The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910

by E. Sylvia Pankhurst

And now on September 17th the Prime Minister was going up to Birmingham to hold a meeting of 10,000 people at the great Bingley Hall. A "bower bedecked" special train was to carry the Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament up north straight from their duties in the House, and back again. Tremendous efforts were being made to work up enthusiasm for at this meeting, Mr. Asquith was to throw down his challenge to the House of Lords, to proclaim that their power of veto should be abolished, and that the will of the people should prevail. But the Suffragettes were determined that, if the freedom to voice their will were to be confined to half the people alone, there should be no peace in Birmingham for the Prime Minister.

Mrs. Leigh and her colleagues, who were organising there, began by copying the police methods so far as to address a warning to the public not to attend Mr. Asquith's meeting, as disturbances were likely to ensue, and immediately the authorities were seized with panic. A great tarpaulin was stretched across the glass roof of the Bingley Hall, a tall fire escape was placed on each side of the building and hundreds of yards of firemen's hose were laid across the roof. Wooden barriers, nine feet high, were erected along the station platform and across all the leading thoroughfares in the neighbourhood, whilst the ends of the streets both in front and at the back of Bingley Hall were sealed up by barricades. Nevertheless, inside those very sealed up streets, numbers of Suffragettes had been lodging for days past and were quietly watching the arrangements. At the same time outside in the town a vigorous propaganda campaign was being carried on by their comrades, and this culminated in an enthusiastic Votes for Women demonstration in the Bull Ring the day before the great Liberal meeting.

When Mr. Asquith left the House of Commons for his special train, detectives and policemen hemmed him in on every side, and when he arrived at the station in Birmingham, he was smuggled to the Queen's Hotel by a back subway a quarter of a mile in length and carried up in the luggage lift. In the hotel he took his meal alone in a private room away from his guests. Though guarded by a strong escort of mounted police he thought it wisest not to enter the hall by the entrance at which he had been expected. Meanwhile tremendous crowds were thronging the streets and the ticket holders were watched as closely as spies in time of war. They had to pass four barriers and were squeezed through them by a tiny gangway and then passed between long lines of police and amid an incessant roar of "show your ticket." The vast throngs of people who had no tickets and had only come out to see the show, surged against the barriers like great human waves and occasionally cries of "Votes for Women" were greeted with deafening cheers.

Inside the hall there were armies of stewards and groups of police at every turn. The meeting began by the singing of a song of freedom led by a band of trumpeters. Then the Prime Minister appeared. "For years past the people have been beguiled with unfulfilled promises," he declared, but during his speech he was again and again reminded, by men of the unfulfilled promises which had been made to women; and, though men who interrupted him on other subjects were never interfered with, these champions of the Suffragettes were, in every case, set upon with a violence which was described by onlookers as "revengeful," and "vicious." Thirteen men were maltreated in this way.

Meanwhile amid the vast crowds outside women were fighting for their freedom. Cabinet Ministers had sneered at them and taunted them with not being able to use physical force. "Working men have flung open the franchise door at which the ladies are scratching," Mr. John Burns had said. So now they were showing that, if they would, they could use violence, though they were determined that, at any rate as yet, they would hurt no one. Again and again they charged the barricades, one woman with a hatchet in her hand, and the friendly people always pressed forward with them. In spite of a thousand police the first barrier was many times thrown down. Whenever a woman was arrested the crowd struggled to secure her release and over and over again they were successful, one woman being snatched from the constables no fewer than seven times.

Inside the hall Mr. Asquith had not only the men to contend with, for the meeting had not long been in progress, when there was a sudden sound of splintering glass and a woman's voice was heard loudly denouncing the Government. A missile had been thrown through one of the ventilators by a number of Suffragettes from an open window in a house opposite. The police rushed to the house door, burst it open and scrambled up the stairs, falling over each other in their haste to reach the women, and then dragged them down and flung them into the street where they were immediately placed under arrest. Even whilst this was happening there burst upon the air the sound of an electric motor horn which issued from another house near by. Evidently there were Suffragettes there too. The front door of this house was barricaded and so also was the door of the room in which the women were, but the infuriated Liberal Stewards forced their way through and wrested the instrument from the woman's hands.

No sooner was this effected however than the rattling of missiles was heard on the other side of the hall, and, on the roof of a house, thirty feet above the street, lit up by a tall electric standard was seen the little agile figure of Mrs. Leigh, with a tall fair girl beside her, both of whom were tearing up the slates with axes, and flinging them on to the roof of the Bingley Hall and down into the road below, always, however, taking care to hit no one and sounding a warning before throwing. The police cried to them to stop and angry stewards came rushing out of the hall to second this demand, but the women calmly went on with their work. A ladder was produced and the men prepared to mount it, but the only reply was a warning to "be careful" and all present felt that discretion was the better part of valour. Then the fire hose was dragged forward, but the firemen refused to turn it on, and so the police themselves played it on the women until they were drenched to the skin. The slates had now become terribly slippery, and the women were in great danger of sliding from the steep roof, but they had already taken off their shoes and so contrived to retain a foothold, and without intermission they continued "firing" slates. Finding that water had no power to subdue them, their opponents retaliated by throwing bricks and stones up at the two women, but, instead of trying, as they had done to avoid hitting, the men took good aim at them and soon blood was running down the face of the tall girl, Charlotte Marsh, and both had been struck several times.

At last Mr. Asquith had said his say and came hurrying out of the building. A slate was hurled at the back of his car as it drove away, and then "firing" ceased from the roof for the Cabinet Minister was gone. Seeing that they had now nothing to fear the police at once placed a ladder against the house and scrambled up to bring the Suffragettes down and then, without allowing them to put on their shoes, they marched them through the streets, in their stockinged feet, the blood streaming from their wounds and their wet garments clinging to their limbs. At the police station bail was refused and the two women were sent to the cells to pass the night in their drenched clothing.

Meanwhile, amid the hooting of the crowd, Mr. Asquith had driven away through the town and as the special train in which he was to return to London, left the station, a shower of small stones rattled against his carriage window, whilst a great bar of iron was flung into an empty compartment in the rear. The two women who had done these things were at once seized by the police and were also obliged to pass the night in the cells, whilst six who had been arrested in the crowd earlier, met the same fate.