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.