Wednesday, 8 oz. suet pudding (exactly like that served in the third class), 6 oz. bread, 8 oz. potatoes.
Thursday, 6 oz. bread, 8 oz. potatoes, 3 oz. cooked meat—a kind of stew.
Friday, Soup 1 pt., 6 oz bread, 8 oz. potatoes.
Saturday, Suet pudding 8 oz., bread 6 oz., potatoes 8 oz.
Sunday, bread 6 oz., potatoes 8 oz., 3 oz. meat "preserved by heat" i. e., some kind of preserved meat slightly warmed.
The soups or meat for each prisoner was served in a cylindrical quart tin into the top of which, like a lid, was fitted another shallow tin holding the potatoes. One did not clean these tins oneself as one did the other utensils, and probably because the kitchen attendants were overburdened with work, they were always exceedingly dingy and dirty-looking. Everything was as badly cooked and as uninviting as it could be. The cocoa, which was quite unlike any cocoa that I have ever tasted, had little pieces of meat and fat floating about in it. It was evidently made in the same vessel in which the meat was cooked. To cut up our meat, in addition to the wooden spoon, which is common to the second and third classes, we were now provided with "a knife." This knife was made of tin. It was about four inches in length and Mrs. Drummond later on aptly described it as being "hemmed" at the edge. There was no fork.
On November 6th my sentence came to an end, and the newspaper representatives were all eager to hear from me what the inside of Holloway was like. I was thus able to make known exactly what the conditions of imprisonment had been both before and after our transfer to the first division and to show that even under the new conditions, the treatment of the Suffragettes was very much more rigorous than that applied to men political prisoners in this and other countries.
Next day, November 7th, Mr. Keir Hardie introduced a Women's Suffrage Bill into the House of Commons under "the ten minutes rule." It had only two chances of passing into law; the first that the Government should provide time for it and the second that not one single Member of Parliament should oppose it in any of its stages. The Government refused to give the time, and the second chance was destroyed by a Liberal Member, Mr. Julius Bertram.
On November 19th another demonstration was therefore held outside the House of Commons as a result of which Miss Alice Milne of Manchester was arrested, and imprisoned for one week. Public sympathy was still daily turning more and more to the side of the Suffragettes and when a by-election became necessary at Huddersfield, Mr. Herbert Gladstone decided to release Mrs. Cobden Sanderson and her colleagues, though they had served but half their sentences and, on November 24th they were set free after one month's imprisonment. They were not only welcomed with enthusiasm by their fellow militant Suffragettes, but a dinner was given in their honour by the older non-militant Suffragists at the Savoy Hotel.