Meanwhile Mr. Harcourt had held a series of meetings in the Rossendale Valley. On December 1st the door and windows of the house in which he was staying were found to have been covered during the night with forcible feeding posters. The next evening three men were set to watch with large hose-pipes attached to the main, but somehow or other the connection was mysteriously cut and the windows were broken without their being aware of it by some person or persons unknown. Two women were arrested in connection with disturbances on the following Monday, and were sent to prison for one month and fourteen days respectively. They both adopted the hunger strike, and were both forcibly fed. Two women were arrested outside Sir Edward Grey's meeting at Leith on December 4th, 1909.
A general election was now announced and on December 10th Mr. Asquith was to speak at a great meeting in the Albert Hall and whilst the authorities were making every attempt to keep them out, the Suffragettes were, of course, making every attempt to get into the building. Some of them did succeed in concealing themselves inside, but were discovered. Jessie Kenney, who disguised herself as a telegraph boy and tried to get in while the meeting was in progress, was also detected and turned back, but three men sympathisers protested during the meeting. To these Mr. Asquith replied, "Nearly two years ago I declared on behalf of the present Government that in the event of our bringing in a Reform Bill we should make the question of Suffrage for Women an open one for the House of Commons to decide. My declaration survives the General Election and this Cause, so far as the Government is concerned, shall be no worse off in the new Parliament than it would have been in the old." Thus Mr. Asquith was cheerfully preparing for another general election without one word of regret or apology to those women who had been misled by his promise to introduce the Reform Bill before Parliament came to an end. That was almost the last of the old false promise.
Meanwhile Charlotte Marsh, who had gone into Winson Green Gaol with the first batch of prisoners to be forcibly fed, was still being detained there, whilst Mrs. Leigh and all the rest had been released. Those who went to visit her once at the expiration of each month were only allowed to look at her through a small square of perforated zinc. They could neither see her clearly nor hear distinctly what she said. Nevertheless they gathered that she was suffering greatly. Our hearts ached for that noble girl. Often there came before our eyes the picture of the tall, straight figure that had carried the colours of our Union before us in so many gay processions. We saw the fair, fresh face with its delicate regular Saxon features, those masses of bright golden hair, the head so proudly held, and the faint flicker of a shy smile that always came when one spoke to her; we heard the boyish ring in her voice, and realised again her earnestness and enthusiasm, and the unaffected gentleness of her address. There was always something about her that made many a woman think of some dear young brother. Her father called her "Charlie," and thought of her as his only boy amongst a family of girls.
It was expected that she would have been released on December 7th, but the Government who had held her in torment for so long were anxious to extort from her the very last ounce of their pound of flesh. They determined not to grant her the remission of one-sixth of the sentence usually allowed, but to withhold it as a punishment for her refusal to take food, and they did this though they knew that her father was dangerously ill and though her mother had appealed for her release on that ground a week before. There was no fine that could be laid down to buy her out, for she had been sentenced without that option, and so perforce she must wait the pleasure of the Government. On the 8th of December, it was known that Charlotte Marsh's father was dying and her family made another urgent appeal that she might be brought to him. But it was not until the 9th that the Home Secretary at last tardily let her go. She hurried at once to her home in Newcastle, so thin and worn with what she had suffered, that her sisters scarcely knew her as she came into the house, only to find that her father was unconscious and would never wake to know her any more.
Footnotes:
[42] Mr. Lloyd George's baseless insinuation was of course indignantly and publicly repudiated by the men concerned.