The hunger strike I have described as a dreadful ordeal, but it is a mild experience compared with the thirst strike, which is from beginning to end simple and unmitigated torture. Hunger striking reduces a prisoner's weight very quickly, but thirst striking reduces weight so alarmingly fast that prison doctors were at first thrown into absolute panic of fright. Later they became somewhat hardened, but even now they regard the thirst strike with terror. I am not sure that I can convey to the reader the effect of days spent without a single drop of water taken into the system. The body cannot endure loss of moisture. It cries out in protest with every nerve. The muscles waste, the skin becomes shrunken and flabby, the facial appearance alters horribly, all these outward symptoms being eloquent of the acute suffering of the entire physical being. Every natural function is, of course, suspended, and the poisons which are unable to pass out of the body are retained and absorbed. The body becomes cold and shivery, there is constant headache and nausea, and sometimes there is fever. The mouth and tongue become coated and swollen, the throat thickens and the voice sinks to a thready whisper.
When, at the end of the third day of my first thirst strike, I was sent home I was in a condition of jaundice from which I have never completely recovered. So badly was I affected that the prison authorities made no attempt to arrest me for nearly a month after my release. On July 13th I felt strong enough once more to protest against the odious Cat and Mouse Act, and, with Miss Annie Kenney, who was also at liberty "on medical grounds," I went to a meeting at the London Pavillion. At the close of the meeting, during which Miss Kenney's prison licence was auctioned off for £12, we attempted for the first time the open escape which we have so frequently since effected. Miss Kenney, from the platform, announced that we should openly leave the hall, and she forthwith walked coolly down into the audience. The police rushed in in overwhelming numbers, and after a desperate fight, succeeded in capturing her. Other detectives and policemen hurried to the side door of the hall to intercept me, but I disappointed them by leaving by the front door and escaping to a friend's house in a cab.
The police soon traced me to the house of my friend, the distinguished scientist, Mrs. Hertha Ayrton, and the place straightway became a besieged fortress. Day and night the house was surrounded, not only by police, but by crowds of women sympathisers. On the Saturday following my appearance at the Pavillion we gave the police a bit of excitement of a kind they do not relish. A cab drove up to Mrs. Ayrton's door, and several well-known members of the Union alighted and hurried indoors. At once the word was circulated that a rescue was being attempted, and the police drew resolutely around the cab. Soon a veiled woman appeared in the doorway, surrounded by Suffragettes, who, when the veiled lady attempted to get into the cab, resisted with all their strength the efforts of the police to lay hands upon her. The cry went up from all sides: "They are arresting Mrs. Pankhurst!" Something very like a free fight ensued, occupying all the attention of the police who were not in the immediate vicinity of the cab. The men surrounding that rocking vehicle succeeded in tearing the veiled figure from the arms of the other women and piling into the cab ordered the chauffeur to drive full speed to Bow Street. Before they reached their destination, however, the veiled lady raised her veil—alas, it was not Mrs. Pankhurst, who by that time was speeding away in another taxicab in quite another direction.
Our ruse infuriated the police, and they determined to arrest me at my first public appearance, which was at the Pavillion on the Monday following the episode just related. When I reached the Pavillion I found it literally surrounded by police, hundreds of them. I managed to slip past the outside cordon, but Scotland Yard had its best men inside the hall, and I was not permitted to reach the platform. Surrounded by plain clothes men, batons drawn, I could not escape, but I called out to the women that I was being taken, and so valiantly did they rush to the rescue that the police had their hands full for nearly half an hour before they got me into a taxicab bound for Holloway. Six women were arrested that day, and many more than six policemen were temporarily incapacitated for duty.
By this time I had made up my mind that I would not only resist staying in prison, I would resist to the utmost of my ability going to prison. Therefore, when we reached Holloway I refused to get out of the cab, declaring to my captors that I would no longer acquiesce in the slow judicial murder to which the Government were subjecting women. I was lifted out and carried into a cell in the convicted hospital wing of the gaol. The wardresses who were on duty there spoke with some kindness to me, suggesting that, as I was very apparently exhausted and ill, I should do well to undress and go to bed. "No," I replied, "I shall not go to bed, not once while I am kept here. I am weary of this brutal game, and I intend to end it."
Without undressing, I lay down on the outside of the bed. Later in the evening the prison doctor visited me, but I refused to be examined. In the morning he came again, and with him the Governor and the head wardress. As I had taken neither food nor water since the previous day my appearance had become altered to such an extent that the doctor was plainly perturbed. He begged me, "as a small concession," to allow him to feel my pulse, but I shook my head, and they left me alone for the day. That night I was so ill that I felt some alarm for my own condition, but I knew of nothing that could be done except to wait. On Wednesday morning the Governor came again and asked me with an assumption of carelessness if it were true that I was refusing both food and water. "It is true," I said, and he replied brutally: "You are very cheap to keep." Then, as if the thing were not a ridiculous farce, he announced that I was sentenced to close confinement for three days, with deprivation of all privileges, after which he left my cell.
Twice that day the doctor visited me, but I would not allow him to touch me. Later came a medical officer from the Home Office, to which I had complained, as I had complained to the Governor and the prison doctor, of the pain I still suffered from the rough treatment I had received at the Pavillion. Both of the medical men insisted that I allow them to examine me, but I said: "I will not be examined by you because your intention is not to help me as a patient, but merely to ascertain how much longer it will be possible to keep me alive in prison. I am not prepared to assist you or the Government in any such way. I am not prepared to relieve you of any responsibility in this matter." I added that it must be quite obvious that I was very ill and unfit to be confined in prison. They hesitated for a moment or two, then left me.
Wednesday night was a long nightmare of suffering, and by Thursday morning I must have presented an almost mummified appearance. From the faces of the Governor and the doctor when they came into my cell and looked at me I thought that they would at once arrange for my release. But the hours passed and no order for release came. I decided that I must force my release, and I got up from the bed where I had been lying and began to stagger up and down the cell. When all strength failed me and I could keep my feet no longer I lay down on the stone floor, and there, at four in the afternoon, they found me, gasping and half unconscious. And then they sent me away. I was in a very weakened condition this time, and had to be treated with saline solutions to save my life. I felt, however, that I had broken my prison walls for a time at least, and so this proved. It was on July 24th that I was released. A few days later I was borne in an invalid's chair to the platform of the London Pavillion. I could not speak, but I was there, as I had promised to be. My licence, which by this time I had ceased to tear up because it had an auction value, was sold to an American present for the sum of one hundred pounds. I had told the Governor on leaving that I intended to sell the licence and to spend the money for militant purposes, but I had not expected to raise such a splendid sum as one hundred pounds. I shall always remember the generosity of that unknown American friend.
A great medical congress was being held in London in the summer of 1913, and on August 11th we held a large meeting at Kingsway Hall, which was attended by hundreds of visiting doctors. I addressed this meeting, at which a ringing resolution against forcible feeding was passed, and I was allowed to go home without police interference. It was, as a matter of fact, the second time during that month that I had spoken in public without molestation. The presence of so many distinguished medical men in London may have suggested to the authorities that I had better be left alone for the time being. At all events I was left alone, and late in the month I went, quite publicly, to Paris, to see my daughter Christabel and plan with her the campaign for the coming autumn. I needed rest after the struggles of the past five months, during which I had served, of my three years' prison sentence, not quite three weeks.