Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences

by Lady Constance Lytton

The following resolution was put to the meeting and carried with acclamation: “That this Parliament of women expresses its indignation that while every measure in the King’s Speech vitally affects the interests of their sex, and while heavier financial burdens are to be laid upon woman tax-payers, the Government have not included in the programme for the session a measure to confer the Parliamentary vote upon duly qualified women. The women here assembled call upon the Government to introduce and carry into law this session a measure giving votes to women on the same terms as to men.

“A Deputation is hereby appointed, to whom is entrusted the duty of forthwith conveying this resolution to the Prime Minister at the House of Commons and eliciting his reply.”

A copy was then handed to each member of the Deputation.

Of all the undesirable possibilities before me, I dreaded most lest by some horrible twist of fate the leaders of the Deputation should be refused admittance, and I, if recognised, should have the lonely privilege thrust upon me of being received. I had never made a regular speech, and two attempts I had made at narrating my experiences of the previous October to a village audience had not been reassuring. My own point of view was definite enough, but I did not feel equipped to speak for others. When deciding to go on the Deputation I had, however, taken stock of my representative character and asked myself for which group of women I should stand, what was my atom’s share in this movement if I did not strain after any vicarious office but merely added my own personal weight to the scale? Without doubt I myself was one of that numerous gang of upper class leisured class spinsters, unemployed, unpropertied, unendowed, uneducated, without equipment or training for public service, economically dependent entirely upon others, not masters of their own leisure, however oppressively abundant that might seem to the onlooker. In a class where property runs with primogeniture, the first-born, if a female, is overlooked. In a class the whole status of which is based on property, on wealth to live at ease and in luxury, property is only dealt out to women, if at all, after male relatives have been served first, and then, as a rule, in much less proportion. Posts of honour and remuneration are barred to them in nearly all professions, in even those few they are allowed to enter. They remain almost invariably without honour of titles or lands or wealth, even where their services have been sought. Posts of Government are exclusively for men, with the sole exception of the Sovereign. Trained to luxury and untrained to remunerative work, they are for the most part dependents from childhood to the grave. A maiming subserviency is so conditional to their very existence that it becomes an aim in itself, an ideal. Driven through life with blinkers on, they are unresentful of the bridle, the rein and the whip, uncritical of the direction in which they are driven, unmindful of the result to others as well as to themselves of their maintainer’s beliefs and policy, whatever they may be. The bride at the sacred ritual of her marriage festival hears from her husband the words, “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” She knows at the time and she learns yet more intimately as life goes on that those words have no practical bearing, and that at her husband’s death the greater part of even that property which had been seemingly made over to her during his lifetime will pass from her hands at the wane of her lonely existence, when she needs it most, into those of her son or some more distant relative. The literal, practical, interpretation of that husband’s vow—yes, of the vow even of good and well-intentioned husbands—most usually is: “With this ring I thee bind, with my body I thee control, with none of my worldly goods I thee endow.” As a widow more often than not she sinks, because of her financial position, to a social state out of touch with all her past life. But at least the wives, the widows, generally have children through whom their powers of service to their families and to the community in general are to a certain extent developed and recognised, and which give them a certain insight into the realities of existence. They also have known well-being and vicarious honour through their husbands. But to the single woman, the old maid of later years, the paralysing worship of incapacity dominates life, the chain of limitations and restrictions is but seldom broken, and never overcome save by exceptional force of character or ability. Even then how often it is only the beating of wings against unyielding and maiming bars; freedom, if attained, rendered useless by lack of preparation in the competition against trained and privileged beings of the male sex, and the vain ambition ends in a seeming mutiny, nothing more—a distortion, an abnormality, an untidiness of creation.

I could stand indeed for the superfluous spinster, but who would listen to a messenger from this mute array, who cares for the blind, the lamed, the maimed and the dumb? The fearful unnecessity of their disablement awakes no pity, no heart softens at thought of them, no politician would feel his conscience pricked by the narration of their grievances. A yoke so submitted to, so uselessly endured, can claim no reverence of martyrdom. But before condemning those who submit to it, I wish that our critics could realise what it means to be born under this yoke and then try to shake it off.

It is easy to see that if women are to appeal effectively to a modern parliament for the rights of liberty and representation which so long have been recognised among men, it must be through the working women, the bread-winning woman. Her situation is easily comparable to that of the working-class man who quite recently has had himself to fight in order to win his denied claim to freedom, a fact which he, and others for him, still remember. The aristocracy, the landed proprietor, the middle-class trader, each in turn was driven to claim and fight for these same rights. But their struggle was of long ago, their security in this right has remained unshaken for so many generations that they have clean forgotten what it would mean to be without it. It is by the side of the most recent victors that women must put in their claim. With this class, the working-class women, though at all times at one with them in point of sympathy from theoretic understanding of their troubles and needs, I was not in direct touch and laid no first-hand experiences that I could share with them. I read the petitions of factory workers, of the sweated home workers, of the professions—teachers, nurses, medical women—with respect and whole-hearted sympathy, but how could I stand for them when I was not equipped to represent them?

This was my state of mind until, walking from Holloway to the City in one of our Suffragette processions, I heard for the first time with my own ears the well-worn taunt “Go home and do your washing.” This awoke in me a magic response. Since the days of my earliest childhood washing had held great charm for me, and as a result I had revered the washers exceptionally. In my youth, the pursuit was associated exclusively with laundry-workers, but in later years I realised that, except in that small proportion of houses where servants are kept, every woman is a laundrymaid, and that in every house throughout the land, or indeed throughout the world, the cleaning and the washing are done mainly by women, by wives and mothers, their girl children or women servants. Washing, the making clean that which had been dirty, and making the crumpled and uncomfortable things smooth, was my hobby. I was an amateur scrubber and laundry-woman in the same spirit as other unemployed females dabble in water-colour drawings or hand embroidery. But much as I personally enjoyed occasional experimenting in the craft, it was easy to imagine how irksome the occupation might become if one were driven to it week by week with no release, under unsuitable conditions, without the necessary equipment, in a small house or single room, surrounded by children, with a stinted water supply, inadequate firing utensils, a weary body and a mind distraught as to how to exist from day to day. From the moment I heard that “washing” taunt in the street, I have had eyes for the work of the washers. If there is one single industry highly deserving of recognition throughout the world of human existence and of representation under parliamentary systems, it surely is that of the washers, the renewers week by week, the makers clean.

I determined, if I should find myself the solitary representative of the Deputation and its untrained spokeswoman, I should point to the collars and shirt fronts of the gentlemen who received me and claim the freedom of citizenship for the washers. As I stepped out from Caxton Hall, through the grime of a foggy February evening, I caught sight of white collars here and there in the crowd, like little flashing code-signals beckoning to us across the darkness. The gnarled hands, the bent backs, the tear-dimmed eyes of those that had washed them white seemed to cry out, “Remember us. Don’t be afraid to speak for us if you get through to the presence of those who know nothing, heed nothing of our toil.” I said in my heart, “I shall remember, and I shall not be afraid in their presence.”

We had scarcely stepped into the street before we found ourselves hedged in by a ∧ shaped avenue of police, narrowing as we advanced. They asked no questions, said nothing, but proceeded to close upon us from either side. My companion and I kept together. Very soon all breath seemed to have been pressed out of my body, but remembering the order of the day, “Don’t be turned back,” I tried to hold my ground even when advance was out of the question. Miss Gye, however, soon realised the situation and pulled me back, saying, “We are not yet in Parliament Square; we must manage to get there somehow; let’s try another way.” The police had forced themselves between the ranks of the Deputation, keeping them apart and trying also to sever the couples, but Miss Gye and I managed to regain hold of each other. I had not been able to reconnoitre in the morning as I had intended. The whereabouts of Caxton Hall was unknown to me, and in the darkness I felt quite at sea as regards direction. We soon got clear of the police and found ourselves in a friendly crowd who half hindered, half pushed, us along. But I was already so incapacitated by breathlessness I could not lift my chest and head. I had repeatedly to stop, and, but for the kindly assistance of my companion and an unknown man and woman of the crowd, I should have been unable to get any further. The main body of the Deputation had made for the strangers’ entrance of the House of Commons, near the House of Lords. I saw none of them again until we met in the police station. In Parliament Square we soon became entangled in a thick crowd, some of them friendly, as many not, the great bulk curiosity-mongers. Miss Gye and I were, of course, recognisable as members of the Deputation by our sashes, and though at first whenever the police or the crowd pushed us apart she managed to return to me, we eventually got completely separated and lost sight of each other. My two stranger friends in the crowd, however, not being marked by badges were always returning to my help. The occasion most literally turned out to be one for “deeds, not words.” Being doubled up for want of breath, I could scarcely see where I was going, but my instinct led me to avoid the police in every way that I could. They were placed about in twos and threes in no apparent special formation, but now and then one came to a whole line of them, standing shoulder to shoulder. I was during most of the time physically incapable of speech. I only twice was able to express myself in words, on both occasions when I was lifted off my feet and relieved of the toil of dragging my own body. First when the crowd wedged me up against a policeman, I said to him: “I know you are only doing your duty and I am doing mine.” His only answer was to seize me with both his hands round the ribs, squeeze the remaining breath out of my body and, lifting me completely into the air, throw me with all his strength. Thanks to the crowd I did not reach the ground; several of my companions in more isolated parts of the square were thrown repeatedly on to the pavement. Another time a policeman turned me round and, holding my arms behind me, drove me ahead of him for several yards at a great pace. So that his violence would not land me on to my face I exerted what pressure I could to steady my feet. No doubt this looked very “violent” on my part to some of the crowd who jeered and booed. I said to them, in gasps: “You ask women to behave in a womanly way; do you think this is treating them in a manly way?” Twice again I was thrown as before described. I offered no resistance to this whatever, and being of light weight for my size, I feared that I was becoming a specially desirable victim for the experts in this line. Each time I was thrown to a greater distance and the concussion on reaching the ground was painful and straining, though in each case the crowd acted for me as sort of buffers. When seized for the throw there is also a feeling of wrenching throughout the body. But I gained in the direction of the House nevertheless, always assisted by the crowd. The stranger woman in particular, a German lady who was tall, well-built, and of considerable strength, had managed to keep near me. Three times, after each of the “throws,” she came to my help and warded off the crowd while I leant up against some railings, or against her shoulder to recover my breath. Several times I said to her, “I can’t go on; I simply can’t go on.” She answered, “Wait for a little, you will be all right presently.” At the time and ever since I have felt most inexpressibly grateful to this stranger friend.

I was goaded on most of all, perhaps, by the fear that I should be taken off by an ambulance—I heard that some were about—and, if so, that all I had achieved so far would have to be faced again, probably with renewed difficulty. Flashes of vivid light and the sound of a slight muffled explosion came about from time to time. I did not know what these were, they added to the sense of incomprehensibleness and general confusion. It was only towards the end of the day I realised that they were the newspaper photographers’ flashlights. The irony of their attentions seemed great.