Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences

by Lady Constance Lytton

When I was in Manchester, Mary Gawthorpe was ill with the internal complaint which has since obliged her to give up work. She saw me in her room one day. We had been distressed beyond words to hear of the sufferings of Selina Martin and Leslie Hall. Mary Gawthorpe said, with tears in her eyes, as she threw her arms round me: “Oh, and these are women quite unknown—nobody knows or cares about them except their own friends. They go to prison again and again to be treated like this, until it kills them!” That was enough. My mind was made up. The altogether shameless way I had been preferred against the others at Newcastle, except Mrs. Brailsford who shared with me the special treatment, made me determine to try whether they would recognise my need for exceptional favours without my name.

Our meetings were always crowded and enthusiastic, especially in Manchester. This was my first experience of meetings in a really poverty-stricken district. I never shall forget one in the Salford Division of Manchester. A small room was packed as close as it would hold of the poorest working women. How eagerly and intelligently they listened, and what a wonderful light came into their eyes as the hope dawned in their minds: “Can it be that Parliament would really begin to think of us and attend to our interests?” All their questions were to the point and practical. How different was the atmosphere from that of the typical drawing-room meeting, where many women came together with the remark: “I am all for propertied women having the vote,” but their fear is lest the electorate should be flooded with working women voters. I have never yet been asked by a working-class woman whether our Bill, to give votes to women for the same reason as men have it, would not give undue power to propertied women. That is a man’s question, though often taken over by women of the leisured or professional class who identify themselves with the objections of theoretic politicians. To the working-class women the matter presents itself easily and naturally, as it actually is—a woman’s question, not a class question. To have their right to labour unrestricted, their protection controlled by themselves, their economic position independent and on the straightforward footing of being judged by its value and by that alone; their property, earnings, and their persons to be defended by law, and their right over their children to be acknowledged by law. In fact, their freedom as human beings, their full recognition as equal members of the community with men—that is how the Votes-for-Women question appeals to them. They see it neither as a party question nor as a class question.

Suddenly I had my opportunity. The Press and the people in each different constituency were entirely engrossed with the elections. Up till now, protest meetings were being held by our Union every week outside Walton Gaol, Liverpool. These were not held during the elections, but I told the Liverpool organiser, Miss Flatman, and the general organiser, Mrs. Jennie Baines, that if they would have one more of these protest meetings on Friday, January 14, it was my intention to go in disguise, call upon the crowd to follow me to the Governor’s house, and insist upon the release of the Suffrage prisoners who had been tortured by forcible feeding. It was not our wont to do any militancy or to hold any protest meetings during election time, that being a time, as it were, when no Government is in, but it seemed to me that this was the opportunity to make the Governor of the prison responsible. It was a case of nothing less than cruelty and did not specially concern, unless they chose to back it up, the Government.

I joined the W.S.P.U. again, filling up the membership card as Miss Jane Warton. The choice of a name had been easy. When I came out of Holloway Prison, a distant relative, by name Mr. F. Warburton, wrote me an appreciative letter, thanking me for having been a prisoner in this cause. I determined that if it were necessary to go to prison under another name, I should take the name of Warburton. When I went to Newcastle, my family raised no objection. Now nobody was to know of my disguise, but Warburton was too distinguished a name; that would at once attract attention. I must leave out the “bur” and make it “Warton.” “Jane” was the name of Joan of Arc (for Jeanne is more often translated into “Jane” than “Joan”) and would bring me comfort in distress. A family sympathetic to our cause, who lived in the suburb near Walton Gaol, were informed that a keen member, Miss Warton, would call at their house in the afternoon before the protest meeting, to investigate the outside of the gaol and the Governor’s house by daylight, and that she was ready to be arrested if she could not obtain the release of the prisoners.

I spent the previous day and night in Manchester where no one knew of my intentions. In the afternoon, at a drawing-room meeting, I was introduced, after I had spoken, to a woman who was a factory inspector. She had very often to attend in the police courts. She said to me: “I think it is impossible to attend these cases, and hear the other cases while you wait, and not be a convert to votes for women if you were not one before. The other day a man and two women were had up before the magistrate. They had been found in the street, the man and one woman had been cohabiting together, the other woman mounted guard. The case was quite clear, and the facts were not denied, the man had bribed the women. The man was let free, the two women were sent to prison. If women had the vote such things could not be; in those countries where women have the vote they get altered in less than a year.”

In the evening we went to a meeting in a large hall. It was full of working men and working women; it looked as if there were not room to move, so crowded were the seats and gangways. They were tremendously enthusiastic, many of them shook me by the hand, and the thought of them remained for a long time in my heart.

The next morning I took leave of my two kind hostesses. Their last injunction to me was, the agitation of my impending task having affected my appetite, “You should eat more; mind you eat more.”

I accomplished my disguise in Manchester, going to a different shop for every part of it, for safety’s sake. I had noticed several times while I was in prison that prisoners of unprepossessing appearance obtained least favour, so I was determined to put ugliness to the test. I had my hair cut short and parted, in early Victorian fashion, in smooth bands down the side of my face. This, combined with the resentful bristles of my newly-cut back hair, produced a curious effect. I wished to bleach my hair as well, but the hairdresser refused point-blank to do this, and the stuff that I bought for the purpose at a chemist’s proved quite ineffective. A tweed hat, a long green cloth coat, which I purchased for 8s. 6d., a woollen scarf and woollen gloves, a white silk neck-kerchief, a pair of pince-nez spectacles, a purse, a net-bag to contain some of my papers, and my costume was complete. I had removed my own initials from my underclothing, and bought the ready-made initials “J. W.” to sew on in their stead, but to my regret I had not time to achieve this finishing touch.

All this sounds simple enough, but I suppose it was due to my preoccupation of mind that I have never known a day’s shopping fraught with such complications and difficulties. At the frowzy little hairdresser’s shop, the only one that seemed to me inconspicuous enough for so important a part of my disguise, the attendant was busy, and I had to return in an hour’s time. I told him that I was going a journey and wanted the hair short, since that would be less trouble. He cut it off. Then I wanted what remained to be worn in a parting, with the hair falling straight on either side. This part of the process was most absurd, for that way of wearing my hair was obviously disfiguring to me. “Ah! now that looks very becoming,” said the hairdresser, and with that I left the shop in haste.