Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  The auctioneer, Henry Alaway, was forced to lower his starting bid again and again before anyone would raise their hand. The atmosphere was tense, and Sophia, sitting sphinx-like and fixing him with her narrow stare, made his job even more difficult. Bidding was cripplingly slow and only two people raised their hands, one of whom was a particularly formidable woman who glowered her competitor into submission. Alaway brought down his hammer, relieved to have the business over and done with. For a fraction of its true value, the Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, Gertrude Eaton, had won the lot.2

  Gertrude was well known in the women’s movement. For years she had been teaching suffragettes how to overcome nerves and speak in public. Giving free lessons to WSPU members, she showed them how to project to the back of large halls without losing control of their voices, or their tempers. As Gertrude handed over £10 for the necklace and £7 for the bangle,3 she knew her gesture was worth more than any speech she could ever give. She had experience of bailiffs herself. Two years before, men had forced their way into her Kensington home, seizing all her silverware for her own unpaid fines.4 Accepting Gertrude’s gift gratefully, Sophia vowed that as long as women were kept from the ballot box, nobody would ever be able to force her to pay her taxes.

  Less than two months later, Sophia was in court again, for the same offence. Such flagrant and repeated disregard for the law ought to have put Sophia in prison. Women who owed far less had been given custodial sentences; however the law treated aristocratic women and commoners very differently. Never was that more clearly illustrated than in the case of Lady Constance Lytton, daughter of a former Viceroy of India. The Earl of Lytton had held the post during the reign of Queen Victoria. It was he who had declared her Empress before the rajahs and nawabs. Constance’s mother, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, was a powerful force in the royal court; the Lyttons therefore led a life of extreme privilege. Constance had never been particularly wilful and had only discovered politics, like Sophia, in mid-life. Her induction came quite by chance when she donated money to a local dance troupe of working-class girls. Through them she heard the plight of suffragettes in prison. The stories of starvation and force-feeding horrified her, and swept up by outrage, in 1909, at the age of thirty-seven, Constance joined the militant wing of the WSPU.

  During a deputation to Parliament on 24 February, things turned violent and Constance was arrested. Before setting off, she had prepared her mother for just such an eventuality: ‘If you ever see this letter it will mean that after joining the deputation I have been arrested and shall not see you again until I have been to Holloway . . . What maternity there lurks in me has for years past been gradually awakening over the fate of prisoners, the deliberate, cruel harm that is done to them, their souls and bodies, the ignorant, exasperating waste of good opportunities in connection with them, till now the thought of them, the yearning after them, turns in me and tugs at me as vitally and irrepressibly as ever a physical child can call upon its mother.’5

  Though many of her companions in the deputation had been sent to gaol for their part in the affray, the authorities had different plans for Constance. The magistrate ‘bound her over’, offering her the chance to go free if she would promise to refrain from suffragette activities in the future. Constance flatly refused, leaving him no choice but to sentence her to one month in prison.

  In Holloway, despite her protestations, she spent most of her time in the comfort of the prison’s hospital wing. Constance knew she was being accorded special treatment because of her family background and demanded to be treated like any other suffragette. The prison governor’s refusal made her even more determined. One night she took a needle and a piece of broken enamel from her hatpin and carved a ‘V’ deep into the flesh of her breast, just over her heart. The prison medic was horrified and news of Constance’s self-mutilation spread quickly. She later confessed that her intention had been to carve ‘Votes for Women’ from her heart, across her torso up towards her neck, until the last letters reached her cheek. Only the intervention of medical staff prevented her.

  By October 1909, Constance Lytton and Emily Wilding Davison had joined forces. Together, they threw stones at a car in which they believed the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George was travelling. As it turned out, he was not in the car, but they were arrested. When the case came to court the authorities again tried everything they could to avoid convicting Lady Lytton. The prosecution seemed to be doing the job of the defence, arguing that she must have been led astray by other dark forces. Constance was furious and made a fiery speech from the dock, insisting that she had known exactly what she was doing, that she was sorry it had not been Lloyd George in the car, and that she would do the same again. She was sentenced to one month in prison.

  To her dismay, Constance was given preferential treatment once more. The authorities used her mild congenital heart condition as an excuse to free her on medical grounds after only a few days. Deeply ashamed, Constance decided that the next time she was arrested, she would hide her true identity. In January 1910 she travelled to Liverpool and took part in the WSPU’s campaign against Liberals standing at the general election. She disguised herself as one plain ‘Jane Warton’, and in her words, made herself as ugly as possible, for ‘I had noticed several times while I was in prison that prisoners of unprepossessing appearance obtained least favour’.6

  It was while she was in Liverpool that ‘Jane Warton’ was arrested for marching on Walton gaol, a sprawling Victorian prison spread over twenty-two acres of land. Suffragettes being held on remand at Walton were frequently force-fed. She was apprehended outside the governor’s house and sentenced to two weeks’ imprisonment. Believing her to be a working-class woman, the authorities did not give Constance the mandatory medical examination which would have revealed her heart defect. Unlike her previous sentences, this time when Lady Lytton refused to eat, she was not released by a sheepish warden. Instead, Constance was held down and had a pipe pushed down her throat into her stomach. Even though she experienced a level of brutality which almost killed her, Lady Lytton never revealed her true identity.

  The force-feeding made her dangerously ill, however, and Constance was only released on medical grounds when rumours of her true identity reached the Press Association. Her subsequent accounts of the prison and feeding regime were eviscerating, and heaped embarrassment on the prison service and home secretary. If the daughter of an earl could cause such a stink, the government had no appetite to see what the Queen’s godchild and daughter of the Maharajah of the Punjab could do. Sophia remained at large, despite her frequent and enthusiastic attempts to get arrested. It was not as easy for her to hide her identity as it had been for ‘Jane Warton’.

  The Prisoners’ Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act finally ended the practice of force-feeding. The legislation came about partly as a result of the outcry which followed testimonials such as those of Lady Lytton. The law stated that suffragettes would now be allowed to refuse food if they wished until such time as a prison doctor regarded their lives to be at risk. At such a point, prisoners would be released under strict licence, giving them time to recover. When fit enough to complete their sentences, the police would re-arrest them.

  Suffragette women released under the provision of the new law became experts at evading the police. They received training in counter-surveillance techniques, and had a network of safe houses throughout the British Isles. Suffragettes such as Anne Kenney would travel with a rope ladder in case they were discovered on the higher floors of one of their hiding places and had to flee.7 The police were made to look comically inept as colourful accounts of daring escapes hit the headlines. Soon the Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act became more popularly known as the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’. The police were the ‘cats’ and the suffragette ‘mice’ ran rings around them.

  Emmeline Pankhurst had been playing cat and mouse with the government long before they even enacted their new legislation. On the occasion
s from 1912 that she was arrested, she refused food, became dangerously ill and then had to be released. The authorities were terrified that she might die in prison, and had learned the hard way that they could not force her to eat. They had tried once, at which point she grabbed a heavy clay jug from her cell and threatened to smash it over her own head if they so much as touched her. One of Emmeline’s most punishing hunger strikes lasted nine days, during which time she lost two stone in weight, developed jaundice and eventually lapsed into unconsciousness, before being set free.

  In 1914, Emmeline was out on licence, this time for the crime of inciting the arson on Lloyd George’s newly built house in Walton on the Hill, Surrey. Sentenced to three years, she had always denied the charge, although she freely admitted she was delighted by the resulting inferno. In prison she had once again starved herself to the point of death, and Holloway had been forced to let her go. Under the terms of the Cat and Mouse law, she was to be tended by her nurse and doctor until such time as she was well enough to finish her sentence. She was to stay at one address, where she would be guarded around the clock by police stationed outside. Emmeline was explicitly forbidden from public speaking, meeting other suffragettes, or travelling anywhere in a motor car. Failure to adhere to these terms would lead to her immediate arrest and incarceration, whether she was well enough or not to face the rest of her sentence.

  On 8 February 1914, while she was meant to be recovering in bed, Emmeline gave her guards the slip. Two nights later a notice was published in the press; it said Emmeline would be speaking at her friend’s house in central London later that night, and all were welcome to attend. The announcement was a ‘catch me if you can’ taunt to the authorities, and later that day they flooded the square with officers.

  The residence at 2 Campden Hill Square was a handsome townhouse with tall windows and a balcony on the first floor which looked out onto a manicured square of garden, exclusively for the use of the well-heeled people living on the street. Georgina Brackenbury, who lived at the house with her mother and father, was a leading suffragette who frequently opened her doors to women recovering from their hunger strikes. The address was soon known as ‘Mouse Castle’ because it had felt like a safe haven for those recuperating or hiding from the police.

  By seven that evening the square was filled with more than a thousand people. The newspaper advertisement had done its work, as both pro- and anti-suffragists crammed into the area outside number 2, all waiting to see what Emmeline would say, and how far the police would go to get her. At 8 o’clock, a frail figure, dressed completely in black, appeared at the first-floor window. To a cacophony of cheers and boos, the mysterious woman stepped out onto the balcony. She looked like Emmeline but nobody could be sure. The figure high above them wore a hat with a veil drawn over her face. As the crowds jostled to get a better look, the police began to close in. With dramatic and deliberate flourish the woman on the balcony lifted her veil. It was indeed Emmeline, her taut cheeks flushed with passion: ‘I have reached London tonight in spite of armies of police. I am here tonight and not a man is going to protect me, because this is a woman’s fight, and we are going to protect ourselves! I am coming out amongst you in a few minutes and I challenge the government to re-arrest me!’8

  The officers surged towards the door, but the sheer numbers of people slowed them down and in the crucial minutes it took for officers to push their way towards the front door, a group of around a dozen women emerged from the house. In their midst was a diminutive, veiled figure, who the suffragettes were determined to escort out of the square, right under the noses of the police.

  Emmeline was going to make a run for it. Her suffragette companions – many of whom had been trained in the martial art of ju-jitsu9 – formed a tight protective circle around her as the hordes tried to swallow them up. To keep their leader free as long as possible, as well as to protect them against violence from the general public, the WSPU had created a secret group known as ‘The Bodyguard’ – two dozen or so women who were charged with providing security at suffragette rallies throughout Britain. They had been trained in secret locations by Edith Garrud, who was among the very first professional ju-jitsu instructors in the Western world.

  Linking arms, the Bodyguard pushed and shoved through the seething mass. As they called out to other suffragettes in the square to join them, an outer ring formed. Princess Sophia and Ada Wright both stepped forward to help fortify the second ring. They and the others who joined them pushed back against the crowds, attempting to clear a path to the road. Shouts of encouragement rang out as the women fought to stay on their feet and hold the perimeter. ‘It’s Mrs. Pankhurst, friends! Don’t let her be arrested!’ screamed one of the suffragettes, as the police closed in. No sooner had the words left Katherine Willoughby Marshall’s lips than punches began to fly.

  Police grappled with the women, wrenching them apart, trying to reach the veiled figure. As the officers brandished their truncheons, a few of the suffragette Bodyguard pulled out Indian clubs from the folds of their long dresses: made of hardwood and shaped like bowling pins, the clubs were almost two feet long and weighted at the bulbous end. Though traditionally used in callisthenic exercise classes, that night they were bludgeons, and the fight became bloody very quickly. Without a club to swing, Ada Wright used her body to block the police from reaching their leader. Sophia, who was also unarmed, clung to Ada’s side, pushing back those who tried to outflank them. The women were no match for the volume of police deployed. One officer knocked Sophia and Ada to the floor, and arrested them both.

  The circle was now broken and the police were able to reach their quarry. One policeman struck the woman on the head with a truncheon; several others held her down, causing her to black out. Still unconscious, veil flapping around her face, the silent and motionless figure was lifted out of the crowds and carried out at shoulder height by six police officers. Fighting off the suffragettes the whole time, the police managed to convey the limp figure all the way to Ladbroke Grove police station. It was only then that they realised their mistake. The dazed woman in their custody wasn’t Emmeline at all. When they lifted her veil to charge her, they saw they had fallen for a decoy. Florence Evelyn Smith was the same height and build as the WSPU leader. While she and her suffragette colleagues had been distracting the police, Emmeline had escaped, and was long gone. The mouse was on the run again and would next be seen inciting a riot in Glasgow.

  Many women were arrested that evening, but only seven were charged. One of them was Ada Wright. Even though she had escaped prison yet again, Sophia was in court for the duration of the trial and sat prominently where the press could see her. When the case against Ada Wright was heard, Sophia took the stand and swore on oath that her friend had done nothing wrong, but rather had been the victim of police violence. According to the princess’s evidence, they had both been arrested on false pretences: ‘On behalf of Ada Wright it was pleaded that she was only arrested after asking Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who was beside her, to take the Constable’s number . . .’10

  Sophia’s testimony did Ada little good. Although the case against her was flimsy, when the court heard that she had five previous convictions for suffragette affray, she was found guilty. The judge gave her the choice between fourteen days imprisonment or a fine of twenty shillings. Unsurprisingly, Ada took the prison sentence. While she waited in her cell, mentally preparing herself for the moment the police would arrive to take her to Holloway Prison, an inexplicable thing happened: as she would later recall, ‘the door was flung open and she was told her fine had been paid by the Princess’.11

  Like Constance Lytton, perhaps Sophia could not stand the idea that she was free, while her friend was being sent to gaol for essentially the same crime. Like all members of the WSPU, the princess knew the payment of fines was a contentious issue. Most suffragettes felt that only through their suffering in prison would public opinion be moved in their favour. However, on this occasion Sophia felt compell
ed to break the code. Secretly, and filled with shame, she paid the fine.

  Tortured by the idea that Ada and the others would hate what she had done, Sophia increased her donations to the WSPU considerably: in 1914 she gave £51 of her £600 annual income to the Pankhurst war chest.12 It was the largest donation from an individual that year, and it came at a time of greatest need, when the authorities were pressing the WSPU harder than ever. The sum was not the round figure of £50 which would have been more natural to most people. Sophia, however, had India on her mind. Numbers ending with ‘1’ are deemed to be auspicious in Indian culture (which is why even today at weddings people usually give gifts of £11, £51 or £101). Sophia was not just giving her friends money; she was sending them good fortune.

  Sophia was not the only Duleep Singh to give money to the suffragettes in 1914. Princess Pauline Duleep Singh, whom Bamba had once described as ‘too vulgar for anything’, had donated the sum of one shilling to the WSPU coffers.13 Sophia was succeeding where others had failed. In small steps, she was teaching Ada’s daughter to care about someone other than herself.

  Pauline had spent the years after her visit to India feeling lost and lonely. Even though she had been warmly welcomed by Sophia on trips to London, and had spent a few Christmases with Prince Freddy at Old Buckenham Hall, she still felt disconnected from her family. Bamba had made no secret of her animosity, Catherine was indifferent, and Victor cared more for her mother than for her. Her younger sister, Irene, meanwhile, desperate for some stability after a peripatetic childhood, had married the first man who had asked her. At the age of twenty-one, she hid her royal title, cut her ties with her family, and put all her faith in Pierre Marie Alexandre Villemant – a man who would eventually leave her.14

  Now, at the height of her own suffragette activities, Sophia stepped into Pauline’s life again and decided to introduce the twenty-three-year-old to her beloved WSPU. It was a place where Sophia had never felt alone, and she hoped her half-sister might feel the same way. The suffragettes proved no comfort to Pauline, however, and before the year was out she had met and married Lieutenant John Torry, a rector’s son from Sussex.15