At this Miss Garnett unbuttoned and took off the coat she was wearing and the magistrate rudely said: "I suppose you could bite as well in one dress as in another."
"I have already told you that my dress was torn," she went on. "You will see that it is torn close to the brooch. I think it is exceedingly probable that the wardress who tore my dress received a wound in her finger from the brooch I was wearing and this wound would exactly resemble the wound caused by a bite."
Miss Garnett now unpinned the portcullis brooch which since April of that year had been presented as a badge of honour to every member of the W. S. P. U. who had suffered imprisonment for the cause, and which, like a genuine portcullis, had five sharp little tooth-like projections at its base.
"Here is the brooch," she said, handing it to the magistrate, "you can look at it for yourself. I have only this to add that if, in spite of the true facts which I have narrated to you, you send me to prison on account of the charges which have been made against me, I shall go there prepared to carry out afresh my protest against the treatment in prison."
Mr. Fordham said that evidently there had been a great struggle and that at such times it was difficult to say exactly what had taken place. He believed that the wound had been caused accidentally, though he thought it was more likely that the wardress's hand had been struck against Miss Garnett's teeth than that the wound had been caused by the brooch. He therefore dismissed the case, but though Miss Garnett had been acquitted of this charge Mr. Gladstone never retracted the statements which he had made in Parliament as to the Suffragette prisoners having bitten the wardresses.
As soon as this first case against Miss Garnett had been disposed of, a second charge of striking one of the wardresses was preferred against her. She then said:
On the day following that on which the visiting magistrates came to Holloway, the wardress entered my cell and ordered me to get up off the bed. I did not do so and she seized hold of the bedding and rolled me on to the floor, injuring my knee. I then said to her, "Is this what you do?" and she said, "It is." I said to her, "In a civilised country?" and she said, "You are a set of uncivilised women." I then asked her to leave the cell and she refused to do so, whereon I pushed her without using any unnecessary violence out of the cell. Later in the day she was exceedingly insolent to me in her behaviour and she further reported me to the Governor and I was moved into a more severe punishment cell. I informed the Governor of the manner in which she had treated me and from that time onwards her behaviour was marked by ordinary courtesy.
Mr. Fordham then sentenced Miss Garnett to a month's imprisonment in the third division.
After this two charges were also brought against Mrs. Dove-Wilcox of Bristol, who was accused of having kicked several of the wardresses, both whilst she was being taken from the cell to the visiting magistrates' room and on the way to the punishment cell afterwards. To the first charge she returned an absolute denial, saying that when summoned to appear before the magistrates she had gone quietly and willingly, and that when she had been charged before them, no attempt had been made to suggest that she had assaulted any of the wardresses. She was sentenced to eight days' close confinement in a punishment cell, but, as she explained: