The reason why the Press as a whole was against the women was of course because every great newspaper in this country is a special pleader, for one or other of the two great political Parties—the Liberals and the Conservatives—and both these Parties looked upon the question which the women were striving to urge forward, as something of a nuisance. Unfortunately, vast numbers of people, instead of examining into and thinking out a thing for themselves, begin, at any rate, by allowing their opinions to be formed for them by the particular newspapers which they happen to read. Therefore some people at once made up their minds that the women were entirely in the wrong, because the papers said so. Others, with strange obliquity of vision, because they did not like the idea of women mixing themselves up in scenes of violence, found it easier to disapprove of the women who had been ill-used than of those who had ill-used them. Besides the unthinking ones, there were also many who had become so much inflamed by Party spirit that their sole idea was to whitewash and bolster up the Liberal leaders and to cast a slur upon the character of any who had dared to turn too fierce a light upon their faults and weaknesses.
But with all this the imprisoned women were not friendless and though for the time being, stone walls and iron bars might prevent their speaking, there were those outside who were determined to defend and uphold them and to turn what they had done to good. The Women's Social and Political Union at once published a statement explaining that in view of the approaching general election the intentions of the Liberal leaders with regard to Women's Suffrage had been recognised to be of immense importance, and Sir Edward Grey had therefore been asked to receive a deputation of members of the Union, in which the questions it was desired that he should answer were clearly stated. No reply or acknowledgment of this request had been received, and it had thereupon been decided that two delegates from the Union should attend the Free Trade Hall meeting to question Sir Edward Grey.
Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney
Many who witnessed the scene in the Free Trade Hall wrote to the newspapers expressing their sympathy with the women.
A "sympathiser" apologised for having helped to shout the women down saying that he would never have done so had he realised what was really taking place. On first reading the accounts, Mr. Keir Hardie, the only Member of Parliament to come forward in support of the prisoners, telegraphed, "The thing is a dastardly outrage, but do not worry, it will do immense good to the Cause. Can I do anything?" Sir Edward Grey's wife, Lady Grey, made no public statement but she told her friends that she considered the women justified in the means they had adopted of forcing their question forward. "What else could they do?" she asked. Whilst Mr. Winston Churchill, fearing probably that his approaching candidature in Manchester might be damaged by the imprisonment of the women, visited Strangeways Gaol and offered to pay their fines, but the Governor refused to accept the money from him.
On Friday, October 20th, a crowded demonstration was held to welcome the Ex-prisoners in the Free Trade Hall from which they had been flung out with ignominy but a week before, and now, as they entered, the audience rose with raised hats and waving handkerchiefs and greeted them with cheers. Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney did not speak of their imprisonment. We knew that they had been treated as belonging to the third and lowest class of criminals, and that they had been dressed in the prison clothes, fed on "skilly" and brown bread, and kept in solitary confinement in a narrow cell both day and night; that they had attended services with the other prisoners in the Chapel and with them had gone out to exercise in the prison yard, that they had performed the daily routine of prison tasks and, losing their own names, had answered only to the number of their cell. These things we know, but they refused to speak of them then, wishing that all attention should be concentrated upon the cause of the enfranchisement of women for which they had been willing to endure all.
But in spite of their own silence we have one picture of Christabel during that first imprisonment. It was brought out to us by one of the Visiting Justices, a friend of her father, who, in the hope of inducing her to allow her fine to be paid, had gone in to see her in the prison cell. He found her clad in strangely made, coarse serge garments, with large heavy shoes upon her feet and with a white cap framing her rosy face, and partly covering her soft brown hair. Seated on a wooden stool she was working away at her allotted task—the making of a shirt for one of the men prisoners. Her dinner, consisting of two or three small sodden-looking unpeeled potatoes and a chunk of coarse brown bread, was lying beside her and she was taking a bite of the bread every now and then. "Don't you think you're a very silly girl to sit here eating brown bread and potatoes and sewing that shirt when you might be freely doing what you please outside?" the Justice asked her. But she smiled up at him brightly "Oh, no," she said, "I always liked brown bread."
Fresh and bright and full of cheer as she had been in her cell, though more serious, she was now, as she stood on the Free Trade Hall platform to make her speech. When she began to tell the meeting of the disturbance that had taken place upon the previous Friday there were some cries of protest from Liberals who disagreed with her, but she stopped them saying "I am sure you want to hear my side of the story," and when she had finished, Resolutions calling for the immediate extension of the franchise to women, commending the bravery of the released prisoners' action and condemning the behaviour of those who had refused to answer their question were carried with tremendous enthusiasm.
DR. PANKHURST—BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE