Arrest of Lady Constance Lytton and Others at Newcastle. Suffragettes Attacked at Abernethy. Hose Pipe Played on Miss Davison in Strangeways Gaol, Manchester. Mr. Asquith at the Albert Hall.
Whilst our comrades were thus enduring agonies in prison, protest meetings were being held in all parts of the country. The Daily News said of the people in our movement: "They are no longer men and women; they are a whirlwind."
During the first three days of forcible feeding £1,200 was collected. At a great demonstration in the Albert Hall on October 7th, a further £2,300 was subscribed, and the £50,000 campaign fund being complete, a fund of £100,000 was started. At this meeting a procession of women who had already gone through the hunger strike marched up to the platform carrying the purple, white and green tricoloured flags of the Union, and here Mrs. Pankhurst, who was on the eve of her departure for America, decorated them with medals in recognition of their services to the cause. The scene was one of the most tremendous enthusiasm; it was one which none of those present will ever forget.
On October 9th a great political pageant was held in Edinburgh, when a procession of women, led by Scotch pipers and Mrs. Drummond in her general's uniform, astride a prancing charger, marched through the streets, accompanied by a number of tableaux representing the figures of heroic women famous in Scottish history.
On October 4th, Lord Morley, as Chancellor of the Victoria University, visited Manchester to open the University's new chemical laboratory. Deeply moved by the sufferings of Mrs. Leigh and her comrades in Winson Green Gaol, Miss Rona Robinson, M.Sc., and Miss Dora Marsden, B.A., both graduates of the University, and the former a subscriber also to the new laboratory, attended in their academic robes, and, with Miss Mary Gawthorpe, advanced down the central aisle of the Whitworth Hall of the University, just as Lord Morley was about to speak. Each one raising a hand in appeal, they said in concert: "My Lord, our women are in prison."
The rowdiness of the young men students of our British universities is time-honoured; their almost deafening shouts and yells and practical jokes, always in evidence at functions such as this, are invariably received with amused tolerance by the authorities. Mr. Asquith himself, when addressing the students of the University of which he is Chancellor, did not disdain to wait with a smile until their play was done before he could address them. Nevertheless the earnest, quietly-spoken words of these three young women were scarcely uttered when they were pounced upon by a number of strange men, who dragged them out of the Hall, and as soon as they were lost to sight by the audience, fell to striking, pummelling, and pinching them, as they pushed them into the street. The passers-by rushed up to know what had happened, and at once the police ordered the three women to move on. They replied that they would not leave until their graduates' caps and other belongings, which had been torn from them, were restored, and until the names of the men who had ejected them were given. Thereupon, without further argument, the police seized them and dragged them to the police station, where they were accused of disorderly conduct and abusive language, in Oxford Street. These ridiculous charges could not be substantiated and were afterwards withdrawn by the Chief Constable of Manchester and the Vice Chancellor of the University.
Such women as Mrs. Baines and Mrs. Leigh, both capable of the fieriest zeal and the most reckless heroism, spurred on by stern first-hand knowledge of the crushing handicaps with which the woman wage-earner has to contend, and the terrible disabilities which are rivetted upon her, had found it not difficult to become rebels. The torture of women in prison was now making it easy for gentler and happier spirits to cast aside also the mere going on deputations and asking of questions and, whilst doing hurt to none, yet by symbolic acts to shadow forth the violence that coercion always breeds.
On October 9th Mr. Lloyd George was to speak at Newcastle and the town was prepared as though for a revolution. Police and detectives were to be seen in hundreds and great barriers were erected across the streets. The night before the meeting twelve women met quietly together to lay their plans for opposing these tremendous forces. Amongst them was Lady Constance Lytton, who had already served one imprisonment for the cause in the previous February, and who, as daughter and sister of an English peer, wished to place herself side by side with Mrs. Leigh, the working woman who was being tortured in Birmingham,—to do what she had done, prepared to suffer the same penalty. Mrs. J. E. M. Brailsford, who had joined the Women's Social & Political Union but a few weeks before, was another who had come forward to bear her share in this fight. (It was Mrs. Brailsford's husband who with Mr. Nevinson had recently thrown up his post as leader writer to the Daily News, because of his sympathy with the Suffragettes). Amongst these women were also two hospital nurses, whilst two of the others, Miss Kathleen Brown and Miss Dorothy Shallard, had already won their way out of prison through the hunger strike.
Next night, whilst vast throngs of people lined the streets and the police were massed in their thousands to guard from them the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "the son of the people," as he called himself, the twelve women quietly proceeded to do their deeds. It was rumoured that Mr. Lloyd George was to stay with Sir Walter Runciman, and, seeing the latter gentleman's motor car driving through the streets, Lady Constance Lytton threw a stone at it, carefully aiming at the radiator in order that, without injuring anyone, she might strike the car. Miss Dorothy Pethick and Miss Kitty Marion entered the General Post Office and, having carefully selected a window in the neighbourhood of which there was no one to be hurt, they went out and cast their stones through it with a cry of "Votes for Women." A number of other women were also arrested for similar acts. Mrs. Brailsford walked quietly up to one of the police barriers and stood resting an innocent-looking bouquet of chrysanthemums upon it. Suddenly the flowers fell to the ground disclosing an axe which she raised and let fall with one dull thud on the wooden bar. It was a symbolic act of revolution, and, like her comrades, she was dragged away by the police. By direct order of the Home Office bail was refused and eight of the Suffragettes were kept in the police court cells from Saturday until Monday, without an opportunity of undressing, without a mattress, and with nothing but a rug in which to wrap themselves at night.
Whilst the women who had thus been lodged in prison had been making their protest outside Mr. Lloyd George's meeting, there were men who were speaking for them within. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer was running through the list of taxes in the Budget, a man complained that "there was no tax on stomach pumps." The whole house rose at that and the man was violently ejected. Many others followed his example. Mr. Lloyd George taunted them by saying: "There are many ways of earning a living, and I think this is the most objectionable of them!" and by asking: "Are there any more of these hirelings?" Evidently he thought that there were no men disinterested enough to support the cause of women unless they received pay for it.[42]