been returned
unopposed.
Mr. H. Samuel, Liberal 5,834
Mr. Jeffrey Drage, Conservative 3,798
_____
Liberal majority 2,036
Meanwhile another by-election was being fought in Dumfriesburgh where
the Liberal majority was again reduced.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] 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.
[38] The Scotch Fiscal is the officer who prosecutes in the case of
petty criminal offences.
[39] 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.