My Own Story

o challenge the Government to carry out their threat to revive the old Act of Charles II. I made a long speech to the women that day, telling them something of m

perience in the country, and especially in South Leeds, has taught me things that Cabinet Ministers, who have not had that experience, do not know, and h

he would drive me to the House of Commons. He readily agreed, and I mounted to the seat behind him, the other women forming in line behind the cart. We had not gone far when the police, who already surrounded us in great force, ordered me to dismount. Of course I obeyed and walked, or rather limped along with my companions. They would have supported me, but the police insisted that we should walk single-file. Presently I grew so faint from the pain of the ankle that I called to two of t

were also arrested, and a few minutes later Annie Kenney and five other women suffered arrest. That night we were released on bail, and the next morning we were arraigned in Westminster police court for trial under the

with noisy shouts and songs, that we had resorted to the most riotous and vulgar behaviour, knocking off policemen's helmets, assaulting the officers right and left as we marched. Our testimony, and that of our witness

t the thought of our women, many of them little past girlhood, being haled to prison in the same van with criminal men. Arriving at the prison, we groped our way through dim corridors into

"Everything?" I faltered. It seemed impossible that they expected me to strip. In fact, they did allow me to take off my last garments in the shelter of a bath-room. I shivered myself into some frightful underclothing, old and patched and stained, some coarse, brown woollen stockings with red stripes,

ng me to the point of exhaustion, and I was glad to throw myself on my hard prison bed and close my eyes. But soon the relief of being alone, and with nothing to do, passed from me. Holloway Prison is a very old place, and it has the disadvantages of old places which have never known enough air and sunshine. It reeks wit

entered Holloway, dropped, as it were, into a tomb. No letters and no visitors were allowed for the first month of the sentence. Think of it-a whole month, more than four weeks, without sending or receiving a single word. One's nearest and dearest may have gone through dreadful suffering, may have been ill, may have died, meantime. One was given plenty of time to imagine all these things, for the prisoner was kept in solitary confinement in a narrow, dimly-lit cell, twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on

I slept a little the first night. About midnight I awoke, and sat up in bed, listening. A woman in the cell next mine was moaning in long, sobbing breaths of mortal pain. She ceased for a few minutes, then moaned again, horribly. The truth flashed over me, turning me sick, as I realised that a life was coming i

if there were not some French or German books in the library, and he brought me a treasure, "Autour de mon Jardin," by Jules Janin. For a few days I was quite happy, reading my book and translating it on the absurd little slate they gave us in lieu of paper and pencil. That slate was, after all, a great comfort. I did all kinds of things with it. I kept a calendar, I

rnor spoke to me, and asked me if I had any complaints to make. "Not of you," I replied, "nor of any

in the world of art and letters, did these things. I felt that I should be doing little if I merely attended the meeting. So I went. My release was not expected until the following morning, and no one thought of my appearing at the meeting. My chairman's seat was decorated with a large placard with the inscription, "Mrs. Pankhurst's Chair." After all the oth

polling day came our members were stationed at every polling booth, and many men as they came to the booths told us that they were, for the first time, voting "for the women," by which they meant against the Government. That night, amid great excitement, it was made known that the Liberal majority of 2,339 at the last general election had been turned into a Conservative majority of 2,494. Letters poured into the newspapers,

lever, astute, and somewhat unscrupulous lawyer. He had filled several high offices to the satisfaction of his party, and under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post which is generally regarded as a stepping-stone to the Premiership. The best thing the Liberal press found to say of the new Premier was that he was a "strong" man.

re were several others, on account of death or elevations to the peerage. This made necessary a number of by-elections, and the Women's Social and Political Union once more went into the field against the Liberal candidates. I shall deal no further with these by-elections than is necessary t

daughter Christabel took charge of this election, and the work of herself and her forces was so successful that Mr. Churchill lost his seat by 420 votes. All the newspapers acknowledged that it was the S

his Scottish constituency, Mr. Churchill dreaded the effect of our presence on the Liberal women. The second meeting he addressed in Dundee was held for women only, and instead of asking for support of the various measures actually on the government's programme, the politician's usual method, he talked about the certainty of securing, within a short time, the Parliamentary franchise for women. "No one," he declared, "can be blind to the fact that at the ne

announcement that the new Government meant to establish old age pensions, created an immense wave of Liberal enthusiasm that swept Mr. Churchill into office in spite of our work, which was untiring. We held something like two hundred meetings, and on election eve, five huge demonstrations-four of them in the open air and one which filled a large drill hall. Polling day, May

did not wish to see women enfranchised, and that it would not be possible for the Government to give the required facilities to Mr. Stanger's bill. He added that he was fully alive to the many defects of the electoral system, and that the Government intended, "barring accidents," to bring in a reform bill before the close of that Parliament. Woman suffrage would have no place in it, but it would be so worded that a woma

en quite seriously is but another proof of the gullibility of the party-blinded public. The Liberal press lauded Mr. Asquith's "promise," and called for a truce of militancy in order that the Government might have every oppor

sing resolutions of gratitude, Lady Carlisle said: "This is a glorious day of rejoicing. Our great Prime Minister, all hon

to tell the electors that the pledge was false on the face of it; that the specious proviso that the amendment be "democratic" left no doubt that the

come part of the Government policy. Evasive as ever, the Prime Minister, after some sparring, replied, "My honourable friend has asked me a question with regard to a remote and speculative future." Thus was our interpretation of Mr. Asquith's "promise" justified from his own lips. Yet the Liberal women still clung to the hope of Government action, and the Liberal press pretended to cli

d no political party united either for or against it. Woman suffrage, said Mr. Gladstone, must advance to victory through all the stages that are required for great reforms to mature. First academic discussion, then effective action, was the history of men's suffrage; it must be the same with women's suffrage. "Men," declared Mr. Gladstone, "have learned this lesson and know the necessity for demonstrating the greatness of their movement,

masses, but power belongs to masses, and through this power a Government can be influenced i

e could organise a demonstration that would out-rival any of the great franchise demonstrations held by men in the thirties, sixties, and eighties. The largest number of people ever gathered in Hyde Park was said to have approximated 72,000. We determined to organise a Hyde Park demonstration of at least 250,000 people. Sunday, June 21, 190

r weeks a small army of women was busy chalking announcements on sidewalks, distributing handbills, canvassing from house to house, advertising the demonstration by posters and sandwich boards carried through the streets. We invited everybody to be present, including both Houses of Parliament. A few days before the demonstration Mrs. Drummond and a number of other women hired and decorated a launch and sailed up the Thames to the Houses of Parliament, arriving at the hour when members entertain the

lowed the processions. When I mounted my platform in Hyde Park, and surveyed the mighty throngs that waited there and the endless crowds that were still pouring into the park from all directions, I was filled with amazement not unmixed with awe. Never had I imagined that so many people c

this, they remained to the end. At five o'clock the bugles sounded again, the speaking ceased, and the resolution calling upon the Government to bring in an official woman-suffrage bill witho

inly fulfilled, and probably it was doubled, and it would be difficult to contradict any one who asserted that it

in one square mass anywhere in England. Men who saw the great Gladstone meeti

py of the resolution to the Prime Minister, asking him what answer the Government would make to that unparalleled gathering of men and women. Mr. Asquith replied formally that he had nothing to add to his previous statemen