Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

I am a most superior person.

  My cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek,

  I dine at Blenheim once a week.6

  In an indignant blaze, Kitchener set about undermining his Viceroy with ruthless efficiency. By August 1905 the two were in furious deadlock over who should be in charge of military supplies. The standoff between the two silverbacks spilled over the frontiers of the Raj. The Secretary of State for India found himself having to arbitrate between his two most senior men from his seat in Whitehall. He was the same William St John Fremantle Broderick who had attempted to explain away concerns over Kitchener’s concentration camps in South Africa. Once again, he backed Kitchener to the hilt.

  Humiliated, Curzon had no choice but to step down, and did so in a cloud of resentment. His undignified exit from India in 1905 delighted the Duleep Singh sisters. Writing to Sophia, Catherine expressed her unconcealed glee: ‘What do you say to Lord Curzon really having resigned. I think it too perfect a joke!’7

  On his return to England, the suffragettes quickly became the target of the former Viceroy’s ire. Curzon began to formulate in speeches and publications his ‘Fifteen Good Reasons Against the Grant of Female Suffrage’; the resulting list would become the mantra for Curzon’s National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, and for anti-suffragists generally. The vote, he claimed, would turn women against motherhood (‘their proper sphere and highest duty’); their innate emotionalism caused women to make unpredictable decisions at times of crisis; moreover, women simply were not intellectually up to the complexities of politics. In essence, ‘women have not as a sex, or a class, the calmness of temperament with a balance of mind, nor have they the training, necessary to qualify them to exercise a weighty judgment in political affairs’.

  None of these arguments was new to the WSPU; however Curzon introduced an additional international dimension to his opposition. He argued that giving women the vote would jeopardise the very foundation of His Majesty’s Empire: ‘the presence of a large female factor in the constituencies returning a British government to power would tend to weaken Great Britain in the estimation of foreign powers’. Critically, Curzon drew attention to the effects equal franchise would have on the most precious ‘jewel in the Crown’. ‘It would be gravely misunderstood and would become a source of weakness in India.’8

  The suffragist newspaper, The Vote, turned a torrent of vitriol towards the fallen Viceroy. Referring to Curzon’s ‘cloven hoof’, in their Christmas Eve edition in 1910, the editorial thundered: ‘He seems to forget that the worship of the Female is by far the most popular cult in India, and that for one prayer put up to a god there are five thousand to a goddess.’ The paper went on: ‘He also ignores – if, indeed, he ever grasped, since few Indian officials do – the enormous influence which women wield in the present unrest. The Feminist movement is intimately associated with the aspirations of Young India.’9 Suffragette magazines and pamphlets began to lampoon Curzon regularly. Sophia watched and relished the mockery of her old foe by her new friends. Eager to prove herself worthy of their sorority, Sophia threw herself, quite literally, into WSPU activities with a new vigour.

  The WSPU chose the day of the King’s speech to Parliament, on 6 February 1911, to stage a coordinated protest. George V was expected to sweep his way from Buckingham Palace towards Parliament in a gilded carriage, with his wife, Queen Mary, by his side. Troops had been drilling for weeks so that they might march in tight, pristine formation, as the King’s escort. The regalia and marching bands were sure to attract crowds, and the police prepared themselves for a huge turnout. With their bunting and flags, supporters woke early, and made their way to London, all vying for the best spot to wave at their new king. The suffragettes rose earlier still.

  At dawn, small groups of WSPU women made for the homes of the most prominent Cabinet ministers in the country. Armed with banners and posters, they wanted their slogans to be the first thing ministers saw on their way to Parliament. Princess Sophia, who could have watched the King’s speech from the VIP seats in the spectators’ gallery at the House of Lords, made her way up Whitehall instead. Accompanied by one other suffragette, her destination was a plain black door in an elegant cream frame, with a bright, white ‘10’ nailed to the front.

  The police officers stationed outside Downing Street saw Sophia, but failed to register any threat. Quite possibly they assumed that the finely dressed lady with the wide-brimmed hat tipped low over her face was one of a number who had come to wave Herbert Asquith on his way. Sophia and her silent companion waited patiently and unobtrusively until the prime minister emerged, a phalanx of civil servants and policeman around him. As he got into the chauffeur-driven car which would take him the short distance to the House of Commons, the princess squeezed her way between them. Brandishing a poster concealed in her expensive fur muff, she ran into the road and hurled herself at the car, shouting suffragette slogans and pressing herself against the prime minister’s closed window. Asquith fumed as Sophia gestured wildly at the banner held in her hands. Policemen moved to grab her, while the chauffeur tried to manoeuvre the huge lumbering vehicle around the princess. As she was physically lifted out of the way, the green and white banner fluttered out of her hands. It bore one simple line: ‘Give women the vote!’

  The prospect of having Queen Victoria’s goddaughter arrested on the day of her grandson’s speech proved too embarrassing. After being detained briefly, Sophia was released without charge.

  Newspapers throughout the Empire reported Princess Sophia’s deeds that day. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph detailed her breakaway actions under the headline ‘Princess As Picket’, whilst the Jamaican broadsheet The Gleaner described how, ‘Princess Sophia Duleep Singh awaited outside the government offices in Downing Street for the departure of Premier Asquith. When the Prime Minister appeared the Princess stepped in front of his automobile and pulled out from her muff a banner . . . She endeavoured to stop the progress of the Premier, but was removed by a policeman.’10

  Weeks later Sophia dared the authorities to arrest her again. The census of 1911 was set to be the most comprehensive ever. Men with ledgers and bundles of questionnaires were dispatched all over the country. Individual households, institutions, workhouses, even naval and merchant vessels in British waters would be included; officials were charged with looking under boxes and in alleyways in order to count the number of homeless on the streets. It was a chance for world-famous British bureaucracy to show its mettle. It was also a chance for the suffragettes to launch their most coordinated act of civil disobedience to date.

  The count was scheduled for the night of Sunday 2 April. The suffragist women set out to wreck the operation in any way they could. Adopting the slogan, ‘If women don’t count, neither should they be counted’, they risked fines and imprisonment in their efforts to evade the enumerators. Suffragettes spoiled their papers by scrawling political messages where their answers should have been. Others spent census night away from home so they could not be counted at all. In London, women gathered in numbers at Trafalgar Square and around a skating rink in Aldwych; they spent all night walking in circles and singing songs to keep themselves warm. Others donned their thickest coats and hid out in attics, sheds and barns. They did these things so that when the statistical snapshot was taken, a slice of Britain would simply appear to have vanished.

  The most celebrated census dodge on 2 April came from Emily Wilding Davison. On the night in question she hid in a broom cupboard at the Houses of Parliament, right under the noses of politicians and police. Sustained by meat lozenges and lime juice, she remained undiscovered for forty-six hours. Her efforts were in vain. Discovered by a cleaner the morning after, the Clerk of Works at the House of Commons informed the census officials of her whereabouts. Even though the deadline for counting had passed, her address was listed on the census papers as ‘Found Hiding in Crypt of Westminster Hall Westminster’.

  Princess Sophia preferred to express her dissent in more comfortable surround
ings. From her home at Hampton Court, she awaited the census papers and when the time came to fill them in, she left the boxes blank. Instead, in uncharacteristically neat handwriting she wrote: ‘No Vote, No Census’,11 diagonally across the paper. Having left her slogan, Sophia went on to elaborate underneath, stating the motto of the anti-census movement: ‘As women do not count, they refuse to be counted.’12 She chose vivid blue ink to stand out against the black and white of the official printed page. Signing her defiance with a curling flourish, she waited to see what the state would do next.

  All the women who dodged the census fully expected legal repercussions. In the event however, none were prosecuted. Emmeline Pankhurst claimed their numbers were too many, and the government was wary of risking further hunger strikes in prisons. Newspaper editorials on the other hand were apoplectic. One letter to The Times described the boycott as a ‘crime against science’. The magazine Punch saw the lighter side, quipping: ‘The suffragettes have definitely taken leave of their census.’13

  After witnessing her conduct on Black Friday and her commitment to the census boycott, the suffragettes believed that their royal recruit might be willing to take a more high-profile role still. They begged Sophia to give keynote speeches at public events. As loyal as she was to the cause, the prospect filled the princess with dread. She became her mother’s daughter once more: embarrassed, awkward and desperate to avoid attention.

  The local branch of the WSPU in Kingston-upon-Thames was particularly keen to harness her celebrity on a more public platform, but Sophia felt ill at the thought: ‘Dear Madam, I am so sorry, I really cannot take the chair at your meeting, I am quite useless for that sort of thing. Please forgive me for refusing. I feel very unkind. If I am here when you have it I will try and come over to the meeting and help in any way I can, only not to speak or take the chair.’14

  Sometimes it was impossible to say no. In April 1911, her friend, hero and Black Friday companion, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was invited to speak in Richmond. Also on the bill was the outspoken English playwright, Laurence Houseman. It was to be a major event in the suffragist calendar, and would include a celebrity auction, to which the wife of writer Thomas Hardy had contributed one of her own dresses – ‘an old-style brocade dress to use as they want’.15 The organisers wanted Sophia to complete the impressive billing, but she begged them to find somebody else. Unable to dissuade them, she agreed to take part but warned that her appearance would be a let-down to all concerned: ‘I will come on the 9th to the meeting with pleasure. I hope you have found someone else to support the resolution, If not I will do so, but very much prefer not to and I shall only say about 5 words!’16

  Even though she was to be one of their VIP guests, Sophia insisted on paying for her own tickets. Not wanting to detract from the guests of honour, she also decided not to travel to the venue in her usual liveried carriage, opting for the train instead. The only problem was, Sophia did not know very much about public transport or how it worked: ‘I shall hope to bring some people over from home with me. Is it a ticket meeting, if so how much are they please? And can you tell me if the train goes anywhere near the rooms.’17 How her sisters would have taunted her if they knew how she humbled herself before her suffragette friends. She signed off her deferential letter with, ‘Please forgive me for bothering you . . . Yours truly SDS.’18

  Although uncomfortable speaking in front of an audience, Sophia had no problem with goading the police and the courts. The princess had been a dedicated member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League from the start, donating money to its war chest. Small but fiercely committed, the organisation spent 1911 producing booklets advising their almost 200-strong membership to stop paying tax and explaining what would happen to them when they did. Advice started from the moment the tax collector would come to their doors: ‘He will most probably beg you to pay, and emphasise the fact that he personally is not answerable for this injustice to women, drawing your attention to the fact that the non-payment of your tax involves him (an innocent factor) in very great difficulties. All this you must harden your heart to.’19 Women were taught how to barricade themselves in their houses to escape the arrival of the bailiffs who might follow. Those who wished to could nail their front doors shut, or block them with heavy furniture. Diagrams of pulley systems and drop baskets were also available for those preparing longer terms of self-imposed incarceration.

  Unimpressed by the tactics, by the middle of 1911 the Inland Revenue began to pursue tax resisters energetically. One of their first targets was a suffragette called Emma Lloyd. Born in West Bromwich in 1867, she was one of seven children. Her father had been prone to bouts of heavy drinking and she had watched as her mother struggled to support her large and hungry family. As a result of their dire poverty, Emma was forced to leave school at the age of eight. She found work as a coal picker, earning pennies by gathering lumps from the pit mounds. At the age of twelve, Emma entered domestic service, starting with the lowliest of jobs. She gradually worked her way up to a full-time position as a maid-of-all-works, counting herself lucky, despite the back-breaking work and long hours. However, after just a few years, Emma lost her job and her income when her employer’s brother made a sexual advance towards her. Sacked without even a reference to her name she was forced to move far away in search of work and a life free of scandal.

  Emma moved to Lancashire, where she finally found employment again. In the few hours she was not scraping together an income, she taught at the local Sunday school and it was here that Emma became involved with the church debating society. To her surprise, she found that she was quite good at it. The church gave her the ability to speak publicly, but it was Princess Sophia’s old nemesis, Lord Curzon, who gave Emma the subject matter. The former Viceroy had been touring Lancashire, appearing before public meetings speaking of the glories of the British Empire. It was at one such event that Curzon steadfastly ignored a particular raised hand in his audience. No matter how much she tried, Emma Lloyd could not get Curzon to pick her amidst the raft of questions taken from the floor. As she later noted, he had refused to answer her question because ‘she was a woman and did not have the vote’.20

  From the moment Curzon dismissed and humiliated her, Emma became a committed suffragette, vowing never to be rendered voiceless in public again. With fighting spirit renewing her, Emma decided to take control of the rest of her life. First she made a defiant return to Wolverhampton, the scene of her ‘disgrace’. She had saved just enough money to purchase a small business for her mother to run with her help. When not working at the shop, which also served as the front room of their house, Emma spent her time volunteering for the Independent Labour Party. Keir Hardie was more disposed to the question of female enfranchisement than any other leader and his party welcomed Emma Lloyd and put her talents to use.

  She was regularly booked to speak at political rallies, and charmed crowds with her zeal and ability to deal with hecklers. It was during her time with the ILP that she met and then married Frank Sproson, a postman who also served as the secretary of the Wolverhampton branch of the ILP. Frank worshipped Emma for her passion and her spirit of rebellion. When asked later why he had found her qualities so attractive, Frank would answer: ‘I admire the rebel against injustice, man or woman, because I know that it is to them that all real progress is due.’21

  It was not long before Emma’s path crossed with that of Emmeline Pankhurst, since the WSPU and the ILP often shared platforms. Immediately the two women sensed a kindred spirit and became close friends, with Emmeline staying at the Sproson family home when she visited Wolverhampton. However, before long the relationship began to sour. Emma grew tired of Pankhurst’s autocratic style of leadership. She left the WSPU and threw her efforts into tax resistance instead.

  On 23 May 1911, Emma Sproson caused a storm of controversy when she was sentenced to a term in prison for keeping a dog without a licence. She had refused to pay for her family pet, insisting that she would not accept
taxation without representation. She had barely been released from Stafford Prison when Emma found herself in the dock once again for her continual refusal to pay. On 20 June she was sentenced to a month in prison and her husband was also given a week’s custodial sentence for aiding and abetting her. Frank Sproson insisted that his only crime was that he had not cracked the whip at home, bringing his wife into line: ‘In the eyes of the law, I was lord and master, so that my offence, therefore, was not that I did anything, but rather that I did not do anything. I did not assert my authority, I did not force my wife into subjection, and however legal the magistrate’s decision may have been, it certainly was not just.’ 22

  Emma Sproson went on hunger strike, fighting for and eventually winning the right to be treated as a political prisoner. Her case received widespread media attention; Winston Churchill was questioned repeatedly in the House of Commons about the legality of trying and punishing her twice for the same offence, and for dragging her husband into the matter. Churchill was unrepentant. The message the government wished to send was a clear one. Pay your dues or go to gaol.

  Princess Sophia stopped paying for the licences for her dogs as soon as Emma Sproson was sent to prison. In an effort to goad the authorities to come for her too, she also refused to pay the charges associated with keeping servants and refused to pay the licence for her carriage with its armorial bearings. None of these liabilities were large, but they were deeply symbolic. At first the letters asking for payment were polite; gradually they took on a more hectoring tone. But still the princess refused to pay. After the final demands went unheeded, Sophia was sent a letter by the courts informing her that she now faced fines and a court hearing. She politely wrote back that she had no intention of paying either the taxes or the penalties and they could take her to court if they liked. A summons was issued calling Sophia to appear before Spelthorne Petty Sessions Court in Middlesex. Courteously Sophia wrote back telling the court she had no intention of attending but would send her lawyer, Leon Castello, instead.