| Sir J. T. Woodhouse (Lib.) | 6,302 |
| T. R. Williams (Lab.) | 5,813 |
| J. Foster Fraser (U.) | 4,391 |
| Liberal Majority | 489 |
Meanwhile the Government had been pushing on with its Bill for the abolition of plural voting, to which the Women's Social and Political Union had persistently claimed that a clause providing for the registration of qualified women voters should be added. When the Bill reached the Report stage on November 26th, Lord Robert Cecil moved and Mr. Keir Hardie seconded and Mr. Balfour supported an amendment to postpone the operation of the Bill until after the next General Election, unless in the meantime the franchise had been given to women on the same terms as men. The object was, of course, to call attention to the need of Votes for Women, and this somewhat round-about way had been adopted because it was ruled out of order to simply suggest that votes for Women should be enacted as a part of the Plural Voting Bill. The amendment was opposed by the Government, and defeated by 278 votes to 50.
Our Manchester Members were now anxious to organise a protest on their own account and it was agreed that they should have their way. Accordingly, on December 13th, a valiant little army of some twenty or thirty North Country women came down to London and proceeded straight to Parliament Square, carrying a small wooden packing case which they set down in the gutter opposite the stranger's entrance. The box was mounted by Mrs. Jennie Baines of Stockport, a fragile little woman, who had begun her strenuous life as a Birmingham child home-worker, rising early in the morning in order to help her mother to stitch hooks and eyes on to cards before going to school, snatching a few moments for the same task in the dinner hour and on returning home in the evening, working far into the night. In her girlhood she had been a Salvation Army "Captain." Later she had married a journeyman bootmaker, and though, in addition to caring for her home and her children, she had been forced to toil in the factory, in order to keep the home together, she had still managed to work as a Police Court Missionary and Temperance and Social reformer.
Therefore, it was with the knowledge born of much experience, that Mrs. Baines now pleaded for the enfranchisement of her sex. Within a few moments a strong force of police came hurrying up and she was roughly dragged down and hustled away. Her place was instantly taken by Mrs. Morrissey of Manchester, whilst the other women linked arms and pressed closely round to form a guard, but after a short hard struggle the police broke through, tore the speaker from the box, and made five arrests. One woman was thrown to the ground and lay unconscious, and Mrs. August MacDougal, an Australian,[19] knelt on the ground beside her, raised her head and held a cup of water to her lips. Then a heavy hand was laid upon Mrs. MacDougal's shoulder and a rough voice ordered her to go, but she remained to attend to the injured woman. For this offence she was arrested, whilst Mrs. Knight, the woman who had been hurt, was removed to Westminster Hospital.
Next day the five women who had been taken into custody were at Westminster Police Court each ordered by Mr. Horace Smith either to pay a fine of twenty shillings or to go to prison for fourteen days, in the first class. They all chose the latter alternative and were taken to the cells. Two days afterwards some of our members attempted to hold a meeting in the Strangers' Lobby. As a result of this eleven of them were sent off to join their comrades in gaol for fourteen days.
Still the Government refused to withdraw their hostility to votes for women, Parliament remained apathetic, and still the majority of the general public were content to allow things to remain as they were. Therefore we felt that yet another protest must be made before the year 1906 should come to an end, and on December 20th, the eve of Parliament's rising for the Christmas holidays, Mrs. Drummond, who had now settled in London, organised a third attack upon the House. Whilst her followers were attempting to speak in the Lobby, she succeeded in entering the House unobserved and in making her way by the back passages to within a few yards of the sacred chamber of debate itself. Here she was captured by the police, but she resisted their efforts to remove her with so much spirit that she won the sympathy and admiration of the constables; one of whom was heard to say, "I wish the members of Parliament would come here and do their own dirty work!"
Next day as the evening-paper boys were eagerly crying the news that another five women were gone to join those already in prison and that twenty-one Suffragettes would now be spending Christmas there, Parliament rose for the holidays. As the Members left the House, comrades of the imprisoned women handed each one an envelope inscribed:—"What a woman really wants for a Christmas box," and within was a small slip of paper bearing the words, "A vote."
For the first batch of Suffragettes to be released from prison in January, a Christmas dinner was provided by Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence at the Holborn Restaurant, and for Mrs. Drummond and those of the Suffragettes who were set free later, the first of the public welcome breakfasts, which have since become an institution, was held at Anderton's Hotel. The released prisoners were able to tell us that Christmas day in Holloway is, except that one goes twice to Chapel, exactly like all the other days of the year and that the Christmas dinner, of which so very much is thought outside, is just the usual one that would naturally fall at any other season to that particular day of the week. But as Mrs. Hillier on their release, said, they went to prison for "a cause that they held dear," and so, as Mrs. Martha Jones added, they regarded having gone there, "not as a sacrifice, but as an honour." What they had seen in Holloway had more than ever convinced them of the pressing need that women should be enfranchised. "The stories that I have heard in the Prison hospital," said Mrs. Baines, "have reached to the bottom of my heart. I have come out with the firm resolve to work on."