On one of the latter days a girl was wrongfully accused of laughing in chapel, and confined to her cell in consequence the following day. It is possible that someone was guilty of this. The severity which some of the wardresses used at chapel seated above the prisoners, one at every two or three rows, their backs to the altar and their attention completely taken up with the prisoners, gave one a strange sensation in church; it took away all reverence of the usual kind, and made one nervous and possibly inclined to laugh. But, as it happened, the girl punished for this offence was far removed from the possibility of laughing. She was one of those I had noticed with particularly long hair; it must have reached below her knees. We had come away together once from an Albert Hall meeting in a four-wheel cab when I had been lucky in securing it, and a wet evening made me invite strangers who were anxious to get away. She was particularly deferential and modest in her ways, her manner in chapel was irreproachable, and that she was picked out for punishment was most singularly ill-judged. We volunteered punishment of the same order as hers, and neither chapel, exercise, nor concerted labour had the benefit of us during the day.

The last days were spent in burning excitement. Nothing that I can say will explain the feeling I had that I was going to be free once more. The food, the clothes, the getting up at 5.30 a.m., these were bad enough, but they were as nothing compared to the incessant brutal treatment of the official manner, as with Mrs. Macdonald more especially, but also with Mrs. Duval, Miss Lawless, and others; in the constantly being ordered about and spoken to as if one had no feelings or perceptions, there was nothing but an extreme severity of manner without the smallest variation. On the third or fourth day before our last, someone had a visitor while we were at associated labour. On her return along the line she said to me: “A speech is expected of you; they hope great things of you at the feast.” My heart gave one bound. This meant release without a doubt, but a speech! How was it such a thing was expected of me? “I’ll simply tell some of the things that take place here,” I thought, and I felt that this was necessary.

The morning of March 24 we were released. My excitement was great, I had not slept, and from 4.30 onwards it was impossible to keep quiet. At 5.30 we were called in the regulation way and towards 7 we were taken down to other cells. I was put into one with a stranger whom I had not seen before. She was a servant, a lady’s maid, who had left her last place, or, rather, they had left her, because of her opinions. She had determined to go in for the Deputation, although probably it would mean that she got no place again.[8] The cell where we were was dirty and smelt horribly, but I said nothing, hoping that my companion would not notice it. She soon did, however, for the smell nearly made her faint. I was given a packet of letters—a large heap from friends and strangers all the world over. At the head of the telegrams was a two-sheet one from our baker in the country, sent off the moment I was a prisoner, addressed to “The Castle where Suffragettes are confined, Holloway,” most anxious about my food, and might he send the special bread he always made for me! I read my mother’s letter again and again; it was all kindness, and I could hardly wait to see her. We were arranged in a long, close file, in the same order in which we had been ushered in, and put to stand in the big gateway. I never knew what it was that kept us, but there we stood for nearly an hour. A wardress or two were watching us, and we were not allowed to move. At last the big doors were unbolted, we were half pushed from where we stood, we were out in the open—we were free. My sister and her eldest girl and boy had somehow gained permission to come within the outer gates. I saw them and forgot all else. There was no release-breakfast feast; we were told that we were to meet that evening at the Inns of Court Hotel and make our speeches there.

Footnote:

Some days had passed when I went back to the prison. I thought I should be glad to get within reach of the ordinary prisoner, I in no way dreaded it. I had more to find out about X., the 3rd Division prisoner of the hospital. But, strangely enough, when I saw the big tower of Holloway, that looked quite different from anything else, and which brought back the inevitable picture of the women that go in, are kept in durance, and let out again to a life more horribly unnatural, I felt my legs begin to shake, and by the time I was shown in to the Governor, who kindly saw me, it was all I could do to walk upstairs. I could not see X.; they said that someone else had been to visit her that month. I got in touch with her case through the Prisoners’ Aid Society but they said that she was being “attended to” by another lady.

I went again to Holloway the morning that X. was to be released. Her freedom was due at 8 a.m. Two women and her little boy were waiting for her, they had kept the boy from all harm during the long months of her imprisonment. They didn’t know where she was going to live, or what she would do, they had heard nothing from her. Soon after eight the great doors swung open, and the prisoners for that morning were let out, but there was no X., among them. I inquired at the door, but they would give no information there. After waiting another three-quarters of an hour I put in an appeal to see the Governor. The little boy of four years old had waited more than an hour outside, I had petitioned for him and one of the women to wait inside, but in vain. I was shown up to the Governor, who kindly saw me and made inquiries for me about X.’s case. She was booked to go out that morning, but was waiting for her uncle, a well-to-do man, to take her away. I said her little boy was there, might he not spend the time with her, as she would be taking him away. The answer was “No.” The Governor said it was a case in which the Chaplain and a lady visitor had taken a special interest, that he knew very little about it. He asked me very kindly to wait in his room, but as he had nothing more to tell me I went back to the women outside. They told me more fully about X. She seems to have been in every way a good and hard-working woman. She had killed her child, knowing that it would be impossible to keep it alive. The man, the father, lived in the same street, but now he had gone, they did not know where. They hoped that she would come back and live where she had been before, but they feared the rich uncle, a publican. X. had been to live with him and her aunt when quite a young girl, but they had insisted that she must tout the men for them, and engage in illegal intercourse as an attraction. She had run away, and would not live with them. At her trial the uncle had been called in, and he, being a Citizen of London, had kindly managed that she should be tried only for concealment of birth. He had done well for her at the trial, but now they feared he would get hold of her again. My feelings were indeed torn when I had to tell them the Governor’s news. They had kept the child without help from anybody, sometimes it was a very hard thing, but they had always kept it in good health. Presently a tall man came by and went into the prison. About a quarter of an hour after he came out. X. was with him. She walked head down, her face in tears. Scarcely knowing what she did, she advanced towards her little boy, stretched out both arms and gave him a passionate embrace. He had rushed towards her calling out “Mother!” Then, sobbing as if her heart would break, she followed the man to the public-house opposite. The two women made as if they would follow her, and I slipped into her hand a letter I had written in case I did not see her. The man then rounded on the women, and driving them away with his hand, said: “Keep away, we don’t want you—your money shall be paid you all right,” and he fled along the pavement, taking X. by the arm. We went and had some belated breakfast at a shop. I took the address of the women and the little boy, but I unfortunately lost it when I was abroad. I had given them mine, but I have never heard of them from that day.

I went abroad with my mother, and in the meanwhile things happened apace in England. The deputations, in ever-increasing numbers, succeeded one another with imprisonments of two or three months. The officials treated all the deputations with the utmost indifference. Miss Wallace Dunlop wrote up on the walls of the House of Commons: “Women’s Deputation, June 29. Bill of Rights. It is the right of all subjects to petition the King. All commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.” This is one of the most fundamental laws of Great Britain, but the vote has rendered it unnecessary for men. For this she was given one month’s imprisonment, and she it was who began the hunger strike, and was let free after four days. For several months succeeding prisoners followed Miss Dunlop’s fine example, and the Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, let them out after four or five days, some of them were kept five or six days. When they were let out they were released unconditionally. Towards the middle of September, Mr. Gladstone thought that he would make another move and, instead of releasing them, he had them fed by force in the prisons. The horror this created was at first small, for there were but few people who realised what it meant. I shall never forget the impression that it made on me.