Next day it was the members of the Women's Freedom League who strove to obtain an interview with Mr. Asquith, and, in consequence, six of their number were arrested in Victoria Street, on their way to the Official residence; sixteen at the entrance to Downing Street; and six, including Mrs. Despard and Mr. Joseph Clayton, a journalist, who protested on their behalf, at the door of the Stranger's Entrance to the House of Commons. The resulting sentences varied from one month to fourteen days' imprisonment.
Little notice was given of these imprisonments, the Press evidently thinking such sensations stale; but those active inventive brains at Clement's Inn were determined not to be check-mated and were ever devising new stratagems and new surprises as a means of pushing the cause forward. When Mr. Churchill visited Newcastle to inspect a battleship, on December 4th and 5th, he was approached on the first of these days no fewer than fifteen times, and on the second almost constantly, by women who met him at the station, at the door of his hotel, at a reception held in his honour, on the pier, on the launch, on the ship itself, and again at every turn on landing, and who presented him with copies of "Votes for Women," urged the cause upon him in brief hurried reminders, and made speeches to him from neighbouring boats. Every other Minister was similarly waylaid.
When Parliament met, and the King's Speech was found to contain no mention of "Votes for Women," the W. S. P. U. decided that another Woman's Parliament must be held and another deputation of women must be sent out from it. Then again something that had never been done before had to be contrived for focussing public attention upon this event. Quite opportunely the Post Master General happened to issue new regulations making it possible to post "human letters." Of course it was at once determined to post some Suffragettes as letters to Mr. Asquith in Downing Street. Accordingly, on Tuesday morning, January 23rd, Jessie Kenney dispatched Miss Solomon and Miss McClellan from the Strand post office. Then, in charge of a little messenger boy, one carrying a placard inscribed "Votes for Women, Deputation to the House of Commons, Wednesday," and the other, to the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, 10, Downing Street, S. W., the two ladies marched off to the official residence. When they arrived the messenger boy was invited inside, and the door was shut, but, after a few moments, it was opened again and an official appeared, saying to the women, "You must be returned." "But we have been paid for," they protested, and he replied, "The Post Office must deliver you somewhere else, you cannot be received here." "An express letter is an official document," they persisted, "and must be signed for according to the regulations." But the official replied, "You cannot be signed for; you must be returned; you are dead letters." So there was nothing for it but to go back to Clement's Inn.
The arrest of Miss Dora Marsden, the Standard Bearer, March 30th, 1909
Another day a facsimile of "Black Maria," the van which takes the prisoners to Holloway, was seen driving through the town. It bore the inscription E. P. for Emmeline Pankhurst, instead of E. R., Edward Rex, and a man dressed almost exactly like a policeman rode on the back step. When the van reached Regent Street a body of women in imitation prison dress emerged and proceeded to distribute handbills to the passers-by and to chalk announcements of the forthcoming deputation to Mr. Asquith upon the pavement. The members of the Women's Freedom League also hit upon a new and striking advertisement, for Miss Matters, the heroine of the Grille scene, floated over the House of Commons in a cigar-shaped dirigible balloon painted with the fateful words, "Votes for Women."
Ridiculous, petty, even unworthy of serious people, you may think, were some of these methods of propaganda and advertisement, but the Suffragettes knew only too well that the cause which does not advance cannot remain stationary, but slips back into the limbo of forgotten things. On February 24th, the seventh Women's Parliament met in the Caxton Hall. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence sallied forth from it with a number of women in her train, but she and twenty-eight of her comrades, including Lady Constance Lytton and Miss Daisy D. Solomon, the daughter of the Late Prime Minister of the Cape, were soon arrested. Their trial took place before Sir Albert de Rutzen at Bow Street next day, and on refusing to be bound over to keep the peace they received sentences of from one to two months' imprisonment.
There were now many members, both of the Women's Social and Political Union and of the Women's Freedom League, in Holloway, and one day, whilst they were exercising together, a member of the latter organisation, Mrs. Meredith MacDonald, a lady in middle life, fell on the frosty stones. Two of her fellow prisoners ran to help her, but the wardress forced them away and, though she said she believed her thigh to be injured, she was forced to drag herself unaided to her cell. Her request to see her own doctor was refused and not until she became unable even to turn in her bed was she removed to the prison hospital. When, at last, the X-rays were applied, it was found that her thigh was fractured, and that, owing to the long delay and lack of proper treatment, she would be lame for life. The matter was reported to the Home Secretary with a demand for redress, but no result followed until June, 1910, more than a year afterwards, when, legal proceedings having been instituted, the authorities at last agreed to pay Mrs. MacDonald £500 damages and her legal costs, amounting to an equal sum.
Meanwhile a place for a Women's Suffrage measure had been won in the private Members' ballot by Mr. Geoffrey Howard, a Liberal Member of Parliament and son of the Countess of Carlisle. Mr. Howard and the Women's Suffrage Committee of Liberal Members with whom he was working, decided to abandon the old equal Bill and to introduce a complicated Reform measure, on the lines of that foreshadowed by Mr. Asquith in his famous promise of the previous year, except that, in this case, Votes for Women was to form part of the original measure, instead of being left to come in as an amendment. Under this Private Members' Reform Bill the only condition required for registration as a Parliamentary voter was to be that the person registered, whether man or woman, should be of full age and have resided for not less than three months within the same constituency. It was estimated that the Bill would qualify some fifteen million new voters, twelve million of whom would be women,[33] and would thus nearly treble the number at present entitled to exercise the franchise. It would at the same time abolish plural voting. The professed object of bringing forward this measure was to meet the stipulation put forward by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George that votes should not be given to women except on "democratic lines."
