After my discharge, 12th April, I remained in the nursing home until partially restored, then, under the eyes of the police, I motored out to Woking, the country home of my friend, Dr Ethel Smyth. This house, like the nursing home, was guarded by a small army of police. I never went to the window, I never took the air in the garden without being conscious of watching eyes. The situation became intolerable, and I determined to end it. On 26th May there was a great meeting at the London Pavilion, and I gave notice that I would attend it. Supported by Dr Flora Murray, Dr Ethel Smyth and my devoted Nurse Pine, I walked downstairs, to be confronted at the door by a detective, who demanded to know where I was going. I was in a weak state, much weaker than I had imagined, and in refusing the right of a man to question my movements I exhausted the last remnant of my strength and sank fainting in the arms of my friends. As soon as I recovered I got into the motor car. The detective instantly took his place beside me and told the chauffeur to drive to Bow Street Station. The chauffeur replied that he took his orders only from Mrs Pankhurst, whereupon the detective summoned a taxicab and, placing me under arrest, took me to Bow Street.
Under the Cat and Mouse Act a paroled prisoner can be thus arrested without the formality of a warrant, nor does the time she has spent at liberty, in regaining her health, count off from her prison sentence. The magistrate at Bow Street was therefore quite within his legal rights when he ordered me returned to Holloway. I felt it my duty, nevertheless, to point out to him the inhumanity of his act. I said to him: ‘I was released from Holloway on account of my health. Since then I have been treated exactly as if I were in prison. It has become absolutely impossible for anyone to recover health under such conditions, and this morning I decided to make this protest against a state of affairs unparalleled in a civilised country.’
The magistrate replied formally: ‘You quite understand what the position is. You have been arrested on this warrant and all I have to do is to make an order recommending you to prison.’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that you should do so, with a full sense of responsibility. If I am taken to Holloway on your warrant I shall resume the protest I made before which led to my release, and I shall go on indefinitely until I die, or until the Government decide, since they have taken upon themselves to employ you and other people to administer the laws, that they must recognise women as citizens and give them some control over the laws of this country.’
It was a five days’ hunger strike this time, because the extreme weakness of my condition made it impossible for me to endure a longer term. I was released on 30th May on a seven days’ licence, and in a half-alive state was again carried to a nursing home. Less than a week later, while I was still bedridden, a terrible event occurred, one that should have shaken the stolid British public into a realisation of the seriousness of the situation precipitated by the Government. Emily Wilding Davison, who had been associated with the militant movement since 1906, gave up her life for the women’s cause by throwing herself in the path of the thing, next to property, held most sacred to Englishmen – sport. Miss Davison went to the races at Epsom, and breaking through the barriers which separated the vast crowds from the race course, rushed in the path of the galloping horses and caught the bridle of the King’s horse, which was leading all the others. The horse fell, throwing his jockey and crushing Miss Davison in such shocking fashion that she was carried from the course in a dying condition. Everything possible was done to save her life. The great surgeon, Mr Mansell Moullin, put everything aside and devoted himself to her case, but though he operated most skilfully, the injuries she had received were so frightful that she died four days later without once having recovered consciousness. Members of the Union were beside her when she breathed her last, on 8th June, and on 14th June they gave her a great public funeral in London. Crowds lined the streets as the funeral car, followed by thousands of women, passed slowly and sadly to St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, where the memorial services were held.
Emily Wilding Davison was a character almost inevitably developed by a struggle such as ours. She was a B.A. of London University, and had taken first class honours at Oxford in English Language and Literature. Yet the women’s cause made such an appeal to her reason and her sympathies that she put every intellectual and social appeal aside and devoted herself untiringly and fearlessly to the work of the Union. She had suffered many imprisonments, had been forcibly fed and most brutally treated. On one occasion when she had barricaded her cell against the prison doctors, a hose pipe was turned on her from the window and she was drenched and all but drowned in the icy water while workmen were breaking down her cell door. Miss Davison, after this experience, expressed to several of her friends the deep conviction that now, as in days called uncivilised, the conscience of the people would awaken only to the sacrifice of a human life. At one time in prison she tried to kill herself by throwing herself headlong from one of the upper galleries, but she succeeded only in sustaining cruel injuries. Ever after that time she clung to her conviction that one great tragedy, the deliberate throwing into the breach of a human life, would put an end to the intolerable torture of women. And so she threw herself at the King’s horse, in full view of the King and Queen and a great multitude of their Majesties’ subjects, offering up her life as a petition to the King, praying for the release of suffering women throughout England and the world. No one can possibly doubt that that prayer can forever remain unanswered, for she took it straight to the Throne of the King of all the worlds.
The death of Miss Davison was a great shock to me and a very great grief as well, and although I was scarcely able to leave my bed I determined to risk everything to attend her funeral. This was not to be, however, for as I left the house I was again arrested by detectives who lay in waiting. Again the farce of trying to make me serve a three years’ sentence was undertaken. But now the militant women had discovered a new and more terrible weapon with which to defy the unjust laws of England, and this weapon – the thirst strike – I turned against my jailers with such effect that they were forced within three days to release me.
The hunger strike I have described as a dreadful ordeal, but it is a mild experience compared with the thirst strike, which is from beginning to end simple and unmitigated torture. Hunger striking reduces a prisoner’s weight very quickly, but thirst striking reduces weight so alarmingly fast that prison doctors were at first thrown into absolute panic of fright. Later they became somewhat hardened, but even now they regard the thirst strike with terror. I am not sure that I can convey to the reader the effect of days spent without a single drop of water taken into the system. The body cannot endure loss of moisture. It cries out in protest with every nerve. The muscles waste, the skin becomes shrunken and flabby, the facial appearance alters horribly, all these outward symptoms being eloquent of the acute suffering of the entire physical being. Every natural function is, of course, suspended, and the poisons which are unable to pass out of the body are retained and absorbed. The body becomes cold and shivery, there is constant headache and nausea, and sometimes there is fever. The mouth and tongue become coated and swollen, the throat thickens and the voice sinks to a thready whisper.
When, at the end of the third day of my first thirst strike, I was sent home I was in a condition of jaundice from which I have never completely recovered. So badly was I affected that the prison authorities made no attempt to arrest me for nearly a month after my release. On 13th July I felt strong enough once more to protest against the odious Cat and Mouse Act, and, with Miss Annie Kenney, who was also at liberty ‘on medical grounds’, I went to a meeting at the London Pavilion. At the close of the meeting, during which Miss Kenney’s prison licence was auctioned off for £12, we attempted for the first time the open escape which we have so frequently since effected. Miss Kenney, from the platform, announced that we should openly leave the hall, and she forthwith walked coolly down into the audience. The police rushed in in overwhelming numbers, and after a desperate fight, succeeded i
n capturing her. Other detectives and policemen hurried to the side door of the hall to intercept me, but I disappointed them by leaving by the front door and escaping to a friend’s house in a cab.
The police soon traced me to the house of my friend, the distinguished scientist, Mrs Hertha Ayrton, and the place straightway became a besieged fortress. Day and night the house was surrounded, not only by police, but by crowds of women sympathisers. On the Saturday following my appearance at the Pavilion we gave the police a bit of excitement of a kind they do not relish. A cab drove up to Mrs Ayrton’s door, and several well-known members of the Union alighted and hurried indoors. At once the word was circulated that a rescue was being attempted, and the police drew resolutely around the cab. Soon a veiled woman appeared in the doorway, surrounded by Suffragettes, who, when the veiled lady attempted to get into the cab, resisted with all their strength the efforts of the police to lay hands upon her. The cry went up from all sides: ‘They are arresting Mrs Pankhurst!’ Something very like a free fight ensued, occupying all the attention of the police who were not in the immediate vicinity of the cab. The men surrounding that rocking vehicle succeeded in tearing the veiled figure from the arms of the other women and piling into the cab ordered the chauffeur to drive full speed to Bow Street. Before they reached their destination, however, the veiled lady raised her veil – alas, it was not Mrs Pankhurst, who by that time was speeding away in another taxicab in quite another direction.
Our ruse infuriated the police, and they determined to arrest me at my first public appearance, which was at the Pavilion on the Monday following the episode just related. When I reached the Pavilion I found it literally surrounded by police, hundreds of them. I managed to slip past the outside cordon, but Scotland Yard had its best men inside the hall, and I was not permitted to reach the platform. Surrounded by plain clothes men, batons drawn, I could not escape, but I called out to the women that I was being taken, and so valiantly did they rush to the rescue that the police had their hands full for nearly half an hour before they got me into a taxicab bound for Holloway. Six women were arrested that day, and many more than six policemen were temporarily incapacitated for duty.
By this time I had made up my mind that I would not only resist staying in prison, I would resist to the utmost of my ability going to prison. Therefore, when we reached Holloway I refused to get out of the cab, declaring to my captors that I would no longer acquiesce in the slow judicial murder to which the Government were subjecting women. I was lifted out and carried into a cell in the convicted hospital wing of the prison. The wardresses who were on duty there spoke with some kindness to me, suggesting that, as I was very apparently exhausted and ill, I should do well to undress and go to bed. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I shall not go to bed, not once while I am kept here. I am weary of this brutal game, and I intend to end it.’
Without undressing, I lay down on the outside of the bed. Later in the evening the prison doctor visited me, but I refused to be examined. In the morning he came again, and with him the Governor and the head wardress. As I had taken neither food nor water since the previous day my appearance had become altered to such an extent that the doctor was plainly perturbed. He begged me, ‘as a small concession’, to allow him to feel my pulse, but I shook my head, and they left me alone for the day. That night I was so ill that I felt some alarm for my own condition, but I knew of nothing that could be done except to wait. On Wednesday morning the Governor came again and asked me with an assumption of carelessness if it were true that I was refusing both food and water. ‘It is true,’ I said, and he replied brutally: ‘You are very cheap to keep.’ Then, as if the thing were not a ridiculous farce, he announced that I was sentenced to close confinement for three days, with deprivation of all privileges, after which he left my cell.
Twice that day the doctor visited me, but I would not allow him to touch me. Later came a medical officer from the Home Office, to which I had complained, as I had complained to the Governor and the prison doctor, of the pain I still suffered from the rough treatment I had received at the Pavilion. Both of the medical men insisted that I allow them to examine me, but I said: ‘I will not be examined by you because your intention is not to help me as a patient, but merely to ascertain how much longer it will be possible to keep me alive in prison. I am not prepared to assist you or the Government in any such way. I am not prepared to relieve you of any responsibility in this matter.’ I added that it must be quite obvious that I was very ill and unfit to be confined in prison. They hesitated for a moment or two, then left me.
Wednesday night was a long nightmare of suffering, and by Thursday morning I must have presented an almost mummified appearance. From the faces of the Governor and the doctor when they came into my cell and looked at me I thought that they would at once arrange for my release. But the hours passed and no order for release came. I decided that I must force my release, and I got up from the bed where I had been lying and began to stagger up and down the cell. When all strength failed me and I could keep my feet no longer I lay down on the stone floor, and there, at four in the afternoon, they found me, gasping and half unconscious. And then they sent me away. I was in a very weakened condition this time, and had to be treated with saline solutions to save my life. I felt, however, that I had broken my prison walls for a time at least, and so this proved. It was on 24th July that I was released. A few days later I was borne in an invalid’s chair to the platform of the London Pavilion. I could not speak, but I was there, as I had promised to be. My licence, which by this time I had ceased to tear up because it had an auction value, was sold to an American present for the sum of one hundred pounds. I had told the Governor on leaving that I intended to sell the licence and to spend the money for militant purposes, but I had not expected to raise such a splendid sum as one hundred pounds. I shall always remember the generosity of that unknown American friend.
A great medical congress was being held in London in the summer of 1913, and on 11th August we held a large meeting at Kingsway Hall, which was attended by hundreds of visiting doctors. I addressed this meeting, at which a ringing resolution against forcible feeding was passed, and I was allowed to go home without police interference. It was, as a matter of fact, the second time during that month that I had spoken in public without molestation. The presence of so many distinguished medical men in London may have suggested to the authorities that I had better be left alone for the time being. At all events I was left alone, and late in the month I went, quite publicly, to Paris, to see my daughter Christabel and plan with her the campaign for the coming autumn. I needed rest after the struggles of the past five months, during which I had served, of my three years’ prison sentence, not quite three weeks.
CHAPTER VII
The two months of the summer of 1913 which were spent with my daughter in Paris were almost the last days of peace and rest I have been destined since to enjoy. I spent the days, or some hours of them, in the initial preparation of this volume, because it seemed to me that I had a duty to perform in giving to the world my own plain statement of the events which have led up to the women’s revolution in England. Other histories of the militant movement will undoubtedly be written; in times to come when in all constitutional countries of the world, women’s votes will be as universally accepted as men’s votes are now; when men and women occupy the world of industry on equal terms, as co-workers rather than as cut-throat competitors; when, in a word, all the dreadful and criminal discriminations which exist now between the sexes are abolished, as they must one day be abolished, the historian will be able to sit down in leisurely fashion and do full justice to the strange story of how the women of England took up arms against the blind and obstinate Government of England and fought their way to political freedom. I should like to live long enough to read such a history, calmly considered, carefully analysed, conscientiously set forth. It will be a better book to read than this one, written, as it were, in camp between battles. But perhaps this one, hastily prepar
ed as it has been, will give the reader of the future a clearer impression of the strenuousness and the desperation of the conflict, and also something of the heretofore undreamed of courage and fighting strength of women, who, having learned the joy of battle, lose all sense of fear and continue their struggle up to and past the gates of death, never flinching at any step of the way.
Every step since that meeting in October 1912, when we definitely declared war on the peace of England, has been beset with danger and difficulty, often unexpected and undeclared. In October 1913, I sailed in the French liner, La Provence, for my third visit to the United States. My intention was published in the public press of England, France and America. No attempt at concealment of my purpose was made, and in fact, my departure was witnessed by two men from Scotland Yard. Some hints had reached my ears that an attempt would be made by the Immigration Officers at the port of New York to exclude me as an undesirable alien, but I gave little credit to these reports. American friends wrote and cabled encouraging words, and so I passed my time aboard ship quite peacefully, working part of the time, resting also against the fatigue always attendant on a lecture tour.
We came to anchor in the harbour of New York on 26th October, and there, to my astonishment, the Immigration authorities notified me that I was ordered to Ellis Island to appear before a Board of Special Inquiry. The officers who served the order of detention did so with all courtesy, even with a certain air of reluctance. They allowed my American travelling companion, Mrs Rheta Childe Dorr, to accompany me to the Island, but no one, not even the solicitor sent by Mrs O.H.P. Belmont to defend me, was permitted to attend me before the Board of Special Inquiry. I went before these three men quite alone, as many a poor, friendless woman, without any of my resources, has had to appear. The moment of my entrance to the room I knew that extraordinary means had been employed against me, for on the desk behind which the Board sat I saw a complete dossier of my case in English legal papers. These papers may have been supplied by Scotland Yard, or they may have been supplied by the Government. I cannot tell, of course. They sufficed to convince the Board of Special Inquiry that I was a person of doubtful character, to say the least of it, and I was informed that I should have to be detained until the higher authorities at Washington examined my case. Everything was done to make me comfortable, the rooms of the Commissioner of Immigration being turned over to me and my companion. The very men who found me guilty of moral obloquy – something of which no British jury has ever yet accused me – put themselves out in a number of ways to make my detention agreeable. I was escorted all over the Island and through the quarters assigned detained immigrants, whose right to land in the United States is in question. The huge dining-rooms, the spotless kitchens and the admirably varied bill of fare interested and impressed me. Nothing like them exists in any English institution.
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