On December 19th a strange drama was played out in Aberdeen. The Liberal officials of the town, had succeeded in inducing the Suffragettes to promise not to interrupt Mr. Asquith, if he would answer the question of one woman, and they had begged Mrs. Black, the President of the local Women's Liberal Federation, to be the woman. Mrs. Black had agreed "in the interests of peace," as she said. When she rose up to comply with the Liberal official's request, however, she was howled at by their enthusiastic followers in the audience, threatened by the stewards of the meeting, and told by the chairman that she was "out of order," almost as though she had been a real Suffragette. Though at last she succeeded in putting her question, Mr. Asquith replied in snappish and hostile manner. Mr. Alexander Webster, a Unitarian Minister and well known citizen of Aberdeen, a slender, elderly figure, with long grey hair and the face of a saint, was afterwards violently handled for trying to move a women's suffrage rider to the official resolution. Finally Mrs. Pankhurst, who was seated at the back of the hall, rose to explain the situation to the curious and excited audience, and was immediately thrown out of the hall. Then the meeting broke up in disorder. As the Aberdeen Free Press put it, "Many a Liberal left the meeting with the uneasy feeling that the Suffragettes had had the best of it." Nevertheless the Suffragettes were loudly censured for these incidents especially by those who had consistently boycotted the Suffrage question when women had worked quietly for it in the old days. In reply to the critics Dr. George Cooper, an honest Radical and Member of Parliament for Bermondsey, in the course of a letter to the Daily News said:

My political life began as a member of the Reform League. It is within my recollection that in 1867 and also in 1884 very few public speakers who were opposed to the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to men, whether members of the Cabinet or otherwise, could utter a single word at a public meeting. Meetings were broken up, platforms stormed and their occupants had to escape the best way they could. In 1884 every Tory speaker used against the extension of the franchise the same arguments now used by some Liberal speakers and newspapers against the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to women.... Why should women be condemned for using the same weapons men found so useful when demanding the vote for themselves?... Cabinet Ministers do not recognise antagonists using any other. There is one fact which cannot be denied. The activity of the Suffragettes has lifted the Women's franchise Bill out of the category of amusing and frivolous debate into that of a serious political question.

Meanwhile the Suffragettes were fighting at two more by-elections. The first of these was at Hull, where polling took place on November 29th, the result being that the Liberal vote was reduced from 8,652 to 5,623, and the Liberal majority from 2,247 to 241. The second of these contests, one of the most striking at which the W. S. P. U. has ever fought, was at Mid-Devon. In each of the seven elections that had occurred in this constituency since its creation in 1885 a Liberal candidate had been returned, the majority on the last occasion having numbered 1,289 votes. The Suffragettes at once opened Committee Rooms in the main street of Newton Abbot, the principal town in the division, and published a manifesto calling upon every elector who wished to see fair play for women to vote against the Liberal candidate, and concluding "We want votes for women this year. Defeat the Government in Mid-Devon as a message that women are to have votes in 1908."

The contest was a very trying one for the workers, for, in addition to the extensive area covered by the constituency, it took place in a season of heavy snow falls and bitter winds which came driving in from the sea. Besides this there was a most turbulent variety of human nature to contend with. The Mid-Devon Elections had always been notorious for their violent character and the roughs of Newton Abbot had long been a byword in the district. Early in the campaign the speakers representing both candidates were frequently howled down and were unable to continue their meetings, and, though on the whole we fared very much better, we ourselves had some similar experiences. On one occasion some of the Conservatives had arranged to speak at a place called Bovey Tracey, but they fled away on being told that the Liberals of the town were not only preparing to break up the meetings of their opponents but had even built a cage in which to imprison them. On the same day three young members of our Union had also appeared in Bovey Tracey. They too were warned of the terrible cage, but decided to hold their meetings in spite of it. All went well and they were told by the men who met to hear them that they had no desire to injure those who trusted them, and that the cage had only been built for cowards. On one occasion it happened that Mr. Buxton, the Liberal candidate, and the Suffragettes held simultaneous school-room meetings in the same village. The Liberal meetings had been advertised several days beforehand, but though ours was arranged on the spur of the moment, all the people came to our meeting and not a single person turned up to hear him.

As time went on the state of the district became more and more turbulent and the great party newspapers, the London Tribune, Daily News, and others, sought to stir up the wildest and most unrestrained element in the constituency. The Daily News hailed with enthusiasm the formation of what was known as the "League of Young Liberals," which was in reality a gang of young roughs whose first act was to push a policeman through the plate glass window of the shop which served as our Committee Rooms. This and other violent acts were described by the Daily News as "diverting incidents with the Suffragettes," but the special correspondent of the Daily Mail, said:

Miss Mary Gawthorpe, who usually has no difficulty in maintaining good-humoured relations with audiences of every class, was not only compelled to hear language from some of the Newton Abbot Liberal partisans that brought a flush to her face and tears into her eyes, but had to resist by force the efforts of one man to mount the waggon from which she and several other ladies were speaking. And the most pitiful part of the business was that the language and the conduct seemed to be regarded by their perpetrators as engaging little gallantries, appropriate to be offered to a lady.

A few days later the roughs dragged the lorry in which our women were speaking round and round with such violence that it was feared that it would be overturned, and they only stopped when a little boy had been run over and trampled upon and seriously injured. Still the Liberal politicians made no protest. Mr. Buxton's reply to a newspaper correspondent who asked him what he thought of the disorder was: "You must remember that they are keen politicians down here. From the fact that Mid-Devon has had three elections within the space of four years the people have necessarily heard a great deal about politics."

So the contest went on—Liberals and Conservatives smashing up each other's meetings, howling each other down, pelting each other with vegetables from the market and snowballing each other on Dartmoor. The Daily Telegraph for January 10th, writing in regard to a Liberal meeting, threatened that, if the Unionists were not admitted, the building would be stormed.

When on January 17th the poll was declared it was found that the Liberal candidate had been defeated. Everyone was surprised except the Suffragettes. The figures were:

Captain Morrison Bell (U.)5,191
Mr. C. R. Buxton (L.)4,632
Unionist majority559