Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences

by Lady Constance Lytton

CHAPTER X
NEWCASTLE: POLICE STATION CELL

I was at Birmingham in October, 1909, and I had two meetings with Mrs. Pankhurst. Whenever this happened one felt most singularly useless beside that great woman. I was overcome by the sense of being superfluous, and oppressed at having to go through the same ordeal in the evening. After the first meeting she took me with her to a nursing home to see the girl who had been the first to be released after the hunger-strike and forcible feeding. It was a fine evening, and a beautiful red light lit up the window as we came in; against it was merely the shadow of a girl, sitting in an arm-chair. She did not look ill in an ordinary way, but young and fresh, only so absolutely thin and wasted, it would not have surprised us if life had gone out. She told her story very simply, just the bare facts and nothing more. She had been fed for a month. Mrs. Pankhurst, in cross-questioning her, elicited some of the horrors. She had resisted the gag as long as possible, then, with the increasing weakness, she had not the strength to resist much. Yes, the tube was a long one, pushed down the throat, in spite of all attempts to prevent it, and into the stomach. The feeling was that the tube was absolutely choking you, and when it was withdrawn that it dragged after it the whole of your inside.

She looked absolutely ethereal as she smiled at us and said “Good-bye.” For several days her face haunted me, it was startlingly like something. Then I remembered the paintings of Fra Angelico in the Chapel of St. Mark’s at Florence. I bought one of the little sixpenny editions of his pictures. There it was, the thing I had seen lately, the look of spiritual strength shining through physical weakness. I looked through the book to choose one specially like the girl at Birmingham; there were several that reminded me of her. I had looked at these pictures in my younger days, and their great beauty had given me joy, but I had felt annoyed with the man for painting beings so inhuman, women that were ethereal but so little real, a look of purity that no living creature has. Now I had longed for them, having seen the thing portrayed in life. As I looked through the book, I turned over suddenly on a picture that was quite different. There was a crowd of women, real women, doing battle with men. One hit out at a soldier—the men were soldiers—another thrust out her arm, and with her hand over his face, kept him away with all the strength she could, a third had been thrown to the ground, but, with a face of raging despair was thrusting out in every direction. The soldiers were simply carrying out their duty, an order had gone forth and they obeyed it; in the arms of the women were little babies, they had been told to kill them, and they did as they were told. In a seat above, looking on quite calmly, was Herod. It was the Massacre of the Innocents. The picture made a deep impression upon me, yet it all seemed so small compared with the unnecessary death rates of now. I was, just then, reading some facts that dealt with the death rate of infants. I found in one of the booklets by J. Johnston, Esq., M.D., 1909, this passage: “The first big fact which faces us upon this subject is that while the death rate for England and Wales for 1906 was 15.4, the infantile mortality—the death rate of children under twelve months—was 132.” This means that one in eight of the children born in this country dies before its first birthday—a death roll of 339 per day—a massacre of the innocents greater than that of King Herod at Bethlehem. And this wholesale slaughter of young life goes on, not for one day, as did that historic butchery, but is repeated every day, every week, every month, year in and year out, until in the year 1906 the army of baby martyrs reached a grand total of 123,895. Well might the African monarch, King Khama, say, “You English take great care of your goods, but you throw away your children.”

I left that room in Birmingham in a maze of feelings. An angel had been in my presence and I, who agreed with all she did, had left her and many others to go through with this alone. My mind was made up. I would take the very next opportunity of making my protest with a stone.

. . . . . .

On Friday, October 8, Christabel Pankhurst and I were on our way to Newcastle. We were seated opposite to each other in the midst of a crowded third-class carriage. It was on this occasion that I realised, as I had not yet done, the wonderful character, the imperturable good temper, the brilliant intellect of my companion. As we could not talk in this crowded train, I showed her some letters and papers on which I wanted her advice, or which I wanted her to know about. Whether they were print, typewritten, or manuscript, she had read them all in a moment, so as to discuss them with me afterwards. When we arrived at Newcastle we found that we had accompanied Mr. Lloyd George; there was a small crowd that welcomed him and that cheered half-heartedly. We went, after depositing our things at an hotel, to join an outdoor meeting. Christabel spoke. I sold Votes for Women in the crowd, which, though a large one, was mostly composed of out-of-work men, who took little interest in what was said. We drove round the town in honour of Miss New, who had just come out of prison, and went to a tea in her honour in an hotel where some fifty or sixty women were assembled. After this there was a strange meeting in the ground-floor room of a lodging-house. There were twelve women; we were all intending stone-throwers, and Christabel was there to hearten us up and to go into details about the way in which we were to do it. Mrs. Brailsford was there, whose husband was lately on the staff of the Daily News; he and Mr. Nevinson had resigned their posts because of the shameful way in which that paper and the Liberal Government had forsaken the women.

I had made up my mind that I was going to throw a stone—that was as sure as death, but the manner of it was going to be my own; I was equally sure of that. I was not sure of “the stone-throwers.” I had vaguely felt that they would have different reasons from mine for this errand, that perhaps, though they could not be more certain than myself, they would mind it less. I had not been in the room with them five minutes before I realised that I was mistaken. I was the “hooligan,” if there were one amongst them. One I specially remember. She was pretty, with a great deal of fair hair. She had not, I thought, the look of determination, of silent, unhesitating determination, which gave an air of inflexibility to the others. She leaned forward and asked many questions: the wardresses, would they, too, be disagreeable, would they pull down her hair and tear out the tortoise-shell combs? One somehow knew by her voice that she was not ready, she asked her questions as if something of a nightmare was in her mind; they were asked quite simply, but seemed to say, “Oh! save me from this!” I asked Christabel, when alone with her at the hotel, if I might tell her there was no need for her to do it, that I thought she was not quite prepared. “Of course,” she answered, “if she does not feel up to it, let her stand aside. One cannot tell how one is going to feel, she has never done anything before.” Not long ago Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had met her, it was at a bazaar. She wore a big hat and looked as remote as it is possible to look from stone throwing. She expressed the greatest admiration for the militants. “There is only one thing,” she said, “which I cannot think worth while—that they should go to prison.” I was to get her out of it the next morning, the day of Lloyd George’s meetings and of our militancy.

That evening there was an immense meeting at the drill hall where Christabel was to speak, but before she began a gang of about forty students howled and threw squibs, so that nothing could be heard. When she got up for a moment the applause drowned everything, but it soon was again impossible to hear her. The students broke up the seats and threw everything about. Then some ten of them charged the platform. A row of stewards hastily ranged themselves and tried to check their advance, but their arms were wrenched apart, until the husband of one of them took his turn and gave it to one of the students, whereupon the other men turned tail and ran. At this man coming forward the police interfered, they had been appealed to in vain by some of the stewards. It was most difficult not to help them, but I had sworn to keep myself till the next day. The row made by the other students went on unabated. Meanwhile, Christabel remained perfectly good-tempered. For the first quarter of an hour she spoke up, but as it was impossible for her voice to carry above the noise she lowered her voice and spoke only to reporters. The next day her speech appeared in full in all the local press.

The next morning, October 9, we were to meet early at the same lodging-house. The morning papers were full of Mr. Lloyd George, and in biographical sketches emphasised the glory of his having been militant, and successfully militant, through several questions that he cared about in his early days. It was different in the lodging-house from the night before. All was hurry and determination. Two of the women had gone already to deliver their stony messages. The organiser, a very straightforward and reasonable woman, was sending each one to a different place. She said, “There is a stone wants to be put through the door of the Palace Theatre in the Haymarket. It must be done at once or the gang of detectives will have become too thick.” A firm voice said: “I’ll go.” It was the young girl with fair hair who had asked so many questions the night before, and whom I was going to set free. “Oh, no,” said the organiser, “this job will have to be done alone—two would be detected at once.” “I’ll go.” It was like a force of nature that reiterated this, and there was something of adamant at the back of the voice. She picked up two or three papers to sell, and was out in the street before we any of us knew what she was doing. I dashed after her. I couldn’t believe that there was so much change in her since the night before. I moved quickly, but it was only down the street that led out of the lodging-house street that I caught her up. “I had thought of getting you out of it, because you seemed too young to do the work,” I said. “That was last night; to-day all is quite different.” “But let me try and say what I have in my mind. You are going to throw a stone. Think, as you lift your arm to do it, of the majority in the House of Commons who for years have said they are for Votes for Women, who over and over again for twenty years have voted for the second reading of a Woman’s Bill, and were quite content that it should stop there. Think of the nearly total Cabinet for Woman Suffrage when the Liberals came in, under a Suffrage Prime Minister, but all attempts to pass a Bill were treated as futile. Think of the women who work with a sweated wage, who have not the energy to rebel, who are cloaked with poverty; the thousands who, stricken with poverty more hideous than we can think of on one side, and tempted with money on the other, sink into a life of shame, which is endured for five or six years, till death releases them. Think of Lloyd George, whose speech is always fair but who carefully prevents anything being done for women. Think of the women who have been sent to prison for their protest against these things, who have hunger-struck as a fresh protest and who now have been fed by force. Then throw your stone and make it do its work.”