On the second day of the Ministerial hearing, Mrs. Tuke, who had been in the prison infirmary for twenty days and had to be attended in court by a trained nurse, was admitted to bail. Mr. Pethick Lawrence made a strong plea for bail for himself and his wife, pointing out that they had been in prison on remand for two weeks and were entitled to bail. I also demanded the privileges of a prisoner on remand. Both of these pleas were denied by the court, but a few days later the Home Secretary wrote to my solicitor that the remainder of my sentence of two months would be remitted until after the conspiracy trail at Bow Street. Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had already been admitted to bail. Public opinion forced the Home Secretary to make these concessions, as it is well known that it is next to impossible to prepare a defence while confined in prison. Aside from the terrible effect of prison on one's body and nerves, there is the difficulty of consulting documents and securing other necessary data to be considered.
On April 4th the Ministerial hearing ended in the acquittal of Mrs. Tuke, whose activities in the W. S. P. U. were shown to be purely secretarial. Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and myself were committed for trial at the next session of the Central Criminal Court, beginning April 23rd. Because of the weak state of my health the judge was with great difficulty prevailed upon to postpone the trial two weeks and it was, therefore, not until May 15th that the case was opened.
The trial at Old Bailey is a thing that I shall never forget. The scene is clear before me as I write, the judge impressively bewigged and scarlet robed, dominating the crowded courtroom, the solicitors at their table, the jury, and looking very far away, the anxious pale faces of our friends who crowded the narrow galleries.
By the veriest irony of fate this judge, Lord Coleridge, was the son of Sir Charles Coleridge who, in the year 1867, appeared with my husband, Dr. Pankhurst, in the famous case of Chorlton v. Lings, and sought to establish that women were persons, and as such were entitled to the Parliamentary vote. To make the irony still deeper the Attorney General, Sir Rufus Isaacs, who appeared as Counsel for the prosecution against women militants, himself had been guilty of remarkable speeches in corroboration of our point of view. In a speech made in 1910, in relation to the abolition of the Lords' veto, Sir Rufus made the statement that, although the agitation against privilege was being peacefully conducted, the indignation behind it was very intense. Said Sir Rufus: "Formerly when the great mass of the people were voteless they had to do something violent in order to show what they felt; to-day the elector's bullet is his ballot. Let no one be deceived, therefore, because in this present struggle everything is peaceful and orderly, in contrast to the disorderliness of other great struggles of the past." We wondered if the man who said these words could fail to realise that voteless women, deprived of every constitutional means of righting their grievances, were also obliged to do something violent in order to show how they felt. His opening address removed all doubt on that score.
Sir Rufus Isaacs has a clear-cut, hawk-like face, deep eyes, and a somewhat world worn air. The first words he spoke were so astoundingly unfair that I could hardly believe that I heard them aright. He began his address to the jury by telling them that they must not, on any account, connect the act of the defendants with any political agitation.
"I am very anxious to impress upon you," he said, "from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, that all questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a man, are questions which are in no sense involved in the trial of this issue.... Therefore, I ask you to discard altogether from the consideration of the matters which will be placed before you any viewpoint you may have on this no doubt very important political issue."
Nevertheless Sir Rufus added in the course of his remarks that he feared that it would not be possible to keep out of the conduct of the case various references to political events, and of course the entire trial, from beginning to end, showed clearly that the case was what Mr. Tim Healey, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's counsel, called it, a great State Trial.
Proceeding, the Attorney General described the W. S. P. U., which he said he thought had been in existence since 1907, and had used what were known as militant methods. In 1911 the association had become annoyed by the Prime Minister because he would not make women's suffrage what was called a Government question. In November, 1911, the Prime Minister announced the introduction of a manhood suffrage bill. From that time on the defendants set to work to carry out a campaign which would have meant nothing less than anarchy. Women were to be induced to act together at a given time, in different given places, in such numbers that the police should be paralysed by the number of persons breaking the law, in order, to use the defendant's own words, "to bring the Government to its knees."
After designating the respective positions held by the four defendants in the W. S. P. U., Sir Rufus went on to relate the events which resulted in the smashing of plate glass windows valued at some two thousand pounds, and the imprisonment of over two hundred women who were incited to their deeds by the conspirators in the dock. He entirely ignored the motive of the acts in question, and he treated the whole affair as if the women had been burglars. This inverted statement of the matter, though accurate enough as to facts, was such as might have been given by King John of the signing of Magna Charta.
A very great number of witnesses were examined, a large number of them being policemen, and their testimony, and our cross examination disclosed the startling fact that there exists in England a special band of secret police entirely engaged in political work. These men, seventy-five in number, form what is known as the political branch of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police. They go about in disguise, and their sole duty is to shadow Suffragettes and other political workers. They follow certain political workers from their homes to their places of business, to their social pleasures, into tea rooms and restaurants, even to the theatre. They pursue unsuspecting people in taxicabs, sit beside them in omnibuses. Above all they take down speeches. In fact the system is exactly like the secret police system of Russia.