by Anand, Anita
When news of Asquith’s letter leaked out, it was met by a tidal wave of rage. In desperation, supportive MPs begged the suffragettes to keep faith, assuring them that they could still squeeze the bill through in the autumn, despite the prime minister’s wrecking tactics. Emmeline Pankhurst did not believe them. On 10 November, just days before the autumn session was due to commence, Pankhurst called a meeting at the Albert Hall. It was filled to the rafters with angry suffragettes. Princess Sophia, in her liveried carriage, accompanied by her gleaming footmen, swept up to the entrance of the Albert Hall to hear what her suffragette sisters were planning next. Every seat was filled, and suffragettes crowded into the standing areas in the soaring heights of the auditorium. From the speeches alone it seemed as if they were on the brink of war. Emmeline was in thunderous form: ‘This is the last constitutional effort of the Women’s Social and Political Union to secure passage of the bill into law. If the bill, in spite of our efforts, is killed by the government, then first of all, I have to say there is an end of the truce.’14 The noise threatened to raise the Albert Hall’s great domed roof.
If Asquith had indeed killed the bill by depriving it of the time it needed to pass, Emmeline declared she would go to the House of Commons and batter down the doors. As she later recalled in her memoirs: ‘Instantly, all over the hall, women sprang to their feet crying out, “Mrs Pankhurst, I will go with you!” “I will go!” “I will go!” And I knew our brave women were as ever ready to give themselves, their very lives, if need be, for the cause of freedom.’15 One of the first to step forward was Sophia Duleep Singh. Emmeline embraced her offer warmly and asked the princess if she would lead the suffragettes with her, walking at her side and in full view of the watching world. Sophia did not hesitate. She would do whatever was required of her.
The plan set for 18 November, the date Parliament was due to return, was a simple one. First the women would gather at Caxton Hall, Westminster. They would then divide themselves into contingents not more than a dozen strong. Emmeline would depart first, with her hand-picked deputation marching in a tight knot around her. The rest of her supporters would leave the hall at intervals of five to ten minutes. The suffragettes aimed to march in this way, group by group, through the winter streets, to the gates of the House of Commons. Turning up in small divisions meant they would break no laws of public order, giving the police no excuse to arrest them. Their chants would build in volume as their numbers grew, making it impossible for those sitting inside the House of Commons to ignore them.
It was a cold, grey, wet Friday morning when Sophia and the others gathered at Caxton Hall. Although suffragettes had met there many times before, this felt different, as if the whole battle for women’s votes might be won or lost in the next few hours. The sense of agitation built to a climax as the time to leave approached. After a rousing recital of their battle song ‘March of the Women’, at half past eleven, the scrape of chairs and the rustle of more than 300 skirts marked the moment when Sophia and her fellow suffragettes rose to do battle. Rumours of an increased police presence rumbled through their ranks, and the women speculated as to how extreme the police response might be.
The new home secretary, the youngest holder of that office Britain had ever known, was the charismatic forty-five-year-old Winston Churchill. Still with a full head of strawberry blond hair in 1910, he had an impressive record of military service and a well-established reputation for swaggering self-confidence. Aware that his fellow politicians were watching him closely, Churchill was determined not to be bettered by a group of noisy women. Although he would later deny it, according to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Churchill ordered his men to keep Pankhurst and her followers away from the prime minister at all costs, and without making any arrests. Churchill reckoned that if the police could just push the suffragettes back for long enough, they would tire and go home. He wanted to avoid messy trials and even messier hunger strikes. He was about to make a catastrophic miscalculation.
Sophia, at thirty-four, was by far the youngest suffragette in Emmeline Pankhurst’s nine-woman-strong vanguard. Her breath turned to vapour on the cold autumnal air as she attempted to keep up with the taller women and their longer strides. Although Sophia was used to the company of royalty, she felt awed by her companions that day. Pulling expensive furs tightly around her, Sophia took in her group. Emmeline had prepared her companions for the possibility of arrest, and personally relished the prospect. Knowing the press would be there to capture the image of her being carried or dragged from the scene, Emmeline had dressed with panache, wearing a full-length fur coat and elaborate hat, complete with tall black feathers.
England’s first woman doctor and also its first woman mayor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, walked in step with Emmeline. Hiding her shock of snow-white hair beneath a tidy black bonnet, her overcoat was sober and practical. At seventy-four, she walked stiffly but quickly through the chill, leaning on Emmeline’s arm from time to time. Close behind, Elizabeth’s daughter Louisa Garrett Anderson moved silently like a protective shadow. Described by the Votes for Women magazine as ‘pale, calm and quiet’, even in the midst of a riot, Louisa provided everyone with a sense of reassurance. She too was a qualified doctor, and more experienced women knew her services might be needed that day. From beneath a cloud of black frizzy hair, Hertha Ayrton looked tense. At fifty-six years of age, she was a distinguished and brilliant physicist and the first woman to be accepted into the Institute of Electrical Engineers. With her broad frame and close-set, intensely green eyes, Ayrton, like the princess, could not help but stand out in a crowd. When the British press falsely attributed the discovery of radium to Marie Curie’s husband, she complained bitterly. The Nobel Prize committee was just as guilty as the newspapers of snubbing the true discoverer of ‘radioactive bodies’. At first it named Curie’s husband and male research partner for the award instead of the rightful winner herself. Only after Monsieur Pierre Curie’s bitter remonstration was Marie included in the prize. She would only ever receive a quarter of the award. Ayrton made it her life’s mission to rectify the injustice and sent scathing letters to editors: ‘Errors are notoriously hard to kill,’ she wrote. ‘But an error that ascribes to a man what was actually the work of a woman has more lives than a cat.’16
Another chosen by Pankhurst to be in the vanguard was Annie Cobden Sanderson, the suffragette who had first inspired Gandhi. At fifty-seven, she was one of the best-connected women in Britain: a close friend of George Bernard Shaw and William Morris, she had also recently been a guest at Winston Churchill’s wedding. Despite her smiling features and soft, bosomy body, Sanderson was one of the most hardened suffragettes who walked with Sophia.
The eldest suffragette in the Pankhurst group, Dorinda Neligan, was a seventy-seven-year-old headmistress from Croydon who had spent much of her life fighting for girls’ education rights. Fragile on her feet, she was accompanied by the slightly more robust sixty-six-year-old Georgina Solomon, widow of the Cape Town statesman Saul Solomon. The Solomons were almost as well known throughout the colonies as Sophia. They had long held uncompromising and unfashionable views, standing against the tide of public opinion, and arguing for racial and religious equality in South Africa.
Riding close behind them, sitting ramrod straight on her thoroughbred horse, was the striking figure of the Hon. Evelina Haverfield; crop in hand, she looked intently at the road ahead, taut with expectation. The twice-married aristocrat and mother of two had been arrested with Emmeline Pankhurst in front of the House of Commons before. She and the older women knew how dangerous confrontations with the police could be and so scanned the route intently, ready for trouble.
At first, their vigilance seemed unnecessary. All seemed to go well and Sophia and the others reached Parliament Square just before noon. The approach to the Palace of Westminster was unusually busy, and almost as soon as they caught sight of their destination, the atmosphere began to prickle. As well as the police, crowds of civilian men fil
led the square, attracted by press speculation over what might happen if the suffragettes turned up en masse for the opening of Parliament. A contingent of US Navy sailors on shore leave had also travelled to Westminster expecting some kind of show. The police were visible in great numbers and closed in on Sophia and the others, letting them pass but jostling them as they did. Murmuring words of encouragement to each other the suffragettes pushed slowly ahead towards St Stephen’s Gate.
Emmeline, Sophia and the other younger members of the deputation took special care to shield Dorinda, Georgina and Elizabeth. Hertha Ayrton later admitted that she had been terrified of what might happen to them and only Louisa Garrett Anderson’s reassurances calmed her enough to carry on putting one foot in front of the other. Though she blanched with fear,17 the collective stature of the women seemed to protect them. Emmeline even believed that the gathered public were on her side. She claimed in her memoirs that ‘the crowds proved remarkably friendly. They pushed and struggled to make a clear pathway for us, and in spite of the efforts of the police, my small deputation actually succeeded in reaching the doors of the Stranger’s Entrance. We mounted the steps to the enthusiastic cheers of the multitudes that filled the streets.’18
Either she misread the situation, or the atmosphere turned on the head of a pin. Within minutes, as the next detachment neared the gate, the chimes of Big Ben were suddenly drowned out by screaming.
Police closed in and Sophia and the others found themselves pressed up against the gates to Parliament, which remained closed. A line of officers formed between them and the rest of the square, trapping them at St Stephen’s Gate. Unable to move, Sophia was forced to watch as friends, arriving steadily in their interval groups, were met with extreme violence just feet away. ‘We stood there for hours gazing down on a scene which I hope never to look upon again,’ wrote Emmeline Pankhurst.19 Women were tossed like rag dolls between groups of men as police and onlookers jeered. As more and more women arrived, so too did police reinforcements. Horses charged into the crowd, knocking women to the ground. Other suffragettes were slapped about the face or shoved with enough force to lift them off their feet. Fighting back, women pushed, scratched and kicked at the men. Small groups of suffragettes tried to pull mounted police from their horses; others attempted to seize reins in order to stop the beasts from trampling their fallen comrades. A number of officers swung their helmets at the suffragettes like clubs. To anyone watching, the scene looked less like a police operation and more like a late-night fight after pub closing time.
Suffragettes were repeatedly thrown to the ground by police in an effort to exhaust them. Some were badly hurt and others were knocked unconscious. One would later complain that she had been hurled into the path of an oncoming vehicle, narrowly avoiding having her head crushed under its wheels. Suffragettes were grabbed about the breasts, had their clothes ripped and skirts raised high to reveal their undergarments. Some would later describe officers ramming knees between their legs. Molestation and abuse rained down upon them, initiated by the men in uniform, who encouraged the crowds to join in.
Even Winston Churchill, no friend of the suffragettes or their methods, was appalled by the excesses of his force that day. In the many hours of recriminations that followed, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner insisted that his officers had been forced into an impossible situation by the home secretary, Winston Churchill, who had not wanted the women anywhere near the House of Commons but did not want them arrested either. In the absence of any clear instruction, the police believed it was their job to use any means necessary to deter the women from reaching Parliament. Since the women refused to give up, the situation had escalated out of control.
Eyewitness accounts from the women painted a picture of state-sponsored violence that went on well into the afternoon: ‘For hours I was beaten about the body, thrown backwards and forwards from one to another, until one felt dazed with the horror of it . . . Often seized by the coat collar, dragged out of the crowd, only to be pushed helplessly along in front of one’s tormentor into a side street . . . he beat one up and down one’s spine until cramp seized one’s legs, when he would then release one with a vicious shove, and with insulting speeches, such as “I will teach you a lesson. I will teach you not to come back any more. I will punish you, you ––, you ––”.’20
Some bystanders, appalled by what they were seeing and hearing, tried to help by pulling some of the suffragettes out of the way of charging horses, or stemming their bleeding cuts with handkerchiefs. Others goaded each other to grope and fondle cornered women. It was suspected by the WSPU that the civilians who showed most enthusiasm for the sexual assault were in fact plain-clothes policemen. Sophia was forced to watch it all, trapped at St Stephen’s. With the tall uniformed men surrounding her, she looked small and helpless. Emmeline Pankhurst was screaming at her side, demanding that the police stop the violence and make arrests. Her voice was drowned out by the noise. Unable to contain herself, or be contained any longer, Evelina Haverfield, still on horseback, barged through the line, charging at the police. Cutting through the crowds, she swung her crop in the faces of the officers, knocking many down as she rode into the densest parts of the square. When she was finally pulled from her saddle Evelina punched one officer in the mouth. As she was dragged away she was heard to lament that she had not hit him hard enough. Next time, she swore, she would bring a revolver.
Evelina had created a break in the police line and Sophia slipped through it. Her small figure bobbed, pushed and weaved its way into the midst of the fighting. The plight of one particular woman had moved her from paralysed horror to action. She saw a suffragette struggling with a police officer for what seemed an age. Every time he pushed her down, she rose up again. The policeman was getting more frustrated and violent and the woman was finding it harder to get back on her feet. After one particularly brutal throw, it seemed she was on the verge of losing consciousness. Sophia watched as ‘she fell onto her hands and knees and when she got up, he took hold of her most roughly’.21
It was too much for the princess, who elbowed her way through the seething mass and forced herself between the woman and the policeman. She pushed against him trying to get him to release his hold, while in a high-pitched, clipped voice she screamed at him to back off. Faced by the tiny, brown-faced, raging figure, the officer was shocked enough to step away. Letting the limp creature in his hands fall to the pavement he turned and disappeared into the crowd. After seeing that the woman was not badly hurt, Sophia followed the officer into the riot. She repeatedly screamed for him to stop and face her. She kept on his heels, demanding his name and the name of his senior officer. At last catching sight of his identification number, she repeated it to herself again and again until she had committed it to memory. She had no intention of letting Constable V700 get away with his behaviour that day.
It seemed that no matter how many times they were thrown down, assaulted or shoved back from the gates, the suffragettes continued to pick themselves up and push forward. Ada Wright, a suffragette who would become a friend of Sophia, described the events in her memoirs: ‘It was a terrible day, and we were battered by the police all day long. The police rode at us with their horses, so I caught hold of the reins and would not let go. A policeman caught hold of my arm, and twisted it round and round, until I felt the bone almost breaking.’22 Although Churchill tried to stop it, the Daily Mirror ran a picture of Ada on their front page the following morning, lying semi-conscious on the ground, clutching her head, while a police officer loomed over her. The events of ‘Black Friday’ would shock the world.
Henry Brailsford, the journalist who had resigned his job over the issue of force-feeding, collected suffragist accounts from that day. They made for difficult reading, even for the most vociferous critics of the WSPU. Delia MacDermott was one of many to lodge official complaints against the police: ‘The constable R21 almost choked me . . . by putting his arm round my neck and pressing the back of his hand on my t
hroat.’23 Her breast had been ‘gripped and pounded’, and she had been ‘lifted right up by the waist and flung into the crowd by Constable R21 who told her “It is no good taking our numbers today”’.24
By Westminster Bridge, the aged Georgina Solomon was violently sexually assaulted by an officer who encouraged bystanders to do what they wished with her.25 Another suffragette, Elizabeth Freeman, gave evidence about the attack on Annie Cobden Sanderson, one of the women who had led the march with Sophia: ‘My attention was drawn to a policeman thumping a woman in the small of the back with doubled fist. Recognising the woman as Mrs Cobden Sanderson I spoke to her, calling her by name, thinking the policeman would desist when he knew who she was, but he did not.’ With her protestations she attracted the attention of another officer who said, ‘Remember you are a man today.’ He then rained oaths upon her while his colleague continued to hit Annie. According to Elizabeth, he ‘had the leader of the deputation by the throat, pushing her head backward’. When Elizabeth tried to pull his hand away from Annie’s neck, he ‘addressed his attention to me, giving my arm and hand a sudden twist and turning his own arm down, so that I found myself on my knees and was kicked in the abdomen, and also in the back by those at the back of me’.26
Compared to her friends, Sophia had been lucky. In her attempt to stop and then follow Constable V700 through the crowds, she had sustained some bruising to her arms which she shrugged off. Writing to Winston Churchill a week later on her distinctive blue paper with its five-pointed coronet, she described the assault on the suffragette she had tried to help. Referring to herself in the third person she told the home secretary: ‘The policeman was unnecessarily and brutally rough and Princess Sophia hopes he will be suitably punished. Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was herself on the Deputation on the 18th and received several bruises on her arm, but she did not find that in her case the police were rougher than necessary.’27 Sophia failed to mention that she had been arrested later that same day, along with 115 women and four men.
