At last six men, Liberal stewards and policemen in plain clothes, seized Christabel Pankhurst and dragged her away down the central aisle and past the platform, then others followed bringing Annie Kenney after her. As they were forced along the women still looked up and called for an answer to their question, and still the Liberal leaders on the platform looked on apparently unmoved and never said a word. As they saw the women dragged away, the men in the front seats—the ticket holders from the Liberal clubs—shouted "Throw them out!" but from the free seats at the back, the people answered "Shame!"
Having been flung out into the street, the two women decided to hold an indignation meeting there, and so, at the corner of Peter Street and South Street, close to the hall, they began to speak, but within a few minutes, they were arrested, and followed by hundreds of men and women, were dragged to the Town Hall. Here they were both charged with obstruction, and Christabel Pankhurst was also accused of assaulting the police. They were summoned to attend the Police Court in Minshull Street next morning.
Meanwhile, as soon as the women had been thrown out of the hall, there came a revulsion of feeling in their favour and the greater part of the meeting broke up in disorder. Believing that some explanation was expected of him, Sir Edward Grey now said that he regretted the disturbance which had taken place. "I am not sure" he continued "that unwittingly and in innocence I have not been a contributing cause. As far as I can understand, the trouble arose from a desire to know my opinion on the subject of Women's Suffrage. That is a question which I would not deal with here to-night because it is not, and I do not think it is likely to be, a party question." He added that he had already given his opinion upon votes for women and that, as he did not think it a "fitting subject for this evening," he would not repeat it.
Thus, within a few days of the fortieth anniversary of the formation of the first Women's Suffrage Society (perhaps even upon that very anniversary), and after forty years of persevering labour for this cause, Sir Edward Grey announced that Women's Suffrage was as yet far outside the realm of practical politics, and the two women who had dared to question him upon this subject were flung with violence and insult from the hall.
The next morning the police court was crowded with people eager to hear the trial. The two girls refused to dispute the police evidence as to the charges of assault and obstruction, and based their defence solely upon the principle that their conduct was justified by the importance of the question upon which they had endeavoured to secure a pronouncement and by the outrageous treatment which they had received. But though ignoring the violence to which they had been subjected and exaggerating the disturbance which they had made, the Counsel for the prosecution had dwelt at length upon the scene in the Free Trade Hall; the women were not allowed to refer to it and, though it was evident that but for what had taken place in the meeting they would not have been arrested for speaking in the street, they were ordered to confine their remarks to what had taken place after they had been ejected. Both defendants were found guilty, Christabel Pankhurst being ordered to pay a fine of ten shillings or to go to prison for seven days and Annie Kenney being fined five shillings with the alternative of three days' imprisonment. They both refused to pay the fines and were immediately hurried away to the cells.
Now the whole country rang with the story. In Manchester especially, the news created tremendous excitement. The father of one of the prisoners, was, as we have seen, a Manchester man. Dr. Pankhurst's[5] remarkable ability and learning, his wonderful eloquence, his wide range of interests, and the number of causes in which he had taken a foremost part, had secured for him an unusually large amount of public recognition. There was scarcely a man or woman in the city to whom he was not a familiar figure. Moreover, his fascinating personality, and his well-known tenderness of heart, illustrated as it was by thousands of kindly acts, as well as by his long life of service and sacrifice for the public good, had endeared him to many of his strongest political opponents. Whatever bitterness may have been aroused against him by his strenuous advocacy of advanced and frequently unpopular causes, had disappeared when the news of his sudden death, which took place in the midst of a legal case that he was conducting on behalf of the Manchester Corporation, had become known, and public sympathy had gone generously forth to Mrs. Pankhurst in her tragic home-coming when she had read of her great loss in the evening papers in the train. Mrs. Pankhurst by her work on public bodies was also known of course, and Christabel Pankhurst herself had recently attracted notice because, having wished to follow her father's profession, she had applied to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn for admission to the Bar. Her application had been refused on the ground of her sex, as had also a request to be heard by the Benchers in support of her claim, but she had not abandoned her endeavours to secure the opening of this avenue of employment to women and she was now a Law student at the Victoria University of Manchester.
Votes for Women in those days was regarded by the majority of sober, level-headed men as a ladies' fad which would never come to anything and the idea that it could ever be a question upon which governments would stand or fall, or be associated with persecution, rioting and imprisonment had been alike unthinkable to them. Therefore, for many reasons, this trial and imprisonment came as a tremendous shock to the general public of Manchester. Questions addressed to political speakers by men in the audience both during and at the close of the speeches were, as everyone knew, the invariable accompaniment of every public political meeting in this country. These questions were almost always replied to. When dissatisfied with the answer the interrogators frequently began a running commentary of disapproval, which sometimes terminated in their ejection, but not until they had become a source of general disturbance to the meeting. These facts were of course a matter of common knowledge, but the newspapers now ignored them and treated the questioning of Sir Edward Grey in the manner adopted by the two women in the Free Trade Hall as an absolutely new and entirely reprehensible departure. They were all agreed that such behaviour would inevitably injure the Women's Suffrage Cause of which, though they had hitherto boycotted it, most of them now implied that they were supporters. Extracts from two newspapers are enough to convey the attitude which in varying degrees of severity was adopted by them all. The Evening Standard:
The Magistrates were lenient in inflicting a small fine.... If Miss Pankhurst desires to go to gaol rather than pay the money, let her go. Our only regret is that the discipline will be identical with that experienced by mature and sensible women, and not that which falls to the lot of children in the nursery.
The Birmingham Daily Mail:—
If any argument were required against giving to ladies political status and power, it has been furnished in Manchester, and by two of the people who are most strenuously clamouring for the franchise.