The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910

by E. Sylvia Pankhurst

Very great precautions were taken to prevent the Suffragettes approaching Mr. Asquith when he visited Leeds to speak at the Coliseum on the afternoon of Saturday, October 10th. From 7 o'clock in the morning the police had been massed around the hall and cordons, both of foot and mounted men were drawn up outside the railway station and along the road by which the Prime Minister was to pass. But, in spite of all the force to guard him, as Mr. Asquith emerged, Mrs. Baines, a little fragile figure, with face ashen white and dark, blazing eyes, a creature compounded of zeal and passion, threw herself in front of him, crying, "Votes for Women, and down with tyranny!" and the crowd cheered her, though she was at once rudely hurled aside by the police. Then, followed by thousands of people, she made her way to Cockridge Street outside the Coliseum, where she had already announced that she would hold an open air meeting simultaneously with that of Mr. Asquith, inside. A great crowd had gathered there to hear her and when she put to them a resolution that she and her Suffragette comrades should go to the Coliseum to demand an interview with the Prime Minister, a forest of hands shot up in favour. Then declaring, "If these tyrants won't come to us, we must go to them and compel a hearing," she jumped down from the carriage which had served her as a platform, and, followed by a number of other women and more slowly by the crowd itself, she moved on towards the Coliseum. Half way across the road the police barred the way and an inspector asked her where she was going. "Don't be foolish, Mrs. Baines," he said when she told him, but she was not to be deterred and, running round one of the mounted police, was arrested by a constable on foot. The other women still pressed forward and one by one five of them were arrested and taken to the Town Hall, where they were charged with disorderly conduct, whilst Mr. Asquith left the meeting by a back exit amid the hisses and groans of the crowd.

On Monday morning the others were each sent to prison for five days on refusing to be bound over to keep the peace, but the case against Mrs. Baines was held over until the following Wednesday. She was then charged with inciting to riot and unlawful assembly. Her case was to be held over until the Assizes, in November, and the opportunity of being tried by Judge and Jury which Mrs. Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst, and Mrs. Drummond had claimed in vain was thus to fall to her lot. The Grand Jury, having returned a True Bill against Mrs. Baines, Mr. Pethick Lawrence, who was defending her, served subpœnas to give evidence at the trial upon Mr. Asquith and Mr. Herbert Gladstone; but the Cabinet Ministers had no intention of allowing themselves to be examined by the Suffragettes and to be made into a Suffragette advertisement a second time. They applied to the Divisional Court for a Rule to set aside the subpœnas, and did not scruple to take advantage of their position as members of the Government to employ both the Attorney General, Sir William Robson, K. C., and the Solicitor General, Sir Samuel Evans, K. C., to plead their case in opposition to Mr. Pethick Lawrence. Though no precedent for setting aside a subpœna in criminal cases could be found, it was decided that neither Mr. Asquith nor Mr. Gladstone should be called upon to give evidence.

On Thursday and Friday, November 19th and 20th, the actual trial took place in the Leeds Town Hall. Mrs. Baines freely admitted that she had used the words, "if these tyrants will not come to us, we must go to them and compel a hearing," and that her intention had been to get into the meeting and secure an interview with the Prime Minister, but she protested that she had had no intention of injuring him or anyone and when Mr. Bairstow, K. C., the Counsel for the prosecution, asked if she had carried any weapons, she replied, "Oh, my tongue is weapon enough!" When asked to give an account of her life, she said that she was the daughter of a working man and had begun to help in earning the family living at eleven years of age. After her marriage she had continued to be a wage-earner, though she was the mother of five children, because her husband, who was a shoemaker, was only able to earn 25 shillings a week. Nevertheless she had done much public and social work as she had been a Salvation Army lieutenant, an evangelist to a working-men's mission, a member of the Stockport unemployed committee and committee for the feeding of school children, and a worker in the temperance cause. When asked to give some account of her speech to the crowd on the 10th of October, she said, "I wanted the men and women of Leeds to understand why we were there to protest against Mr. Asquith's refusal to give us the vote. I said that that afternoon Mr. Asquith would be dealing with the Licensing question; that this was more a woman's question than it was a man's, because we women suffered most through intemperance, and that no real temperance reform would ever be brought about until women had a voice in the matter. The unemployed question was also more a woman's question than it was a man's, because it was the women who really suffered most. Mr. Asquith had never known what it was, as I have done, to go without food or to go to school hungry. We wanted to see Mr. Asquith and we wanted to know when we were going to have access to Mr. Asquith."

After the evidence on both sides had been heard Mr. Lawrence made an eloquent speech for the defence, but it was nevertheless decided that Mrs. Baines was guilty of unlawful assembly. The Judge then asked her to enter into her own recognisances to be of good behaviour, explaining that if she agreed she would merely be promising not to use violence or to incite to violence in future. Mrs. Baines steadfastly maintained that she had had no intention of using violence, but felt that she could not conscientiously agree to be bound over to keep the peace. Mr. Justice Pickford then said that though he was reluctant to do so, he must pass sentence upon her and ordered that she should be imprisoned for six weeks in the Second Division. In the result, however, she was only kept in prison for three weeks because, though she had gone free meanwhile, the fortnight during which she had awaited her trial at the Assizes was counted as part of her sentence, and in addition she was entitled to one week's remission of sentence for good behaviour.

Amid all the whirl of militancy that had been going on the work of educative peaceful propaganda was never allowed to flag and beside the hundreds of uncounted smaller meetings a series of great indoor demonstrations calling for votes for women and the release of the prisoners was held in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, the Town Hall, Birmingham, the St. George's Hall, Bradford, the Guild Hall, Plymouth, the Town Hall, Huddersfield, the Town Hall, Battersea, the Town Hall, Chelsea, the King's Theatre, Hammersmith, and in many other places, and culminated in a second great demonstration in the Albert Hall on October 29th at which £3,000 was collected. Then, in declaring the £20,000 campaign fund to be complete, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence appealed for it to be carried on to £50,000, and that the half way house of £25,000 should be reached before the founder of the Union should be released from prison.

Whilst the W. S. P. U. had been thus active, the Women's Freedom League had startled London by a cleverly organised and smartly executed demonstration in the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons, on October 28th. That morning all the world had awakened to find that little placards, headed "A Proclamation containing a demand for Votes for Women," had been posted on every hoarding. At 8:30 in the evening, whilst Parliament was discussing the Licensing Bill, and Mr. Remnant, one of the Conservative Members, was speaking, a woman in the Ladies' Gallery suddenly thrust through the brass grille one of these proclamations with a cry of "Votes for Women!" Instantly Miss Muriel Matters darted to the front of the Gallery and proceeded to deliver a Suffrage speech, two attendants at once came rushing in, tumbling over the ladies' trains and pushing unceremoniously past them in haste to drag her from her place, only to find that they could not do so, for, by means of a padlock and chain around her waist, she had attached herself to the grille. Whilst some of the men struggled to break the chains, others gagged her by holding their hands over her mouth, but a second woman, also chained, took up the tale with "we demand the vote," and, after she had been stifled in the same impromptu and objectionable fashion, a third cried, "We have remained behind this insulting grille too long."

Members of Parliament were meanwhile pouring into the House to see the show, and though Mr. Remnant spoke on without pausing, but little notice was taken of anything that he said. The attendants in the Gallery now discovered that the chains around the women's waists had been wrapped in wool to prevent their clanking and were secured by strong Yale padlocks, that, on being snapped together, had locked automatically without a key, and after vainly dragging and pulling at the women (who, in spite of the gagging, still managed to articulate a word or two occasionally), and after tugging again and again at both locks and chains, the men came to the conclusion that it would be necessary to remove bodily those parts of the grille to which the three disturbers were attached. Then all the women in the Gallery, Suffragettes, Suffragists and even anti-Suffragists were alike quickly bundled out. Next screwdrivers were brought and the attendants set to work to dismember the grille, and when this had been done the women and the great pieces of wrought brass work, to which they were still attached, were hauled out by the attendants and taken to Committee Room 15, where they were kept until a smith arrived to file through the chains.

By this time the House had resumed its ordinary, humdrum appearance, and the Members who had come in during the disturbance had all drifted away, but, as the Division bell rang and they came trooping back to vote, a man in the Strangers' Gallery shouted, "Why don't you do justice to women?" and was dragged out by a number of policemen, and within ten minutes afterwards a second man shouted, "Why don't you give votes to women?" and flung a shower of leaflets down amongst the Members.

At the same time several women were attempting to hold a meeting in the Lobby. The police flung them outside but they immediately climbed up to speak from the pedestal of the Richard Cœur de Lion statue, and whilst the constables clambered up after them, pulled them down and placed them under arrest, other Suffragettes made dash after dash to re-enter the House. Crowds quickly gathered and the confusion grew and fourteen women and one man had been taken into custody before the people were dispersed.