On Monday, whilst the other women received sentences varying from fourteen days to one month's hard labour, Lady Constance Lytton and Mrs. Brailsford were ordered to be bound over to be of good behaviour, and on refusing were sent to prison in the second division for one month. The authorities were evidently very loath to convict these two ladies, one of them because of her rank, and the other because of her own and her husband's association with the Liberal party, but both were determined to stand by their comrades and steadfastly refused to express any regret for what they had done.
Their hope that their courageous action might save Mrs. Leigh and the other Birmingham prisoners from further suffering proved to be vain, and on Wednesday, October 13th, Lady Constance Lytton and Mrs. Brailsford, both of whom had refused food, were released after having been imprisoned for no more than two and a half days. Mr. Gladstone asserted that in deciding to release them, he had not been in any way influenced by regard for their position, but that they had been turned out of prison on purely medical grounds. It was indeed true that Lady Constance was exceedingly fragile and delicate and that she suffered from a slight heart affection, but Mrs. Brailsford protested that she herself was perfectly well and strong.
The eight other women were all forcibly fed and all but two were retained in prison till the end of their sentence. In most cases the nasal tube was used; it always caused headache and sickness. The nostrils soon became terribly inflamed and every one of the women lost weight and suffered from great and growing weakness.
On Saturday, October 16th, Mr. Winston Churchill was to speak at an open-air gathering at Abernethy, some sixteen miles from Dundee. The W. S. P. U. had no intention of heckling him or creating any disturbance, for after much pressing and a lengthy correspondence he had agreed to fulfil a promise made to the Women's Freedom League in the previous January to receive a Woman's Suffrage deputation on the following Monday. Nevertheless the occasion was thought a suitable one for distributing Suffrage literature and for holding a meeting somewhere in the neighbourhood. Adela Pankhurst, Mrs. Archdale, the daughter of Russell, the founder of the great Liberal newspaper, "The Scotsman," Mrs. Frank Corbett, the sister-in-law of a Member of Parliament, and Miss C. Jolly accordingly decided to motor over there.
They started off on a crisp bright autumn day, the clouds high, the sun shining and the trees all turning gold, and the little frost sparkles gleaming on the good hard road. Everything began auspiciously but before long they were held up by a punctured tire. Owing to this delay they lost the opportunity of giving out leaflets to the people as they arrived, for the audience had already entered the big tent where the speaking was to take place when the Suffragettes drove up. Standing in the road were some thirty or forty men, all wearing the yellow rosettes of official Liberal stewards, and as the car slowed down, they rushed furiously towards it, shouting and tearing up sods from the road and pelting the women with them. One man pulled out a knife and began to cut the tires, whilst the others feverishly pulled the loose pieces off with their fingers. The Suffragettes tried to quiet them with a few words of explanation, but their only reply was to pull the hood of the motor over the women's heads and then to beat it and batter it until it was broken in several places. Then they tore at the women's clothes and tried to pull them out of the car, whilst the son of the gentleman in whose grounds the meeting was being held then drove up in another motor and threw a shower of pepper in the women's eyes. The shouts of the men reached the tent where Mr. Churchill was speaking, and numbers of people flocked out and watched the scene from over the hedge, but only two gentlemen had the courage to come to the aid of the women, and their efforts availed little against the large band of stewards. At last, fearing that his motor would be entirely wrecked, the driver put on full speed and drove away. The only excuse for the stewards who took part in this extraordinary occurrence is that many of them were intoxicated.
On Monday, as he had promised, Mr. Churchill received the deputation from the Women's Freedom League. He then entirely departed from what he had said during the elections both in Manchester and at Dundee itself. In Manchester, when asked what he would do to help to secure the enfranchisement of women he had said: "I will try my best as and when occasion offers." He had added that the women Suffragists had "now got behind them a great popular demand," and that their movement was assuming "the same character as Franchise movements have previously assumed." In Dundee he had said that Women's Suffrage would be "a real practical issue" at the next general election and that he thought that the next Parliament "ought to see" the gratification of the women's claim. Now that no election was in prospect he said: "Looking back over the last four years I am bound to say I think your cause has marched backwards." He further said that the mass of people still remained to be converted and that, so far as he could see, women's enfranchisement would not "figure either in the programme of any great political party" or "in the election address of any prominent man," and that, until militant tactics were discontinued, he himself would render no assistance to the cause. A more flagrant example of political dishonesty than that which these conflicting statements of Mr. Churchill's presented, it would be difficult to find and not merely the Suffragettes but the people of Dundee freely expressed their disapproval.
On Tuesday, Mr. Churchill was to speak in the Kinnaird Hall, and huge crowds then filled the streets and in spite of the tremendous force of police the barricades were stormed. Led by Mrs. Corbett, Miss Joachim, and Mrs. Archdale, they shouted "Votes for Women," and rushed again and again at the doors of the Hall. The three women who led the crowds were arrested but the storm still went on.
Adela Pankhurst and Miss C. Jolly, who had lain concealed there since the previous Sunday, had raised the cry, "Votes for Women," in a little dark room, the windows of which overlooked the large hall. After a tussle with the police and stewards, which lasted three quarters of an hour, they were arrested and with the three who had been taken in the street, were eventually sent to prison for ten days. They immediately commenced the hunger strike, and were set free on Sunday, 24th October, after having gone without food for five and a half days. Whilst they were in prison, huge crowds came to the gates every night to cheer them, and on the next night after their release the men of Dundee organised a meeting of protest, in the Kinnaird Hall.
Meanwhile, four Suffragettes were suffering the torture of forcible feeding in Strangeways Gaol, Manchester. They had been arrested in connection with a meeting held by Mr. Runciman at Radcliffe, and sentenced to one month's imprisonment, with hard labour, on October 21st. They had gone into prison on the Thursday, and had begun the hunger strike at once, and on Friday the doctors and wardresses came to feed them by force. Miss Emily Wilding Davison urged that the operation was illegal, but she was seized and forced down on her bed. "The scene which followed," she says, "will haunt me with its horror all my life and is almost indescribable." Each time it happened she felt she could not possibly live through it again. On Monday a wardress put her into an empty cell next door to her own, and there she found that instead of one plank bed there were two. She saw in a flash a way to escape the torture. She hastily pulled down the two bed boards, and laid them end to end upon the floor, one touching the door, the other the opposite wall, and, as the door opened inwards, she thus hoped to prevent anyone entering. A space of a foot or more, however, remained, but she jammed in her stool, her shoes, and her hairbrush, and sat down holding this wedge firm. Soon the wardress returned, unlocked the door, and pushed it sharply, but it would not move. Looking through the spy-hole she discovered the reason and called, "Open the door," but the prisoner would not budge. After some threats and coaxing the window of her cell was broken, the nozzle of a hose-pipe was poked through, and the water was turned full upon her. She clung to the bedboards with all her strength gasping for breath, until a voice called out quickly, "Stop, no more, no more." She sat there drenched and shivering, still crouching on the bedboards, the water six inches deep around her. After a time they decided to take the heavy iron door off its hinges, and, when this was done, a warder rushed in and seized her, saying, as he did so, "You ought to be horsewhipped for this." Now her clothes were torn off, she was wrapped in blankets, put into an invalid's chair, and rushed off to the hospital, there to be plunged into a hot bath and rubbed down, and then, still gasping and shivering miserably, she was put into bed between blankets with a hot bottle. At 6 P. M. on Thursday she was released.
Meanwhile, the whole country had heard of the incident and an outcry had been raised. A correspondent wrote that he had seen a hose-pipe played on drunken stokers at sea. They were Norwegian stokers, the officer would not have dared to do it had they been English, but the passengers had intervened at what they felt to be revolting and unjustifiable brutality. The thought of turning that fearful force of ice-cold water upon a woman already weak from several days of fasting, was horrible indeed to anyone who realised what it meant.