Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story recounts her childhood in Manchester and the family influences that shaped her suffrage convictions. This deck covers her early political awakening, education in Paris, and her marriage to Dr. Pankhurst.
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Chapter 1 · Question
What childhood bazaar did Pankhurst recall in Manchester, and why was it held?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
Pankhurst's earliest recollection is a great bazaar in her native Manchester held to raise money for the newly emancipated negro slaves in the United States. Her mother took an active part, and Pankhurst, then no older than five, was entrusted with a lucky bag to help collect money. She says she already understood the words slavery and emancipation.
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Section 14 cards
What childhood bazaar did Pankhurst recall in Manchester, and why was it held?
Pankhurst's earliest recollection is a great bazaar in her native Manchester held to raise money for the newly emancipated negro slaves in the United States. Her mother took an active part, and Pankhurst, then no older than five, was entrusted with a lucky bag to help collect money. She says she already understood the words slavery and emancipation.
Chapter 1
How did Pankhurst's family circle and father regard slavery and the American Civil War?
Pankhurst says public opinion in England was sharply divided on slavery and secession, and broadly the propertied classes were pro-slavery, though with many exceptions. Most of her family's friends opposed slavery, and her father, Robert Goulden, was always a most ardent abolitionist, prominent enough to serve on a committee welcoming Henry Ward Beecher on his lecture tour.
Chapter 1
Which stories did Pankhurst's mother use as bedtime tales, and what effect did they have?
Her mother used Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin continually as a source of bedtime stories. Pankhurst says the tales, told almost fifty years earlier, remain as fresh as morning newspaper events because they made a deeper impression. She recalls Eliza's race for freedom over the broken ice of the Ohio River, the pursuit, and the rescue by the old Quaker.
Chapter 1
What runaway slave story haunted Pankhurst on train rides throughout her childhood?
She recalls the tale of a negro boy fleeing his cruel master's plantation who had never seen a railroad train. Hearing an approaching train, his strained imagination made the clattering car-wheels repeat, 'Catch a nigger--catch a nigger--catch a nigger--.' Pankhurst calls it a terrible story and thought of that escaping slave whenever she rode in a train.
Chapter 1
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What two responses did childhood stories of war awaken in Pankhurst?
The author says these stories awakened two sets of sensations to which she responded most readily all her life: first, admiration for the spirit of fighting and heroic sacrifice by which alone the soul of civilisation is saved; and second, appreciation of the gentler spirit moved to mend and repair the ravages of war.
Chapter 2
How did the Reform Act of 1866 raise women's suffrage hopes?
The Household Franchise Bill gave the Parliamentary vote to householders paying at least ten pounds a year rent. John Stuart Mill's amendment to include women householders was defeated, but the act used the word 'man' rather than 'male person.' Since another act held that 'man' includes 'woman' unless stated otherwise, many women believed suffrage had been granted.
Chapter 2
What happened after the Fenian rescue attempt in Manchester?
During the Fenian Revolt, police arrested leaders and a rescue attempt on the prison van led to a fatal pistol shot; a policeman was mortally wounded. Although the shooting was done without intent to kill, the men were tried for murder and three were found guilty and hanged. Pankhurst calls it a ghastly blunder and her awakening that justice and judgment lie often a world apart.
Chapter 2
What did Pankhurst's father say that shaped her view of sex inequality?
While feigning sleep, she heard her father say sadly, 'What a pity she wasn't born a lad.' She did not regret her sex, but the remark made clear that men considered themselves superior to women and that women apparently acquiesced. She found this hard to reconcile with both parents being advocates of equal suffrage.
Chapter 2
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How did young Emmeline try to help the Liberal Party at her first election?
Wearing new green winter frocks over red flannel petticoats, she and her sister walked about a mile to a polling-booth in a rough factory district and paraded before the crowds showing the Liberal colours. A nursery-maid removed them, and the author believes they may have been sent to bed.
Chapter 3
What effect did attending her first suffrage meeting at fourteen have on Emmeline?
Her mother let her go along on the way home from school, books still in hand. The speeches excited her, especially Lydia Becker's address; she admired Becker as secretary of the Manchester committee and editor of the Women's Suffrage Journal. She left the meeting, in her words, a conscious and confirmed suffragist.
Chapter 3
What educational principles did Mlle. Marchef-Girard apply at the Paris school?
She believed girls' education should be as thorough and even more practical than boys' education, including chemistry and sciences alongside embroidery, plus bookkeeping. She held that women should be given the highest ideals of honour, keeping pupils to strict truth-telling and candour. The author valued this moral discipline as much as the intellectual training.
Chapter 3
What was Dr. Pankhurst's legislative record on women's rights before their 1879 marriage?
He drafted the first enfranchisement bill, the Women's Disabilities Removal Bill, introduced by Jacob Bright in 1870; it passed its second reading by thirty-three votes but was killed in committee on Gladstone's orders. He and Lord Coleridge were counsel for the Manchester women seeking registration in 1868, and he drafted the bill giving married women control over property and earnings, law in 1882.
Chapter 3
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What did Pankhurst say about the claim that suffragists are soured women who failed to find emotional outlets?
She calls the taunt probably untrue of any suffragist and certainly untrue of herself, describing her nineteen-year married life and home relations as nearly ideal. She also notes that her husband, Dr. Pankhurst, did not want her turned into a household machine, believing society as well as the family needs women's services.
Chapter 4
What happened to the women's suffrage amendment to the 1884 County Franchise Bill?
Though suffragists had an actual majority in the House of Commons, Gladstone curtly refused a memorial asking for a free vote. He declared the Government would disclaim responsibility for the bill if the amendment carried, ordered Liberal members to vote against it via a whip, and later arranged business so an independent suffrage bill never came up for discussion.
Chapter 4
What did Pankhurst say about the Women's Liberal Associations and the suffrage cause?
The author argues they were a shrewd Gladstone move to disrupt suffrage organisation by offering 'something just as good.' Beginning in Bristol in 1881 and becoming a National Federation in 1887, they promised women would earn the vote by allying with men in party politics. Pankhurst says the long alliance never advanced suffrage one step; men accepted women's services but never paid.
Chapter 4
How did Pankhurst say the agricultural labourers actually won their franchise?
She notes they won it by burning hay-ricks, rioting, and otherwise demonstrating their strength in the only way English politicians understand, plus the threat to march a hundred thousand men to the House of Commons. She observes that no woman suffragist noticed this lesson, and says she herself was too young politically to learn it then.
Chapter 4
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Why did Dr. Pankhurst lose the 1885 Rotherline election despite being a popular candidate?
The Home-Rulers under Parnell opposed him. Although Dr. Pankhurst supported home rule, Parnell's settled policy was to oppose all Government candidates, so his forces were solidly against him and he was defeated. The author notes her husband defended Parnell's strategy of obstruction as absolutely right, a lesson she later applied.
Chapter 5
What was the outcome of the Bryant and May match girls' strike, and who supported it?
The strike of women working in the Bryant and May match factories was successful: the girls won substantial improvements in their working conditions. The author threw herself into it with enthusiasm, working with the girls and with women of prominence, among them Mrs. Annie Besant. She describes the period as one of tremendous unrest, labour agitation, strikes and lockouts.
Chapter 5
What happened at the Trafalgar Square Free Speech meeting, and what did the author say it achieved?
The Law and Liberty League held an immense Free Speech meeting in Trafalgar Square, with John Burns and Cunningham Graham as principal speakers. It ended in a bloody riot between police and the populace. Both speakers served prison sentences but gained fame and did much to establish free speech for English men. The author adds that English women were still contending for that right.
Chapter 5
How did the author characterize Haldane's suffrage bill and the support of young politicians like Edward Grey?
Haldane's bill enfranchised all women of the householding classes and made them eligible to all offices under the Crown, but it was never taken seriously and never advanced beyond the first reading. Haldane told her it was 'for the future.' The author argues that young aspiring statesmen like Edward Grey espoused suffrage to attract attention, then later turned against the cause.
Chapter 5
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What did Pankhurst find wrong with the Chorlton board's bread ration policy?
The old board, made up of "rate savers," gave each inmate a solid daily weight of bread that most could not eat; the surplus fed pigs, which fetched low market prices. Pankhurst proposed slicing and buttering the loaf with margarine so each person ate only what they wanted. The board feared inmates would suspect a cut in rations, so she suggested consulting the inmates, who consented. Saved bread became milk-and-currant puddings for the old people.
Chapter 6
What conditions for children in the Manchester workhouse did Pankhurst describe and reform?
She found girls of seven and eight scrubbing cold stone corridors in thin, short-sleeved cotton frocks, with no night dresses, while bronchitis was epidemic. Teaching was of the poorest order. Within five years the board had built a cottage-system home in the country, established a modern school with trained teachers, and secured a gymnasium and swimming-bath. Pankhurst sat on the building committee as its only woman member.
Chapter 6
What choice did the workhouse force on young mothers after confinement?
Pankhurst found pregnant women scrubbing floors almost until their babies were born, many of them unmarried and very young. After confinement they were allowed only two weeks in the hospital. Then they had to stay in the workhouse, earning their living by scrubbing and being separated from their babies, or take their discharge with a two-weeks-old infant, no home, money, or hope. This question underlay the women guardians' demand for Poor Law reform.
Chapter 6
Why did the twenty-pound lump sum payment defeat inspection of baby-farms?
Under the law, if a man who ruined a girl paid a lump sum of twenty pounds, the boarding home became immune from inspection, and inspectors could not enter as long as the baby-farmer took only one child at a time. Pankhurst argues the babies died with hideous promptness, often before the money was spent, freeing the farmer to solicit another victim. Women tried repeatedly to reform this and always failed, she says, because those who cared were mere women.
Chapter 6
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What did Pankhurst conclude about the vote after serving as a Poor Law Guardian?
She began to see the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity. The poor, unprotected mothers and babies she encountered, along with the women in the workhouse, she says were potent factors in her education as a militant.
Chapter 7
How did old women and old men in the workhouse differ, according to Pankhurst?
Pankhurst observed that the old women were in many ways superior to the old men. Women over sixty and seventy did most of the work, including sewing and cleaning, and showed touching industry and patience. The old men did little real work and preferred the oakum picking-room, where smoking was allowed.
Chapter 7
Why were so many respectable old women in the workhouse, per Pankhurst?
Most were not dissolute or criminal but had led respectable lives as wives, mothers, or single earners. Many were domestic servants who lost employment and could not save on wages averaging under two dollars a week. Widows of artisans and servicemen lost pensions that died with their husbands.
Chapter 7
What did Pankhurst say about women's relief under the Poor Law?
The law offered no relief for a woman and one child except the workhouse, and a woman with a baby at her breast was regarded as an able-bodied man. Pankhurst used to tell her male colleagues that when women had the vote, mothers could stay at home and care for their children.
Chapter 7
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What did the 1900 education law do to women's role in school administration?
The 1900 law abolished the school boards entirely and placed school administration under municipalities. Pankhurst notes this removed education from women's hands, despite her view that women cared more for schools and children. The law did require corporations to co-opt at least one woman onto education boards; Manchester co-opted four, including Pankhurst, recommended by the Labour Party.
Chapter 8
What led Pankhurst and her daughters to found the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903?
Susan B. Anthony's 1902 visit to Manchester influenced the founding. Christabel wrote an article about Anthony and was indignant that such a worker would die without seeing her hopes realized, declaring women must not waste another generation begging for the vote. In October 1903 Pankhurst invited women to her Nelson Street house, where they formed the WSPU: women-only, free of party affiliation, demanding action, with the motto 'Deeds, not words.'
Chapter 8
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Why did the old suffragists' annual deputation to the House of Commons accomplish little?
The author describes the yearly ceremony as conventional and farcical: women thanked sympathetic members, who renewed vague assurances of support, then returned to party business. The author argues the old leaders were content with sympathy and regret from politicians rather than concrete action, and that no bill becomes law without being made a Government measure.
Chapter 9
What did Emmeline Pankhurst ask Sir Charles M'Laren that upset the deputation?
She asked whether any member was preparing to introduce a women's suffrage bill, and what he and other members would pledge themselves to do for the reform they endorsed. He was unprepared to answer. The deputation left in confusion and wrath, calling her an interloper and impertinent intruder who had ruined the good impression.
Chapter 9
Why did the ILP adopt Dr. Pankhurst's 1870 Women's Enfranchisement Bill instead of universal adult suffrage?
A minority held the Labour Party should pursue universal adult suffrage for men and women. The author argues no such sweeping reform could then be effected unless the Government made it a measure, and that a majority of MPs pledged to equal women's franchise might not support adult suffrage. The National Council chose the original bill, approved by an overwhelming majority.
Chapter 9
How was the suffrage bill of May 12, 1905 defeated in the Commons?
The bill stood second on the order of the day, behind a Roadway Lighting Bill requiring carts to carry a rear light at night. Its promoters refused to withdraw, and the Conservative Government refused facilities for full discussion. The promoters then talked out the suffrage bill with silly stories and foolish jokes, which members greeted with laughter and applause.
Chapter 9
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What was the first militant act of the W.S.P.U., and how did police respond?
After women in the Strangers' Lobby grew angry, Pankhurst led them outside to a protest meeting. Police pushed the women and ordered them to disperse, then allowed a meeting in Broad Sanctuary near Westminster Abbey. There they made speeches and adopted a resolution condemning the Government for letting a small minority talk out their bill. The author calls this the W.S.P.U.'s first militant act; police merely took names.
Chapter 10
How did Annie Kenney join the W.S.P.U., and what did she contribute?
At a meeting in Oldham, mill-worker Annie Kenney introduced herself to Pankhurst as a suffrage sympathiser. Pankhurst invited her and her sister Jenny, a Board School teacher, to tea the next day; both joined the Union. The author says this changed Kenney's life and gave the W.S.P.U. one of its most distinguished leaders and organisers, helping carry propaganda to a new public.
Chapter 10
Why did the W.S.P.U. seek pledges from Liberal leaders rather than candidates?
The author argues that repeated experience taught the W.S.P.U. that only committing a Government to women's suffrage could attain it. Pledges of support from individual candidates were plainly useless and not worth having. The only object worth trying for was pledges from responsible leaders that the new Government would make women's suffrage part of its official programme.
Chapter 10
How did the slogan 'Votes for Women' originate at the Free Trade Hall meeting?
The W.S.P.U. planned a large banner reading 'Will the Liberal Party Give Votes for Women?' to drop over the gallery rails when Sir Edward Grey spoke. Unable to get the needed gallery seats, they cut out a small banner late that afternoon inscribed 'Votes for Women.' The author says this accident created the present worldwide suffrage slogan. Christabel held it aloft as Annie Kenney questioned Grey.
Chapter 10
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What did the two women do after being flung into the street in Manchester?
After stewards dragged Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney from the Liberal meeting, the two girls staggered to their feet in the street and began addressing the crowds, telling them what had happened inside. Within five minutes they were arrested on a charge of obstruction and, in Christabel's case, assaulting a police officer. Both were summonsed to appear the next morning in a police court.
Chapter 11
What sentences did the court impose, and what did the women choose?
After a trial the author calls a mere farce, Annie Kenney was fined five shillings or three days in prison, and Christabel Pankhurst was fined ten shillings or one week. Both promptly chose the prison sentence. When Emmeline offered to pay the fines, Christabel said that if her mother paid, she would never go home, showing her courage was unshaken.
Chapter 11
How did the press react, and what was the actual effect on the suffrage cause?
The press was almost unanimously bitter, ignoring that men routinely question speakers at political meetings and calling the girls unsexed creatures who deserved nursery discipline. One Birmingham paper said the incident argued against giving ladies political power. Yet the author argues it set the cause back only in the sense that sympathy letters poured in, the WSPU gained many members, and suffrage became a live topic across Britain.
Chapter 11
Why did the WSPU concentrate its campaign on Winston Churchill?
The WSPU would have opposed every Liberal candidate but was limited in funds and members, so it concentrated on one Cabinet member, Winston Churchill. The author says there was no animus against him; he was chosen because he was the only important candidate standing for constituencies within reach of their headquarters. They heckled him at every meeting, and though he won, it was by the smallest majority of any Manchester Liberal candidate.
Chapter 11
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What did Pankhurst claim the heckling campaign achieved for women's suffrage?
The author argues the heckling campaign made women's suffrage a matter of news, which it had never been before, filling the newspapers with the suffragists. She also says it revived the old suffrage associations, which organised a gigantic manifesto in favour of action from the Liberal Government, signed by groups including the Women's Co-operative Guild, the Women's Liberal Federation, and the Independent Labour Party.
Chapter 12
What happened when the first London suffrage procession reached the House of Commons?
On February 19, 1906, between three and four hundred women, mostly East End working-women, marched in the first suffrage procession in London. Police ordered them to furl their banners, and at the Strangers' Entrance they learned the doors of the House of Commons were barred to women for the first time in memory. The government later allowed twenty women at a time into the lobby, but no member could be persuaded to take up their cause.
Chapter 12
Why did a Commons majority pledged to suffrage fail to pass a bill?
Pankhurst explains that for seven years a majority of the House of Commons had been pledged to vote favourably on a suffrage bill, and the year before had voted favourably on one, yet it did not become law. She argues an overwhelming majority of private members is powerless against a hostile Government of eleven cabinet ministers, since members' practical powers are limited to enacting Government measures.
Chapter 12
How did the WSPU differ from other suffrage associations, according to Pankhurst?
The author argues WSPU members were absolutely single-minded, concentrating all their forces on one object: political equality with men. No member divided her attention between suffrage and other social reforms. She claims other suffragists were party members first and suffragists afterward, or suffragists part of the time and social theorists the rest, and that had all suffragists adopted this principle, British women would have been enfranchised years earlier.
Chapter 12
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How did the WSPU's membership rules enforce loyalty to its policy?
Any woman could join by paying a shilling, but she had to sign a declaration of loyal adherence to the policy and pledge not to work for any political party until the women's vote was won. If a member lost faith in the policy, suggested a substitute, or tried to add other policies, she ceased at once to be a member. The author calls this autocratic and defends it.
Chapter 13
What was the foundation of the WSPU's policy toward the Government?
The foundation was opposition to a Government that refused votes to women. The WSPU opposed the Liberal party because it was in power, and said it would oppose a Unionist government if that were in power and opposed to woman suffrage. It urged suffragists to leave the Liberal party and voters to vote against Liberal candidates until justice was done.
Chapter 13
What precedent did the WSPU cite for its anti-government policy?
The author says the policy was not invented by the WSPU but was pursued by Mr. Parnell in his Home Rule struggle over thirty-five years earlier. In 1885 the Home Rulers persistently voted against the Government in the Commons, forcing Gladstone's resignation. Gladstone returned with a majority of eighty-four, and to keep control he brought in a Home Rule Bill, which private intrigue and Parnell's death prevented from becoming law.
Chapter 13
How did the WSPU's street campaign differ from older suffrage methods?
The WSPU adopted Salvation Army methods, going into the highways and byways after converts and discarding conventional notions of what was ladylike. Members held street meetings with a chair for a rostrum, rang a bell to gather a crowd, gave lively suffrage speeches, and distributed literature. The author says this brought press publicity never accorded the older suffrage methods and reached audiences new to the doctrine.
Chapter 13
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What did Campbell-Bannerman tell the suffrage deputation on May 19th?
He assured them of his sympathy, belief in the justice of their cause, and confidence in their fitness to vote, but told them to have patience and wait, saying he could do nothing because some of his Cabinet were opposed. The deputation was then dismissed with the usual vote of thanks, and the W. S. P. U. held a protest meeting that afternoon.
Chapter 14
Why did the W. S. P. U. heckle Cabinet Ministers, and how does the author defend it?
The object was to keep woman suffrage in the foreground and insist no other reform was as immediately important. The author argues heckling is a time-honoured English right of opposition, comparing it to Liberals interrupting Conservative meetings, which newspapers praise as 'the Voice in Fine Form.' She notes suffragists were criticised and brutally handled for it.
Chapter 14
How did Lloyd-George respond when suffragists interrupted him?
The author recalls Lloyd-George saying he liked interruptions from a man because they gave him a chance to convert opponents, but when suffragists interrupted he said 'Pay no attention to those cats mewing.' He also claimed sympathy as a friend to woman suffrage; when asked why he did not act, he deflected by asking why they did not go for their greatest enemy, and the hall shouted 'Asquith!'
Chapter 14
What happened when the W. S. P. U. tried to attend Asquith's Northampton meeting?
In summer 1906 Pankhurst and other W. S. P. U. members went to Northampton, where Asquith was holding a large meeting for the Government's education bills. They organised outdoor meetings and prepared to attend his meeting. Pankhurst told the local Women's Liberal Association president they expected to be put out; the president insisted that could not happen in Northampton.
Chapter 14
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Why did Pankhurst enter the hall instead of holding her own outside meeting?
Her plan was to hold a meeting outside the door, but before Asquith spoke, W.S.P.U. members tried to question him and were thrown out with violence. She then turned her own meeting over to them, slipped quietly into the hall, and sat in the front row of the division reserved for wives and women friends of Liberal leaders.
Chapter 15
What question did Pankhurst put to Asquith, and how was she removed?
She asked whether, since Asquith said parents have a right to be consulted on their children's education, women—being parents—should not control their children's education through the vote as men do. The chairman looked to Asquith, who frowned and shook his head; stewards then seized her by the arms and shoulders and dragged her out.
Chapter 15
What happened to the deputations sent to Asquith's Cavendish Square house?
The first deputation was told Asquith was not at home; he had escaped through the back door in a fast motor-car. A larger deputation of about thirty women was stopped at the entrance to Cavendish Square by a strong force of police, who tore away banners, with blows and insults; the leader was choked against the park railings and arrested, and three other women were also arrested.
Chapter 15
What did the W.S.P.U. do at the Cockermouth by-election, and why?
At the August 1906 by-election, held to fill a parliamentary vacancy, the W.S.P.U. campaigned against the Liberal candidate. They told voters how the Liberal party had failed its pledges, described the arrests in London and Manchester and the treatment of women at Liberal meetings, and argued that a lost seat was the only rebuke politicians would notice.
Chapter 15
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What was the result of the Cockermouth by-election for the Liberal candidate?
The Liberal candidate lost the seat that his party had won at the general election a little more than a year before by a majority of 655. This time the Unionist candidate was returned by a majority of 609. The suffragettes were tremendously elated and hurried their forces to another by-election.
Chapter 16
What argument did Liberals and constitutional suffragists use against WSPU by-election tactics?
They said the vote, if won at all, must be gained from the Liberal party, and asked how the Liberal party would ever give the vote to open and avowed enemies. Women Liberals and constitutional suffragists advised working for the party instead. The WSPU retorted that they had done that unsuccessfully for too many years and persisted with the opposite method.
Chapter 16
What happened when the deputation tried to see the Prime Minister on October 23rd?
Only twenty women were admitted to the Strangers' Lobby under police orders. The Liberal whip returned with the reply that nothing could be done for women that session, and confirmed the Prime Minister held out no hope for any session during that Parliament or at any future time. A protest meeting began on the spot; eleven women were arrested and sent to Holloway for two months.
Chapter 16
How did the imprisonment of the women affect the WSPU, according to the chapter?
The authorities thought to crush the Union at a blow, but the author argues it gave the movement the greatest impetus it had yet received. Volunteers came forward to carry on the work, and older suffrage organisations joined prominent women in denouncing the affair as barbarous. Two women were made so ill in Holloway they were released within days, prompting questions in Parliament about treating Suffragettes as political offenders.
Chapter 16
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What did the House of Commons committee formed at Christmas resolve to do for women's suffrage?
A group of MPs formed a committee to press the government to grant the franchise to women during that Parliament. Its members resolved to educate wider public opinion, advocate suffrage when addressing constituency meetings, take Parliamentary action at every opportunity, and induce as many MPs as possible to ballot for a suffrage bill or motion next session.
Chapter 17
What happened when the February 13th deputation tried to reach the House of Commons?
Police, including mounted officers, blocked the deputation near Westminster Abbey. Horsemen rode into the procession, pursued women onto pavements and dragged others from doorways in front of the horses. Fifteen women reached the Strangers' Lobby and attempted a meeting; they and many outside were arrested. Fifty-seven women and two men were arraigned the next morning.
Chapter 17
What did the magistrate tell Christabel Pankhurst, and what sentence did she choose?
Mr. Curtis Bennett blamed the women entirely for the disorders, saying the Government had nothing to do with causing them and that the disgraceful street scenes must cease. Christabel replied the scenes could be stopped in only one way. Offered twenty shillings or fourteen days, she chose prison, as did the other prisoners; Mrs. Despard and Sylvia Pankhurst received three weeks.
Chapter 17
How did the 'raid' affect the WSPU and the suffrage bill prospects?
The author argues the raid gave the WSPU enormous, largely favourable publicity. Newspapers almost unanimously condemned the Government for sending mounted troops against unarmed women, angry questions were asked in Parliament, and the ranks grew. Though old-fashioned suffragists claimed friends in Parliament were alienated, a Liberal MP, Mr. Dickinson, won the ballot and planned a suffrage bill, backed by the prime minister.
Chapter 17
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What happened at the second Women's Parliament on March 20, 1907?
The second Women's Parliament assembled on the afternoon of March 20, 1907. The women adopted a resolution calling on the Government to introduce an official suffrage measure and voted to send it to the Prime Minister. Lady Harberton led the deputation, but police met the women at the hall door, and a struggle ensued. About one thousand police guarded the House of Commons; many women were arrested, and the resolution was not presented.
Chapter 18
What sentences were given to the arrested women, and what does Pankhurst say about 'militancy'?
At Westminster police court, sentences ranged from twenty shillings or fourteen days to forty shillings or one month's imprisonment. Miss Woodlock and Mrs. Chatterton, as 'old offenders,' got thirty days without the option of a fine; Mary Leigh got thirty days for hanging a 'Votes for Women' banner over the dock. Pankhurst argues that within the first two months of 1907 the Government imprisoned one hundred and thirty women whose 'militancy' consisted merely of trying to carry a resolution to the Prime Minister.
Chapter 18
How did the suffragettes conduct by-election campaigns, and what effect did they have?
Pankhurst led suffrage forces at by-elections, beginning work the hour they entered a town. They held street meetings, hired a vacant shop for literature and flags, and secured the best halls, sometimes leaving the candidate only schoolhouses. Their meetings were more popular, so candidates often spoke to empty benches. At Hexham they reduced the Liberal majority by a thousand votes, and seven more by-elections followed. Pankhurst says they tamed and educated a public used to violence at elections.
Chapter 18
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How did the crowd at the Suffolk election respond to the candidate's victory speech?
When the successful Unionist candidate asked the crowd what caused the victory, the crowd roared "Votes for Women!" and cheered the Suffragettes. The candidate, who had not intended this, waved graciously and conceded that "the ladies had something to do with it." The chapter uses this to show voters credited the suffragettes even when politicians rarely admitted their role in Government losses.
Chapter 19
What did the hostile London Tribune correspondent concede about the suffragette workers?
The Tribune, a Liberal paper hostile to suffragette tactics, still praised their energy and courage. Its correspondent judged their staying power extraordinary by men's standards, noting they worked twice as hard by taking afternoon and evening meetings, rising earlier and retiring as late. The author quotes his claim that women were better speakers, more logical, better informed, and better phrased than men.
Chapter 19
Why did the Mid-Devon by-election turn dangerous for Pankhurst after the result?
Mid-Devon was a stronghold that had elected only Liberals since 1885. After the Unionist candidate won by 1,280 votes, Pankhurst and Mrs. Martel were attacked by clay-cutters wearing Liberal red rosettes, who shouted "Those women did it!" and pelted them with clay and rotten eggs. Pankhurst was struck down and the two women took months to recover.
Chapter 19
What did Pankhurst observe about the mob and the aftermath of the Mid-Devon violence?
Surrounded by the silent ring of men in pit-clay-smeared clothes, Pankhurst felt poignant pity, finding them underfed, puny, and sodden, and asked, "Are none of you men?" Police rescued the women and guarded the shop. The rowdies then smashed the Conservative Club windows, and a bruised body was found in the mill-race, yet no man was arrested—which the author contrasts with the treatment of women in London.
Chapter 19
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What happened when Pankhurst rode a dog-cart toward the Commons?
Her ankle, still sensitive from the Mid-Devon attack, made walking painful, so Mrs. Drummond asked a man with a dog-cart to drive her. Police, already surrounding them in force, ordered her to dismount. She obeyed and limped along; when faint from pain, two women took her arms, the group's one act of disobedience to police orders.
Chapter 20
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What happened when the authorities tried the suffragettes under the Charles II Act?
The authorities, embarrassed by the women's readiness to test the act, changed their minds and announced they would continue treating the suffragettes as common street brawlers. At the Westminster police court trial, the author heard what she called astonishing perjuries from the prosecution, her testimony was ignored, and she and the others had to choose between being bound over or six weeks in the second division.
Chapter 21
What conditions did Pankhurst describe in Holloway Prison in 1907?
She describes Holloway as old, stuffy, draughty, and reeking of bad ventilation. Prisoners were kept in solitary confinement twenty-three hours out of twenty-four in narrow, dimly-lit cells, with no letters or visitors for the first month. She argues the English prison system was mediaeval and outworn, and that solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment for any human being.
Chapter 21
What did Pankhurst witness in the prison hospital that she said she would never forget?
About midnight she awoke to a woman in the next cell moaning in long, sobbing breaths of mortal pain. She realized a woman imprisoned by men's laws was giving birth in the cell. Pankhurst says she never forgot that night or what she suffered with the woman's birth-pangs, and later learned the woman was simply awaiting trial on a charge found to be baseless.
Chapter 21
How did Pankhurst occupy herself during her imprisonment?
Deprived of chapel and work in the hospital, she begged a wardress for sewing and was given a skirt to hem and later coarse knitting. She asked the chaplain for French or German books and received Jules Janin's Autour de mon Jardin, which she read and translated on the small slate given in place of paper. She kept a calendar and wrote French poetry and old school exercises on it.
Chapter 21
Section 224 cards
What did Pankhurst tell the Governor when asked if she had complaints upon release?
She replied that she had no complaints against him or the wardresses, but only against the prison and all men's prisons, declaring, "We shall raze them to the ground." This statement reflects her broader critique of the prison system rather than individual staff.
Chapter 22
How did Pankhurst surprise the Albert Hall meeting on the night of her release?
Her release was unexpected until the next morning, but she walked quietly onto the stage after the speakers and ex-prisoners were seated, removed the placard reading "Mrs. Pankhurst's Chair," and sat down. The women sprang up and stretched their hands toward her, and she was moved to tears.
Chapter 22
What was the result of the Peckham by-election and its attributed cause?
The previous Liberal majority of 2,339 was turned into a Conservative majority of 2,494. Letters to newspapers declared the loss was due almost entirely to the Suffragettes' work, and many Liberals urged party leaders to act for women before the next general election. The Liberal leaders responded not at all.
Chapter 22
Why did the WSPU target Winston Churchill in the North West Manchester and Dundee by-elections?
Churchill had to seek re-election upon becoming president of the Board of Trade. The WSPU fought him to defeat him if possible and reduce the Liberal majority. Christabel's campaign defeated him in North West Manchester by 420 votes. In Dundee, despite about 200 meetings, Churchill won, though with 2,200 fewer votes than his predecessor.
Chapter 22
Section 234 cards
What conditions did Asquith attach to allowing a woman-suffrage amendment?
Asquith said he did not wish to see women enfranchised and would not give facilities to the Stanger bill. He proposed a reform bill in which a suffrage amendment could be moved, saying the Government would not oppose it if approved by a Commons majority—provided it was on democratic lines and backed by the strong support of women and the present electorate.
Chapter 23
How did the WSPU interpret Asquith's promise, and how was this confirmed?
The WSPU called the pledge false on its face, arguing the 'democratic' proviso meant the Government would reject any practical amendment. When an anti-suffragist MP questioned Asquith in the Commons, he replied that the matter concerned 'a remote and speculative future,' which the author presents as justifying the WSPU's reading from Asquith's own lips.
Chapter 23
What challenge did Herbert Gladstone issue, and how did the WSPU respond?
Gladstone argued suffrage must pass through academic discussion to effective action, and that power belongs to masses—men assembled in tens of thousands in the thirties, sixties and eighties. Though he doubted women could assemble in such masses, the WSPU determined to answer the challenge by organizing a Hyde Park demonstration of at least 250,000 on Sunday, June 21, 1908.
Chapter 23
How did the WSPU advertise its Hyde Park demonstration?
The WSPU spent over a thousand pounds on advertising alone, covering hoardings in London and principal provincial cities with posters showing portraits of the twenty platform presiders, a map of the seven procession routes, and a plan of the meeting-place. Women chalked sidewalks, distributed handbills, canvassed house to house, and carried sandwich boards. Mrs. Drummond even invited Parliament from a launch on the Thames.
Chapter 23
Section 254 cards
How did Winchester authorities respond to a riot over a historic gun?
The author recounts that in Winchester a great riot broke out over moving a historic gun; windows were broken and serious property damage done, yet no punishment was administered. The authorities bowed to public opinion and restored the gun to its original place. The author uses this to argue that window-breaking by Englishmen is treated as honest political expression, while the same act by Englishwomen is treated as a crime.
Chapter 25
What summons did Pankhurst, Christabel, and Mrs. Drummond receive on October 12, 1908?
The Commissioner of Police laid information that in October 1908 they were guilty of conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace by publishing a handbill inciting the public to rush the House of Commons at 7:30 P.M. on October 13th. The summons ordered them to Bow Street police station that afternoon at three; they went instead to a Queen's Hall meeting, and the summons was adjourned.
Chapter 25
Why did Christabel Pankhurst conduct the defense at the October 21 trial?
Christabel held an LL.B. but women could not practise law in England, so she had never appeared at the bar except as defendant. She therefore combined the roles of defendant and lawyer for the three of them. She sought trial by judge and jury, suspecting police-court officials acted under commands of those against whom the agitation was directed; jury trial was denied, though a week's adjournment was granted.
Chapter 25
How did Lloyd-George's testimony and the magistrate's ruling help the defendants?
Christabel questioned Lloyd-George on the meaning of "rush" and on the Trafalgar Square speeches, and he admitted the speeches were temperate and the crowds orderly. Asked about his Swansea advice that women be ruthlessly flung out of his meeting, he answered nothing. The magistrate called this irrelevant, insisting it was a private meeting "in a sense"; Christabel said it was public.
Chapter 25
Section 264 cards
What did Miss Brackenbury say the magistrate told her when sentencing her?
Christabel asked Georgiana Brackenbury whether Mr. Horace Smith said he was doing what he had been told to do; the magistrate objected but the witness had already answered "Yes." The chapter presents this as an admission recorded under oath that Suffragettes were sentenced by the Government rather than by the magistrate according to evidence and law.
Chapter 26
Why did Christabel argue the Government kept the case in a police court?
Christabel argued the authorities dared not let the case reach a jury, believing a jury of countrymen would acquit them, as John Burns was acquitted years earlier for actions more dangerous to public peace. She said this procedure was carefully thought out to deprive them of trial by jury and of the right to appeal the magistrate's decision.
Chapter 26
What did Christabel admit about the handbill, and how did she defend it?
Christabel did not deny issuing or circulating the bill bearing the words "Come and help the suffragettes rush the House of Commons," and said they did not apologise for those words. She said the action was taken to press a claim which, according to the British constitution, they were well entitled to make, following in the footsteps of men now in Parliament.
Chapter 26
How did Christabel use Lloyd-George's and Gladstone's own words against them?
Christabel noted Gladstone had said victory by argument alone is not enough and told them to fight as men did, yet the Government prosecuted them. She cited Lloyd-George's career as a series of revolts and his statement that without the vote women would be justified in adopting men's methods, such as pulling down Hyde Park railings.
Chapter 26
Section 274 cards
What did Pankhurst tell the magistrate about why the suffragettes were in court?
Pankhurst declared that the suffragettes were present not as law-breakers but in their efforts to become law-makers. She argued that women had petitioned and held meetings yet Parliament claimed it was responsible only to voters, and that their agitation was a matter of honour, like the duty of forefathers to improve the world for women.
Chapter 27
What demands did Pankhurst make of the Holloway Governor on arrival?
She demanded that Suffragettes no longer be treated as ordinary law-breakers, refusing to be searched or undressed before wardresses, since two Cabinet Ministers had admitted at trial they were political offenders. She also claimed the right to speak with friends during exercise. The Governor granted the first two demands but required Home Office consultation on the silence rule.
Chapter 27
How did Pankhurst break the prison silence rule, and what followed?
At exercise she called her daughter by name and told her to stand still; they linked arms and talked. A wardress seized her and removed her to her cell while other suffrage prisoners cheered. For the 'mutiny' the others got three days' solitary confinement, while Pankhurst was classed a 'dangerous criminal' and held in solitary without exercise or chapel for two weeks.
Chapter 27
How did public opinion reach inside Holloway prison?
Released suffrage prisoners, including Mrs. Drummond, spread the story of the mutiny and of a later one led by Miss Wallace Dunlop that sent many women into solitary confinement. Suffragettes marched by thousands around the prison, singing the Women's Marseillaise and cheering. Pankhurst heard them faintly, which lightened her loneliness; a later march was turned back by police.
Chapter 27
Section 284 cards
What prison privileges did Pankhurst and her daughter gain after demonstrations and Commons questions?
Orders came from the Home Office allowing them to see each other, exercise and talk together for one hour each day, and read a daily newspaper. On December 8th, the day of Christabel's release, orders came that Emmeline too should be discharged, two weeks before her sentence expired.
Chapter 28
What new policy did Pankhurst announce at the Lincoln's Inn Hotel breakfast?
She told members they should henceforth refuse to abide by ordinary prison rules and demand treatment as political prisoners. She argued Cabinet Ministers had admitted in the witness box that they were political offenders, and that civilised nations treat such offenders differently, so the Liberal government must not treat them as ordinary law-breakers.
Chapter 28
Why did the WSPU decide to test the right of petition in 1909?
They wanted to force the Liberal Government on record regarding the oldest popular right, petition. Asquith had said he received deputations of men on many days and listened favourably, yet women were refused. The WSPU held that the right of petition, written into the 1689 Bill of Rights, now applied to petitioning the Prime Minister.
Chapter 28
How did the WSPU plan to petition while staying within the Charles II Act's limits?
They accepted the Charles II Act's limitation that petitions be carried by groups of no more than twelve, and decided small groups of women would carry the petition to the House of Commons. Pankhurst wrote to Asquith that a deputation would wait on him at eight o'clock; he formally declined to receive them, but they continued preparations.
Chapter 28
Section 294 cards
What did Miss Wallace Dunlop do in St. Stephen's Hall, and what was her sentence?
She stamped an extract from the Bill of Rights on the stonework of St. Stephen's Hall, using printer's ink, to remind Parliament that women possess constitutional rights. After an initial interruption by a policeman, she succeeded two days later. She was arrested and sentenced to one month in the third division, refusing the option of a heavy fine.
Chapter 29
How did the police initially treat the deputation approaching St. Stephen's Hall?
At St. Margaret's Church a long line of police blocked the road, but then an order was given and the lines parted, letting the women walk through toward the House. Inspector Wells escorted them while the crowd cheered, believing they would be received. At the entrance to St. Stephen's Hall, Inspector Scantlebury handed Pankhurst a letter refusing the deputation.
Chapter 29
Why did Pankhurst strike Inspector Jarvis, and how did he respond?
Fearing the two fragile elderly women with her could not endure the repeated pushing and forced retreats, Pankhurst decided to force an immediate arrest by committing a technical assault, striking Inspector Jarvis lightly on the cheek. He said he understood why she did it, but the other police did not act, so at his prompting she struck him again, after which he ordered the arrests.
Chapter 29
How did the WSPU explain the mysterious reappearance of small groups of women after Parliament Square was cleared?
The WSPU had hired thirty offices in the neighborhood, where women waited in shelter until it was time to sally forth in groups of seven or eight and dash toward the House. This ingenuity exasperated police, who could not tell where the women came from, and it diverted attention from other Suffragettes breaking windows at the Admiralty, Home Office, Treasury and Privy Council Offices.
Chapter 29
Section 303 cards
What did Sir Albert de Rutzen decide about the women's right of petition?
He agreed with Henle and Cecil that the right of petition was guaranteed to every subject, but held the women acted wrongly in persisting after being refused entry to the House of Commons and after Asquith said he would not receive them. He fined them five pounds each or one month in the second division, suspending sentence pending a higher court decision.
Chapter 30
What three characteristics of the right of petition did Lord Robert Cecil argue?
Cecil contended the right had three characteristics: it was the right to petition the actual repositories of power; it was the right to petition in person; and the right must be exercised reasonably. He supported the right to petition in person with historical precedents and the Charles II Tumultuous Petitions Act, and noted the Bill of Rights confirmed petitioning the King.
Chapter 30
How did Pankhurst interpret the high court's decision and its effect on the W.S.P.U.?
The author argues the decision destroyed the ancient constitutional right of petition secured by the Bill of Rights, since a petition that cannot be presented in person is of little value. She says the ruling was appalling to the W.S.P.U. because it closed the last constitutional approach to enfranchisement, but it spurred the group to new and more aggressive militancy rather than discouraging them.
Chapter 30
Section 314 cards
Why did Wallace Dunlop refuse food in Holloway prison?
She demanded treatment as a political offender rather than as a common criminal in the second division. When the Governor said he could not alter the magistrate's sentence, she declared the Suffragettes would never again submit to ordinary prison treatment and would refuse food until the Government yielded. The authorities ignored her letter and tried tempting food and persuasion, but she did not surrender.
Chapter 31
How did the fourteen window-breaking prisoners respond on arrival at Holloway?
Learning of Wallace Dunlop's act, they agreed in the prison van to follow her example. They refused to give up belongings, wear prison clothing, perform prison labour, eat prison food, or keep silence. The Governor allowed them to keep property and clothing for the moment but called it mutiny. They postponed the hunger strike pending a Home Secretary reply, then broke their cell windows.
Chapter 31
What happened to the mutineers after the visiting magistrates arrived?
They were sentenced to seven to ten days of solitary confinement in dark, unclean, damp punishment cells. There they resolutely hunger struck. After five days one woman's condition was so reduced that the Home Secretary ordered her release; several more followed the next day, and before the week ended all fourteen had gained liberty. The affair excited great sympathy across England.
Chapter 31
What did Mr. Gladstone do after the affair excited sympathy across England?
The author states that Gladstone tried to divert that sympathy by charging two prisoners with kicking and biting the wardresses. Despite their vigorous denials, one was sentenced to ten days and the other to a month. Still weak from the earlier hunger strike, they immediately began a second hunger strike and had to be released within three days.
Chapter 31
Section 324 cards
How does Pankhurst describe the physical stages of a hunger strike?
She says hunger pangs usually last about twenty-four hours, though she personally suffers most on the second day. Then weakness and mental depression replace craving, digestion disturbances shift desire to longing for pain relief, and intense headache, dizziness or slight delirium may occur. Final stages bring complete exhaustion and a feeling of isolation from earth. Recovery is often protracted and full recovery sometimes discouragingly slow.
Chapter 32
How were hunger-striking suffragette prisoners treated in the two months after the first strike?
Pankhurst writes that scores of women adopted the hunger strike as protest against a Government refusing to recognize the political character of their offences. She says some were treated with unexampled cruelty: delicate women were sentenced to solitary confinement and handcuffs for twenty-four hours at a stretch, and one woman who refused prison clothes was put into a straightwaistcoat.
Chapter 32
What precautions guarded Asquith at the September 17th Birmingham meeting?
Pankhurst describes security never equalled except for the Tsar during Russian revolutionary outbreaks: detectives and police surrounded the Cabinet from Commons to Birmingham; Asquith used a quarter-mile underground passage, was carried upstairs in a luggage lift, entered Bingley Hall by a side door, and the glass roof was covered with tarpaulin. Ladders, firemen's hose, barricades and regiments of police were deployed.
Chapter 32
How did the Government defend forcible feeding, and who opposed it?
Masterman, speaking for the Home Secretary, called it "hospital treatment" to preserve the Government's dignity and save prisoners' lives. Pankhurst argues no law allows it except for certified insane persons, and even then it is unsafe. The Lancet published physicians condemning the practice; Dr. Mansell-Moullin protested the term as a foul libel, and 116 physicians signed a memorial to the Prime Minister.
Chapter 32
Section 334 cards
What did the doctor tell Mrs. Leigh about release on medical grounds?
The senior doctor told Mrs. Leigh he had orders from his superior officers that she was not to be released even on medical grounds, and that if she continued refusing food he must take other measures to compel her to eat. She replied that she still refused and argued she could not legally be forcibly fed, since an operation could not be performed without a sane patient's consent.
Chapter 33
How was Mrs. Leigh forcibly fed, and who reacted to it?
Two doctors and wardresses forced her onto the bed; a doctor pushed a two-yard rubber tube up her nostril into her stomach while she shrieked in pain. Three wardresses burst into tears and the junior doctor begged him to stop, but he persisted on Government orders. Food was poured through a funnel, and she said it felt as if the back of her nose and throat were torn out when the tube was withdrawn.
Chapter 33
How did the Carnegie Hall audience react to Pankhurst's opening line?
At her first lecture at Carnegie Hall on October 25th, 1909, the hall was filled and crowds thronged the streets outside. When she rose, a deep hush fell, but at her first words, 'I am what you call a hooligan--', a great shout of warm and sympathetic laughter shook the walls. She took this as proof she had found friends in America.
Chapter 33
Why did the WSPU oppose the Liberals in the 1910 election?
The author argues they had no faith in Asquith's pledge to allow an electoral reform bill amendable to include woman suffrage. She adds that failing to oppose the party in power would have invited Asquith and Balfour to agree not to deal with suffrage at all, keeping it outside practical politics. She compares their position to the Irish Nationalists in 1885, whose opposition made the Liberal government dependent on Irish votes and obliged to bring in a Home Rule Bill.
Chapter 33
Section 344 cards
Why did suffragists reject pleas to waive their claim in the election?
Other suffrage societies and Liberal women urged them to waive the claim "just this once" because of the Commons–Lords budget struggle. The suffragists replied the same plea was made in 1906 over the fiscal issue, and that for women there was only one political issue: their own enfranchisement. They argued both Houses were unrepresentative until women had a voice in choosing legislators and influencing lawmaking.
Chapter 34
What electoral impact did opposing Liberal candidates in forty constituencies have?
The suffragists opposed Liberal candidates in forty constituencies. In almost every one, Liberal majorities were reduced, and eighteen seats were wrested from Liberal candidates. The author calls it a terrible election for the Government. The Liberal Party was returned to power, but its majority over all sections of the House of Commons was swept away, leaving the Asquith Government dependent on Labour Party and Irish Nationalist votes.
Chapter 34
What precautions protected Asquith at his meetings during the election?
Asquith travelled with detectives and official "chuckers out" whose sole duty was ejecting interrupters on Votes for Women. Hall windows were boarded up or covered with wire netting, thoroughfares were barricaded, traffic suspended, and large police forces guarded him. At one place he reached his meeting by a secret path through gooseberry bushes and a cabbage patch, then escaped along a sawdust-covered path to a concealed motor car.
Chapter 34
What was the Conciliation Committee and what bill did it frame?
Formed at the suggestion of H. N. Brailsford, the non-party Conciliation Committee aimed to unite suffragists in the House of Commons regardless of party and frame a passable suffrage measure. Lord Lytton chaired it; it had twenty-five Liberals, seventeen Conservatives, six Irish Nationalists, and six Labour members. Dr. Pankhurst's equal-terms bill was abandoned for one based on the municipal franchise: women householders and occupiers of business premises paying ten pounds rental and upwards.
Chapter 34
Section 354 cards
How did the Women's Social and Political Union respond to the Conciliation Bill?
The WSPU accepted the bill through its official newspaper, stating it did not give them all they wanted but they would support it if others did. The bill was submitted to all suffrage societies and women's organisations and accepted by every one of them. The WSPU also arranged a massive national and international demonstration in support of the bill, the greatest made up to that time.
Chapter 35
What did Asquith tell the House of Commons about facilities for the Conciliation Bill?
Asquith said the Government would give time before the session's close for full debate and division on second reading, but no further facilities. He stated frankly that he personally did not want the bill to pass, though the Government recognised the House of Commons should have an opportunity to deal with the question if that was its deliberate desire. Suffragists, press and public mostly read this as graceful yielding.
Chapter 35
Why did the WSPU urge members to send the bill to a Grand Committee?
The WSPU feared Asquith might let the bill pass its debating stages only to smother it in committee. A bill sent to a Grand Committee proceeds without special facilities while the House transacts other business, returning only at report stage before third reading and the Lords. A bill referred to the Whole House cannot reach committee stage without special facilities. The WSPU therefore urged members to vote for a Grand Committee.
Chapter 35
How did Churchill and Lloyd-George act against the Conciliation Bill despite their reputations?
The WSPU had counted on both men as suffrage sympathizers, but both opposed the bill in debate. Churchill gave a conventional anti-suffrage speech claiming women had no grievances, then attacked the bill because the class of women it would enfranchise did not suit him. He proposed selecting 'some of the best women of all classes' by property, education and earning capacity, and called the bill anti-democratic.
Chapter 35
Section 364 cards
Who drafted the Conciliation Bill, and why was it introduced as a private bill?
The author states the bill was drafted by men, not by a committee of women as Lloyd-George claimed. It was introduced as a private bill because the Government refused to bring in a party measure and refused to deliberate on any broader form of suffrage. Suffragists would have welcomed Government deliberation on a wider franchise.
Chapter 36
What majority did the Conciliation Bill win on its second reading?
It passed its second reading by a majority of 109, with 299 members voting for and 190 against. The author notes this was a larger majority than the Government's budget or the House of Lords Resolution had received, and no measure during that Parliament had received so great a majority.
Chapter 36
What did Philip Snowden offer in response to Lloyd-George's conditional support?
Snowden said the bill's promoters would withdraw it if Lloyd-George on behalf of the Government, or the Prime Minister, would undertake to give the House the opportunity to discuss and carry through another form of franchise bill. If that could not be obtained, they would prosecute the bill. The Government made no reply.
Chapter 36
What did Emmeline Pankhurst declare at the Albert Hall meeting on November 10th?
She declared it was the last constitutional effort of the W.S.P.U. to secure the bill's passage. If the Government killed the bill, the truce would end, and since the Government claimed no power to secure Commons time, the W.S.P.U. would take the matter out of its hands and resume direction of the campaign itself. She called for another deputation to the Prime Minister.
Chapter 36
Section 374 cards
What plan did the Government devise to deal with the suffragettes on Black Friday?
The author argues the Government, fearing Liberal women would stop election work if suffragettes suffered, ordered police to punish and turn back the women without arresting them. Women were to be thrown from one policeman to another and so rudely treated that terror would make them turn back. Previously police had arrested women who persisted; Black Friday's wholesale brutality was unprecedented.
Chapter 37
How did the crowds and police behave during the Black Friday struggle?
Contrary to Government hopes, the crowds were friendly, pushing to clear a path; Pankhurst's deputation reached the Strangers' Entrance. Police seized and tore banners, threw women from one man to another, and used fists on faces, breasts and shoulders. After about five hours, with crowds turbulent in defense, police made arrests: 115 women and four men, most bruised or injured.
Chapter 37
What happened to the arrested suffrage prisoners in police court the next morning?
Mr. Muskett, prosecuting for the Chief Commissioner of Police, told the magistrate he had orders from the Home Secretary that the prisoners be discharged. Mr. Churchill had decided no public advantage would be gained by proceeding, so no evidence would be given. Newspapers reported subdued laughter and some contemptuous booing; prisoners were brought in batches and discharged.
Chapter 37
How did the House of Commons respond to the deputation and Lord Castlereagh's amendment?
Asquith refused to receive the deputation despite appeals from Keir Hardie, Sir Alfred Mondell and others. Lord Castlereagh moved an amendment to compel facilities for the Conciliation Bill; Pankhurst begged friendly members to support it. Only fifty-two backed it, putting party loyalty before manhood, and Asquith promised a Government statement the following Tuesday.
Chapter 37
Section 383 cards
What did Asquith promise regarding a franchise bill, and why did suffragettes reject it?
Asquith said the Government would, if still in power, give facilities in the next Parliament for a franchise bill framed to admit free amendment, but refused to promise it in the first year. The W.S.P.U. found the promise too vague and ambiguous, since the current Parliament had lasted only ten months and the next might be equally short—so the promise meant nothing.
Chapter 38
What did the discharge of most of the 160 arrested Suffragettes establish, according to Pankhurst?
That week 160 Suffragettes were arrested, but all except those charged with window-breaking or assault were discharged. Pankhurst argues this court action established two things: that the Home Secretary's claim of no responsibility for prosecuting and sentencing Suffrage prisoners was a colossal falsehood, and that the Government knew imprisoning women of good character struggling for citizenship was bad election tactics.
Chapter 38
What did Lady Constance Lytton do as 'Jane Warton,' and what happened to her?
To protest the privileges given her because of rank, Lady Constance Lytton cut her hair, disguised herself in cheap clothing, and as 'Jane Warton' joined a Newcastle demonstration, suffering arrest and imprisonment. Treated as an ordinary prisoner without adequate medical examination, she endured forcible feeding, was struck on the cheek by a doctor, and was released only when her identity became known. Pankhurst says she never recovered and became a hopeless invalid.
Chapter 38
Section 394 cards
What did the WSPU do to protest the census in April 1911?
The WSPU organized census resistance, urging women to refuse to fill in census papers or to stay away from home while enumerators took the census. Direct resistance risked a £5 fine or a month's imprisonment. Pankhurst argued women should refuse to be numbered until they counted as people for representation as well as taxation.
Chapter 39
How did Asquith's government block the Conciliation Bill in 1911?
The Prime Minister announced that all Fridays before Easter, plus the Tuesdays and Wednesdays usually reserved for private members' bills, would be given to Government measures. This removed the time needed for the Conciliation Bill's second reading. Pankhurst notes hardly any Liberal objected, the Irish were pleased for Home Rule, Labour seemed complacent, and one backbencher even thanked the Prime Minister for the gagging.
Chapter 39
What was Pankhurst's criticism of the 1906 'Children's Charter'?
The author argues the Act placed most responsibility for child neglect on mothers, who under English law had no rights as parents. She cites Annie Woolmore, imprisoned six weeks despite starving herself to feed her children, and Helen Conroy, jailed three months with her husband over a condemned room. Pankhurst used such cases to justify the census resistance.
Chapter 39
How did the new Conciliation Bill differ from the old one?
The old bill, titled 'A Bill to give the Vote to Women Occupiers,' was hard to amend. The new bill was titled 'A Bill to Confer the Parliamentary Franchise on Women,' removing Lloyd-George's objection. The £10 occupation clause was dropped, eliminating fears of 'faggot voting,' where a rich man made daughters tenants to grant them votes. It also protected married women from disqualification by marriage.
Chapter 39
Section 403 cards
What majority passed the Conciliation Bill's second reading, and when?
The Conciliation Bill was debated on May 5th and passed its second reading by the large majority of 137. Public opinion and part of the press then pressed the Government to grant facilities, and the Conciliation Committee sent a deputation to the Prime Minister reminding him of his pre-election promise that the Commons would have an opportunity to deal with the whole woman suffrage question. He gave only an assurance that the matter was under consideration.
Chapter 40
What facilities did the Government promise for the bill, and why?
The Government said it would not grant facilities that session but would next session, after a second reading, give a week for further stages—via a good ballot place or a Government day. Asquith's letter to Lord Lytton promised elasticity, no unreasonable obstacle to closure, and extra days for report and third reading if committee finished in time. The author states this pledge was made to deter a W.S.P.U. militant demonstration at the King's coronation.
Chapter 40
How did the W.S.P.U. react to Asquith's assurances, and what campaign followed?
Previously sceptical, the W.S.P.U. was now convinced the Government was sincere about full facilities the following year. They held a joyful mass meeting at Queen's Hall, where Pankhurst declared warfare against the Government at an end. The new policy was a great holiday campaign to make victory in 1912 certain: arousing electors, holding MPs to allegiance, and organizing women. Pankhurst chose Scotland and Wales for her holiday labours. The Nation's leader shared this confidence.
Chapter 40
Section 413 cards
What conditions did the WSPU's new by-election policy impose on candidates?
The WSPU worked against candidates of every party who refused to promise not only to support the Conciliation Committee in carrying the bill, but also to vote against any amendment the committee considered dangerous. The author presents this as an attempt to cover every possibility of disaster, only to find the Asquith Ministry capable of what she calls cold-blooded lying.
Chapter 41
How did Asquith's August 1911 letter to Lord Lytton describe the Government's promises?
Asquith wrote that he had no hesitation in saying the promises made by and on behalf of the Government regarding facilities for the Conciliation Bill would be strictly adhered to, both in letter and in spirit. The author says this reassured the suffragists, even as Lloyd-George hinted the promises were illusory, and she told an American audience in 1911 that English women would vote next year.
Chapter 41
What did Pankhurst observe about American prisons and the Night Court for Women?
Pankhurst says the Blackwell's Island workhouse and penitentiary, though not model institutions, were infinitely superior to English prisons where women were punished for political activism: no solitary confinement, no rule of silence, no deadly officialdom, and better food and kindness. At the Night Court she saw women charged with solicitation, most of high type by nature, and the magistrate said economic reasons drove most cases.
Chapter 41
Section 424 cards
What did Asquith promise a deputation of the People's Suffrage Federation on November 7th, 1911?
Asquith said the Government would introduce and pass a genuine reform bill abolishing existing franchise qualifications in favor of residence, applying to adult males only. It would be framed to allow a woman suffrage amendment if the Commons desired it. He also pledged facilities for the Conciliation Bill, which the chapter says were incompatible promises.
Chapter 42
How did the Insurance Bill treat women, according to the chapter?
The chapter states the clauses were notoriously unfair: about four million women got sickness insurance but no women got unemployment insurance, versus eleven million men for sickness and two and a half million for unemployment. Women received lower benefits for the same premium, and premiums from family income were credited to men's accounts. No insurance was provided for wives, mothers, and daughters working at home.
Chapter 42
How did the W.S.P.U. respond after Asquith's November 17th deputation reply?
Led by Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, W.S.P.U. women went out with stones and hammers and broke hundreds of windows at government offices including the Home Office, War and Foreign Offices, Treasury, and Somerset House, plus the National Liberal Club and other buildings. Two hundred twenty women were arrested and about 150 imprisoned for a week to two months.
Chapter 42
Why did the chapter call the Government's offer of a possible woman suffrage amendment an insult?
The author argues universal suffrage was unlikely in a country where women outnumbered men by one million, so the offer of a possible amendment was a gratuitous insult. Newspapers including the Evening News said the manhood suffrage bill would blow the Conciliation Bill to smithereens, since a property qualification for women could not coexist with manhood suffrage.
Chapter 42
Section 434 cards
Why did Emily Wilding Davison set fire to a Parliament Street letter box?
In December Miss Davison was arrested for attempting to set fire to a letter box at Parliament Street Post Office. In court she said she acted as a protest against the Government's treachery and to demand that women's suffrage be included in the King's speech. She called her protest serious, noting that in past reform agitation the step after window-breaking was incendiarism, meant to draw private citizens' attention. She received six months' imprisonment.
Chapter 43
What did the WSPU conclude about the Conciliation Bill by early 1912?
The WSPU considered itself done with the Conciliation Bill forever, believing its prospect of success had been destroyed. When Mr. Agg Gardner announced he would reintroduce it, this interested them only slightly. The WSPU held that nothing less than a Government measure would satisfy them, since it had been clearly demonstrated that only a Government measure would be allowed to pass the House of Commons.
Chapter 43
What tactic did Pankhurst announce at the February 16th meeting?
At a meeting welcoming released window-breaking prisoners, the author argued for using the "argument of the stone," the time-honoured official political argument, saying stronger weapons were unnecessary if stones sufficed. She reasoned that breaking glass produced more effect on the Government with less hurt to women than enduring assault in Parliament Square. She said the Union only goes as far as obliged to win.
Chapter 43
How does the author answer curiosity about the link between property destruction and the vote?
The author argues that only a complete lack of historical knowledge excuses that curiosity, since every advance of men's political freedom has been marked by violence and destruction of property — usually by war, called glorious, sometimes by riotings, deemed less glorious but at least effective. She notes that at the very hour she spoke, Cabinet Minister C. E. H. Hobhouse told an anti-suffrage meeting the movement lacked a popular uprising like Nottingham Castle in 1832 or the Hyde Park railings in 1867.
Chapter 43
Section 444 cards
What did Pankhurst cite as the violent 1832 Bristol reform riots' result?
The author recounts that militant reformers burned Bristol's new gaol, toll houses, the Bishop's Palace, Queen's Square, warehouses and other property, valued at over L100,000. She argues that as a result of such violence, and fear of more, the reform bill was hurried through Parliament and became law in June 1832.
Chapter 44
How did the WSPU outmaneuver police on March 1st and 4th, 1914?
Pankhurst explains they announced a March 4th demonstration but secretly planned another for March 1st. Late that Friday she and two others threw four stones through No. 10 Downing Street windows and were arrested; relays of women then smashed glass across central London. Police guarded Parliament Square on March 4th, but the actual demonstration had occurred that morning in Knightsbridge.
Chapter 44
What did Home Secretary response to Sir William Byles' question about Pankhurst's speech?
Byles asked whether the Home Secretary had noted a speech by Mrs. Pankhurst allegedly inciting violent outrage, property destruction, and threats of firearms, and what steps he proposed to protect society. The Home Secretary replied that his attention had been called to the speech, but that it would not be desirable in the public interest to say more at present.
Chapter 44
How did magistrates respond to the arrested suffragettes' stated motives?
Pankhurst says the women made clear, lucid statements of their positions and motives, but magistrates are not schooled to examine motives; they are trained to think of laws, mostly laws protecting property. About two hundred suffragettes were taken to police stations over the two days, including famous women such as composer Dr. Ethel Smyth.
Chapter 44
Section 454 cards
What did Pankhurst tell the magistrate about the miners' strike?
Pankhurst reminded the magistrate that the Government was negotiating peace with striking coal miners instead of arresting their leaders, and argued the women's actions were a fleabite compared to the miners' violence. She warned that if imprisoned she would go further, since women who help pay Cabinet Ministers' salaries deserve a voice in making the laws they obey. She was sentenced to two months.
Chapter 45
How did Christabel Pankhurst avoid arrest, and why did Emmeline approve?
When police raided Clement's Inn with warrants for Christabel and the Pethick Lawrences, Christabel was not there. Realizing the Union would suffer if its leadership were entirely removed, she decided it was her duty to avoid arrest, left quietly, stayed with friends, and reached Paris the next night. Emmeline's relief was great because the movement would still be wisely directed.
Chapter 45
What did the police seize from the Clement's Inn offices?
Police thoroughly ransacked the Clement's Inn offices, going through every desk, file and cabinet to find evidence of conspiracy. They took away two cab loads of books and papers, including all of Pankhurst's private papers, photographs of her children in infancy, and letters from her husband long ago. Some of these she never saw again.
Chapter 45
How did the police raid affect the WSPU newspaper, and what did the blank columns convey?
Police terrorised the printer, and although the paper came out as usual, about a third of its columns were left blank. Headlines like "History Teaches" and "Women's Moderation" over white space suggested the Government was suppressing what history teaches and comparisons of women's window breaking with men's greater past violence. The editorial page was blank except for "A Challenge!" and Christabel Pankhurst's name.
Chapter 45
Section 464 cards
What did the laughter in court signify to the author?
The author argues the laughter was more than amusement at the W. S. P. U.'s business-like methods; it showed that the old respect for Cabinet Ministers was gone. The militants had, in her words, torn the veil from their sacro-sanct personalities and shown them as mean and scheming politicians.
Chapter 46
What evidence did police present about the window-breaking of March 1st and 4th?
Police testified that after arresting the author and two companions in Downing Street on March 1st, the women handed over their reserve stock of heavy flint stones, all alike. Other prisoners had similar stones. Officers described methodical, systematically planned window-breaking and soldierly behavior, with women gathering at Clement's Inn and the Gardenia restaurant before simultaneous smashing.
Chapter 46
Why were the defendants' bail pleas and trial preparation affected?
Mr. Pethick Lawrence argued he and his wife deserved bail after two weeks on remand; the author demanded a remand prisoner's privileges. Both pleas were denied, though the Home Secretary later remitted the author's sentence until after the Bow Street conspiracy trial. The author argues public opinion forced these concessions, since preparing a defense in prison is nearly impossible.
Chapter 46
What irony did the author note about the judge and prosecutor at the Old Bailey trial?
The author notes Judge Lord Coleridge was son of Sir Charles Coleridge, who in 1867 appeared with Dr. Pankhurst in Chorlton v. Lings seeking to establish women as persons entitled to vote. Attorney General Sir Rufus Isaacs, prosecuting, had in 1910 said the elector's bullet is his ballot and peaceful struggles contrast with past disorder.
Chapter 46
Section 474 cards
What did the Attorney General claim the WSPU campaign aimed to do?
He described the WSPU as using militant methods since 1907 and said that after the November 1911 manhood suffrage announcement the defendants pursued a campaign amounting to anarchy: women acting together in numbers large enough to paralyse police, in order, in the defendant's words, "to bring the Government to its knees." He ignored motive and treated the affair as if the women were burglars.
Chapter 47
What did cross-examination reveal about England's political secret police?
Testimony and cross-examination disclosed a special band of seventy-five secret police forming the political branch of the Criminal Investigation Department. They work in disguise, shadow Suffragettes and other political workers from home to business, into tea rooms, restaurants and theatres, follow them in taxicabs and omnibuses, and take down speeches. Pankhurst says the system is exactly like Russia's secret police.
Chapter 47
Why did the WSPU abandon trying to influence a political party?
The WSPU, founded in 1903, first tried to persuade the party then coming into power to adopt women's enfranchisement. Pankhurst says it took time to convince them this was useless. In 1905 they faced a Press boycott—speeches, letters and parliamentary news on suffrage went unreported—and Liberal documents spoke only of "a simple measure of Manhood Suffrage," so they sought a way to force attention.
Chapter 47
How did Pankhurst describe the form militancy took and its provocations?
She said each step followed Government repression, and that the Government alone—not MPs or men generally—was regarded as the enemy. Women asked questions at meetings, then interrupted only Cabinet Ministers, going singly while men interrupted women's meetings in noisy gangs. Ticket admission and exclusion of women forced them to hide for thirty-six hours, wait starving in cold or on roofs, just to ask when the Liberal Government would keep its promises.
Chapter 47
Section 481 cards
How did Pankhurst contrast the Government's treatment of suffragettes with Young Turkish revolutionaries?
The author argues the Government imprisoned her for three months as a common criminal for issuing a handbill less inflammatory than Government speeches, while simultaneously feting members of the Young Turkish Revolutionary Party who had invaded the Sultan's home and killed people in a successful revolution. She uses this contrast to explain why women concluded they had not done enough and needed to do more.
Chapter 48
Section 493 cards
What happened to efforts to obtain a public judicial inquiry after 'Black Friday'?
Pankhurst says every effort was made to get an open public judicial inquiry into police instructions on 'Black Friday,' but it was refused. Instead Lord Robert Cecil and Mr. Ellis Griffith held a private inquiry, heard the women's evidence, and reported they believed it substantially true and that there was good cause for an inquiry.
Chapter 49
How does Pankhurst describe the publicity given to Lord Robert Cecil's speech?
Pankhurst says Lord Robert Cecil spoke at the Criterion Restaurant calling on the Government to hold the inquiry, yet not one word of that speech was reported in any morning paper. She cites this as an illustration of the difficulties the movement faced in getting its facts before the public.
Chapter 49
What did Mr. Tim Healey argue about the political character of the prosecution?
Healey argued the Government prosecuted to seclude its chief opponents and silence 'Votes for Women' cries, noting men who drilled and boasted of arms were not prosecuted while only women faced indictment. He asked the jury whether the incitement of his clients or the conduct of Ministers led to these events.
Chapter 49
Section 503 cards
What did the judge say would have changed his sentencing decision?
Lord Coleridge stated that if he had observed any contrition or disavowal of the acts committed, or any hope that the defendants would avoid repeating them, he would have been much prevailed upon by the arguments to treat them as first class misdemeanants. Since no contrition was expressed, he sentenced all three to nine months in the second division plus costs of the prosecution.
Chapter 50
What precedents did Mr. Pethick Lawrence cite to argue they were political offenders?
He cited a Swiss subject whose extradition was refused because his offence was political, with the Court declaring even politically motivated murder a political crime. He also cited W. T. Stead, given first division treatment and freedom to see family due to unusual motive, and Dr. Jameson, whose raid killed twenty-one and wounded forty-six but who was made a first division prisoner because of his offence's political character.
Chapter 50
What did the three prisoners receive after the Home Secretary examined their case?
Shortly before the seven Parliamentary days expired, all three were placed in the first division. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence received Dr. Jameson's former cell and Pankhurst the adjoining one; Mr. Pethick Lawrence was similarly accommodated at Brixton. They could furnish cells with chairs, tables, bedding and towels, receive outside meals, wear own clothing, and have books and newspapers—though letters and visits remained restricted to the ordinary two-week routine.
Chapter 50
Section 513 cards
Why did Pankhurst and the Pethick Lawrences resume the hunger strike after gaining first division?
The order transferring prisoners to the first division applied only to Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Pankhurst herself. They refused this advantage, and after exhausting every means to get the same treatment for other suffrage prisoners, they adopted the hunger strike as protest. The word spread through Holloway and to Brixton, Aylesbury, and Winson Green, and all other suffrage prisoners followed their lead, leaving the Government with over eighty hunger strikers.
Chapter 51
How did Asquith answer the appeal to release the suffrage prisoners?
Asquith said it was not for him to interfere with his colleague Mr. McKenna, and added that no single prisoner could not leave prison that afternoon by giving the undertaking the Home Secretary asked for, meaning a promise to refrain from militancy. The author calls this statement suave and mendacious. George Lansbury rose and shouted that they could not, calling the statement disgraceful, and continued protesting until ordered to leave the House.
Chapter 51
What happened when the doctors came to forcibly feed Pankhurst?
Pankhurst heard Mrs. Lawrence scream and struggle, then doctors and wardresses appeared at her cell door. Weak from starvation, she seized a heavy earthenware water jug, held it high, and warned that she would defend herself if anyone stepped inside. Nobody moved for a few seconds; the doctor muttered something about doing it tomorrow morning and they retreated. It was the last attempt to feed either woman, and two days later they were released on medical grounds.
Chapter 51
Section 524 cards
Why did the third Conciliation Bill fail its second reading?
It failed by a majority of fourteen. Many Liberal members feared the bill would split the Cabinet, a rumour spread by Lloyd-George and Lewis Harcourt. The Irish Nationalists turned hostile because their leader, Redmond, was an anti-suffragist. Most Labour members stayed away from the House. The author notes the Militants were then blamed for the bill's loss.
Chapter 52
What did Asquith's manhood suffrage bill do, and how did suffragists view it?
It simplified registration, cut the residence qualifying period to six months, and abolished property qualifications, plural voting, and University representation, giving the franchise to every man over twenty-one while denying it to all women. The author calls it an unprecedented affront. Suffragists distrusted Asquith's pledge to allow a women's suffrage amendment, since he had broken every prior pledge.
Chapter 52
What happened to Mrs. Leigh and Miss Evans after the Theatre Royal fire?
They received five-year penal servitude sentences, the first women in the movement so sentenced. Refused first division treatment at Mountjoy Prison, they adopted the hunger strike, joined sympathetically by Irish Suffragettes already there. The Government kept them imprisoned to be forcibly fed as long as they could be kept alive, but after a fierce struggle both women fought their way out.
Chapter 52
Why did suffragettes attack golf links during the summer?
The author argues it was not wanton mischief but a practical aim: reminding the public that while English women's liberties were being stolen, it was no time for sports. Women targeted country clubs where prominent Liberal politicians spent weekends, burning turf with acids, sometimes burning 'Votes for Women,' and replacing Balmoral's marking flags with W.S.P.U. flags.
Chapter 52
Section 534 cards
Why did the WSPU target golf greens, and how did the press react?
The WSPU undertook to spoil the sport of politicians and comfortable men so they would be obliged to think clearly about women and their determination to get justice. The papers published appeals not to interfere with a game said to help weary politicians think clearly; the suffragettes replied it had not had that effect on Asquith or Lloyd-George. The author says this activity aroused more hostility than all the window-breaking.
Chapter 53
What ended at the October 17 Albert Hall meeting, and what replaced it?
The six years' association of Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the WSPU ended. A new paper, The Suffragette, edited by Christabel Pankhurst, was sold and became the official organ. A joint statement said the Pethick Lawrences could not approve the new militant policy, so they resumed control of Votes for Women and left the Union rather than make schism.
Chapter 53
What new militant policy did Mrs. Pankhurst outline after the split?
Relentless opposition not only to the Liberal Party but to all parties in the coalition—Nationalist and Labour included. Since the Government stayed in office through those parties' support, she argued they were parties to its guilt and would receive the same opposition. She summoned Labour to oppose the Government on every question until it did justice to women, saying they were equally responsible with Asquith.
Chapter 53
Why did the WSPU intend to strike at property rather than human life?
The author argues the WSPU never recklessly endangered human life, leaving that to men in their warfare, and that militancy against life would be out of place. She asserts governments care far more for the security of property than for human life, so it is through property that the enemy would be struck. Any sacrifice of property would be the Government's fault for refusing just demands.
Chapter 53
Section 544 cards
What forms of militancy did Pankhurst authorize at this meeting?
She told each woman to be militant in her own way: going to the House of Commons and refusing to leave without satisfaction, facing party mobs at Cabinet Ministers' meetings, joining the anti-Government by-election policy, breaking windows, and attacking the "secret idol of property." She ended by saying she incited the meeting to rebellion.
Chapter 54
What double standard does Pankhurst argue men apply to militancy?
The author argues men make the moral code and expect women to accept it. Men are praised for fighting for their liberties, while women doing the same are punished with prison and forcible feeding. She says men call it cowardly for men to accept tyranny, but merely "respectable" for women, and the Suffragettes repudiate this double standard.
Chapter 54
How does Pankhurst contrast treatment of Ulster rebels with Suffragettes?
She notes Ulster leaders incited armed rebellion and civil war, and prominent MPs said Ulster would fight and be right, yet none were arrested; Lord Selborne even praised their drilling. Mutinous officers resigned without arrest. Meanwhile women got nine months for inciting mild rebellion, and a labour leader who incited mutiny was freed in two months.
Chapter 54
What was the letter-burning campaign and how was it justified?
Within days of her call to strike at property, letter boxes in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and other cities were attacked with fire, corrosive chemicals, and black fluids; over 5,000 letters were destroyed and thousands delayed. The author says this was undertaken with gravity because letters are less precious than human bodies and souls, citing the Titanic.
Chapter 54
Section 554 cards
Why did the WSPU declare a truce during the Franchise Bill debates?
The author states the truce gave the Government full opportunity to fulfil its pledge on a woman suffrage amendment to the Franchise Bill. She adds that the militants did not believe Asquith would willingly keep his word, and that a principal reason for the truce was to ensure blame for any evasion fell on the Prime Minister, the 'real traitor,' rather than on militancy.
Chapter 55
What happened to the crippled woman arrested for pillar box destruction?
She was sentenced to eight months in the first division. She resolutely hunger struck and was forcibly fed with unusual brutality; the prison doctor deliberately broke one of her teeth to insert a gag. Despite her disabilities and weakness she persisted in her hunger strike and resistance to prison rules, and within a short time had to be released.
Chapter 55
How did Asquith's past handling of suffrage bills, per the author, show bad faith?
The author recounts that in 1908 the bill passed its second reading by 179 and Asquith refused to let it proceed; in 1910 the Conciliation Bill passed by 110 and he blocked it, pledging facilities if reintroduced in 1911 with free amendment; in 1911, with a majority of 167, it was torpedoed by a Government manhood suffrage bill.
Chapter 55
What amendments were moved to the Franchise Bill, and how was debate time allotted?
Sir Edward Grey moved an amendment deleting the word 'male,' leaving room for women's suffrage amendments. Two were moved: adult suffrage for men and women, and full suffrage for women householders and wives of householders, the latter postponing women's voting age to twenty-five rather than twenty-one. Debate began January 24th, 1913, with a day and a half for Grey's amendment and one-third of a day for each of the other two.
Chapter 55
Section 564 cards
Why did the Speaker rule a woman suffrage amendment improper to the Franchise Bill?
The Speaker held that passing any woman suffrage amendment would so alter the Franchise Bill's scope as to create a new bill. The bill's main object was altering the qualification or basis of registration for a Parliamentary vote, increasing the male electorate only indirectly. Because it was not framed to bestow the franchise on a hitherto excluded class, a suffrage amendment was not proper, though it would have been had the bill been so framed.
Chapter 56
How did Asquith respond to the withdrawal of the Franchise Bill?
Asquith admitted his women's suffrage pledge could not be fulfilled and offered a new one. He refused a Government bill to enfranchise women, instead promising full facilities of time in the next session for a private member's bill drafted to permit free amendment. He concluded that he had given effect, in letter and spirit, to every Government undertaking. The author calls this effrontery and treachery.
Chapter 56
Why did the author believe a private member's bill could not succeed?
The author argues there was no chance for a private member's bill even with facilities, principally because torpedoing the Conciliation Bill had destroyed the spirit of conciliation. Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, and militant and non-militant women had set aside differences to unite on a compromise measure. Lord Lytton had warned that if the 1911 Conciliation Bill failed, that conciliatory spirit would be destroyed and war would follow.
Chapter 56
What new form of militancy began in February 1913, and why?
The author says militancy as the public now understood it began in February 1913: continued, destructive guerrilla warfare against the Government through injury to private property. Earlier property destruction was sporadic and meant as warning. The militants concluded the Government would not yield to right and justice but only to expediency, so they had to make England and every department of English life insecure and unsafe.
Chapter 56
Section 572 cards
What examples of property damage does the chapter list during the first month of guerilla warfare?
Putting greens burned with acids on January 31st; telegraph and telephone wires cut February 7th and 8th, suspending London-Glasgow communication for hours; windows broken at smart London clubs; orchid houses at Kew wrecked; the Tower jewel room showcase broken; windows broken at Prince Christian's residence and Lambeth Palace; the Regents Park refreshment house burned February 12th; and Lloyd-George's house at Walton-on-the-Hill partially destroyed by bomb on February 18th.
Chapter 57
Why did Pankhurst plead not guilty at the Old Bailey despite accepting responsibility for the explosion?
She pleaded not guilty not to evade responsibility for the explosion, which she had already assumed, but because the indictment accused her of wickedly and maliciously inciting women to crime. She said what she had done was not wicked of purpose but the opposite of wicked, so she could not truthfully plead guilty. She conducted her own case in consultation with her solicitor, Mr. Marshall.
Chapter 57
Section 584 cards
What did Mr. Bodkin allege Mrs. Pankhurst was in the Lloyd-George house explosion?
Bodkin charged that she was an accessory before the fact, not present at the crime. He alleged she moved, incited, counselled and procured unknown women to carry out the explosion at Lloyd-George's house at Walton, and asked the jury to conclude the perpetrators were W.S.P.U. members of which she was head and recognised leader.
Chapter 58
How did the Judge frame the two ways Bodkin could present the case?
The Judge asked whether Bodkin asked the jury to find she specifically counselled this crime, or alternatively that her speeches were a general incitement to damage property, so anyone acting on that invitation was incited by her. Bodkin said the latter was correct and did not confine the case to the former.
Chapter 58
What did Mrs. Pankhurst object to about the police reports of her speeches?
She lodged an objection, saying the police reports supplied to her were grossly inaccurate, ignorant and ungrammatical, and conveyed an absolutely wrong impression of what she said. She accepted only the report of the Cardiff journalist, one of the witnesses, as fairly accurate.
Chapter 58
How did Mrs. Pankhurst rebut Bodkin's suggestions about her motor car and income?
She said she shared the dangers other women faced, having been imprisoned three times and treated as an ordinary felon. She stated she owned no motor car; the car she rode in belonged to the organisation for propaganda. She denied women were making L1,000 to L1,500 a year, saying she had sacrificed part of her own income for the movement.
Chapter 58
Section 594 cards
What did Pankhurst argue about respect for law among educated women?
The author argues that women of intelligence, training, and upright life had for many years ceased to respect the laws of this country, and that when one examines how the laws affect women, this is not to be wondered at. She framed this as a serious condition: respectable, naturally law-abiding people coming to hold the law in contempt and believing themselves justified in breaking it.
Chapter 59
What sentencing disparity did Pankhurst cite to the jury?
She told the Court that the law made it possible for a judge to send her to prison for fourteen years if found guilty, while the maximum penalty for the most revolting offences against little girls was only two years' imprisonment. She used this contrast to illustrate how scandalously unjust the laws were toward women.
Chapter 59
What did Pankhurst say she would do if convicted?
She told the jury that whatever her sentence, long or short, penal servitude or lighter imprisonment, she would not submit to it. From the moment she left the court she would deliberately refuse to eat food, join the women already on hunger strike in Holloway, and come out dead or alive at the earliest possible moment, then re-enter the fight once physically fit.
Chapter 59
Why did the Court stop Pankhurst from discussing certain judges?
Pankhurst tried to describe things she had learned as the wife of a barrister about men in high places entrusted with administering the law, including an Assizes judge found dead in a brothel. The Court refused to allow her to go into what it called personalities regarding distinguished people, telling her the sole question before the jury was whether she was guilty as charged.
Chapter 59
Section 604 cards
What did Pankhurst ask the jury to do in her final address?
She asked the jury to find her not guilty of malicious incitement, arguing her incitement was not malicious. She said the only way to stop the agitation was to do women justice, not by deporting or imprisoning them, and appealed to the jury for the welfare of the country and the race to return a not-guilty verdict.
Chapter 60
How did the judge rule on Pankhurst's arguments about provocation and unjust laws?
The judge said her topics about provocation by the laws and the injustice of women lacking the vote had no bearing on the question the jury had to decide. He stated motive afforded no defence to the indictment and directed the jury to decide on the evidence alone, without regard to whether they thought the law just or unjust.
Chapter 60
What verdict did the jury return, and what did Pankhurst say after it?
The jury found her guilty with a strong recommendation to mercy. Pankhurst said that since motive is not taken into account in human laws, she had no sense of guilt and felt she had done her duty. She called herself a prisoner of war, under no moral obligation to accept the sentence, and vowed to fight and resist forcible feeding.
Chapter 60
What did Justice Lush say when passing sentence on Pankhurst?
He called it a painful duty to pass a suitable and adequate sentence, recognizing the jury's recommendation to mercy and that her motives were not selfish. But he said the crime was serious and, despite her motives, wicked: it destroyed property of people who had done her no wrong, might maim or kill others, and lured young women into crimes possibly to their ruin.
Chapter 60
Section 614 cards
What sentence did the judge impose on Pankhurst, and what did he say he considered?
The judge sentenced her to three years' penal servitude, calling the crime serious and wicked, not trivial. He said he had paid regard to the jury's recommendation and noted she herself had stated the maximum sentence the legislature thought the offence deserved. He offered that if she would use her influence in a right direction he would help bring about mitigation, but she interjected that she had already thought of these things.
Chapter 61
How did the courtroom react when Pankhurst's sentence was pronounced?
The silence broke into pandemonium. Spectators first murmured 'Shame!' which swelled into loud indignant cries from gallery and court. Women sprang to their feet, some stood on seats, shouting 'Shame!' as Pankhurst was led out. One woman shouted 'Keep the flag flying!' and the chorus answered 'We will!' with cheers for Mrs. Pankhurst. Afterwards women filed out singing the Women's Marseillaise, and the judge threatened prison for any woman repeating such a scene.
Chapter 61
What was the Cat and Mouse Act, and who introduced it?
Home Secretary Reginald McKenna introduced the bill in March 1913 while Pankhurst awaited trial for conspiring to destroy Lloyd-George's country house. The author explains it allowed a hunger-striking suffrage prisoner certified by prison doctors as in danger of death to be released on a ticket of leave to regain strength, then return to serve the rest of her sentence under police surveillance. The author argues the law was frankly admitted to apply only to suffrage prisoners.
Chapter 61
According to the author, why did the government resort to the Cat and Mouse Act?
The author argues the Government was at its wits' end coping with hunger strikers and the scandal the situation brought on English law. McKenna said he could not make prisoners undergo sentences without serious risk of death, wanted power to release without a pardon while keeping the sentence alive, and wanted to enforce the law without forcible feeding. The author calls the measure the most savagely devised ever brought before a modern Parliament.
Chapter 61
Section 624 cards
What did Mr. McKenna admit about the Cat and Mouse bill and forcible feeding?
McKenna admitted to interrogating members that the Cat and Mouse bill, if passed, would not inevitably end forcible feeding, but promised the process would be used only when "absolutely necessary." Pankhurst calls this representation hypocritical, noting Parliament passed the Act through both houses within days, and she grieves that many Labour Party members pledged to woman suffrage helped make it law.
Chapter 62
How did Pankhurst respond to the Cat and Mouse Act upon entering Holloway in April 1913?
Pankhurst treated the Act with contempt and adopted the hunger strike exactly as before, refusing to assist McKenna in enforcing unjust sentences. She describes efforts to break her resolve, including tempting food and arguments about futility and risking suicide. After nine days she was released temporarily under a licence to return in fifteen days, which she tore up, declaring she would never voluntarily return to prison.
Chapter 62
What forms did the militant outbreak take after Pankhurst's imprisonment, according to the chapter?
Pankhurst reports the greatest revolutionary outbreak in England since 1832: unoccupied country houses fired, the Ayr race course grand stand burned, a bomb exploded at Oxted Station, empty railroad carriages blown up, and glass of thirteen famous paintings in the Manchester Art Gallery smashed. The Government responded by closing the British Museum, National Gallery, and Windsor Castle. She notes the public felt insecurity but did not yet demand votes for women.
Chapter 62
What happened to the WSPU headquarters and The Suffragette newspaper on April 30th?
Police raided the Kingsway headquarters and arrested the entire official force, including Miss Barrett, Miss Lennox, Miss Lake, Miss Kerr, and Mrs. Sanders, though none had appeared in militant action. Mr. E. G. Clayton was accused of furnishing explosive materials. Police also arrested printer Mr. Drew and seized the paper's material. Pankhurst decided not to let the issue lapse, and The Suffragette was printed overnight and sold alongside papers reporting its suppression.
Chapter 62
Section 633 cards
How did the WSPU keep operating after police raided headquarters and arrested leaders?
The author explains that the organization remained closed less than forty-eight hours because every leader had an understudy ready to take her place instantly. When Miss Kenney was arrested, Miss Grace Roe became chief organizer, aided by Mrs. Dacre Fox and Mrs. Mansel. The author presents this resilience as evidence of the Union's strong organization.
Chapter 63
Under the Cat and Mouse Act, what happened to paroled prisoners like Mrs. Pankhurst?
The author states that a paroled prisoner could be arrested without a warrant, and time spent at liberty regaining health did not count toward the prison sentence. The Bow Street magistrate therefore legally ordered her return to Holloway. She protested the inhumanity of the arrangement, arguing no one could recover health under such conditions.
Chapter 63
What did the author say about Emily Wilding Davison's background and motives?
The author describes Davison as a London University B.A. with first-class honours at Oxford in English Language and Literature, who set aside intellectual and social pursuits for the Union. After imprisonments and brutal treatment, including a hose turned on her cell, she became convinced that only the sacrifice of a human life would awaken public conscience. She died June 8th after throwing herself before the King's horse at Epsom.
Chapter 63
Section 644 cards
What new weapon did Pankhurst use against her gaolers, and with what result?
Pankhurst says the militant women had discovered the thirst strike, which she turned against her gaolers with such effect that they were forced to release her within three days. She describes it as far worse than the hunger strike—simple, unmitigated torture—and says she was sent home after three days in a condition of jaundice from which she never completely recovered.
Chapter 64
How does Pankhurst compare the thirst strike with the hunger strike?
The author argues the hunger strike, though a dreadful ordeal, is mild compared with the thirst strike, which she calls simple and unmitigated torture. She says thirst striking reduces weight so alarmingly fast that prison doctors were at first thrown into panic, and later still regarded it with terror. She describes the body crying out, muscles wasting, skin shrinking, and the voice sinking to a thready whisper.
Chapter 64
How did Pankhurst escape the police at the London Pavilion on July 13th?
At the close of the meeting, where Annie Kenney's prison licence was auctioned for L12, Kenney announced they would openly leave the hall. Police rushed in and captured Kenney after a desperate fight. Detectives hurried to the side door to intercept Pankhurst, but she disappointed them by leaving through the front door and escaping to a friend's house in a cab.
Chapter 64
What ruse did the suffragettes use at Mrs. Ayrton's house, and how did the police react?
A cab drove up and well-known Union members hurried indoors, spreading word that a rescue was being attempted. A veiled woman appeared and struggled with police, who cried that they were arresting Mrs. Pankhurst and drove her to Bow Street—where she raised her veil and proved not to be Pankhurst, who was speeding away in another taxicab. The author says the ruse infuriated the police.
Chapter 64
Section 653 cards
How was Pankhurst finally released from prison in July 1913?
After a night of suffering and no release order, she decided to force her release. She staggered up and down her cell until she collapsed on the stone floor, where she was found at four in the afternoon gasping and half unconscious. She was then sent away, released on July 24th and treated with saline solutions to save her life.
Chapter 65
What did Pankhurst do with her prison licence after release?
She had ceased tearing up her licence because it had an auction value. A few days after release she was taken in an invalid's chair to the London Pavilion platform, where she could not speak but was present as promised. The licence was sold to an American present for one hundred pounds, money she said she would spend for militant purposes.
Chapter 65
Why did Pankhurst believe she was left alone by police in August 1913?
She addressed a large meeting at Kingsway Hall on August 11th, attended by hundreds of visiting doctors during a great medical congress, where a resolution against forcible feeding passed. She was allowed home without police interference, and suggests the presence of so many distinguished medical men may have made authorities decide to leave her alone for the time being.
Chapter 65
Section 664 cards
Why was Pankhurst detained at Ellis Island, and how did it end?
She remained at Ellis Island two and a half days while the Commissioner of Immigration in Washington took her case to the President, who instantly ordered her release. She argues whoever ordered the detention overlooked its advertising value: her lecture tour became much more successful, and she sailed for England in late November with a generous American contribution to the war chest.
Chapter 66
How was Pankhurst arrested on her return to Plymouth?
A wireless message warned her the Government would arrest her on arrival. The bay was cleared of craft, with the tender anchored between two grey warships. Police came aboard and she heard, for the fifth time, that she was arrested under the Cat and Mouse Act. Refusing to cooperate, she was carried to a police tender and taken to Bull Point, then driven across Dartmoor to Exeter.
Chapter 66
What did Pankhurst do during her imprisonment at Exeter?
She had what she calls a not unendurable imprisonment and hunger strike of four days. Everyone from the Governor to the wardresses was openly sympathetic and kind, and a confidential official told her they kept her only on orders until after the great welcome-home meeting at the Empress Theatre, Earls Court, which raised L15,000 for militancy, including L4,500 from her American tour.
Chapter 66
Why did police arrest Pankhurst at Dover, and how did she resist at Holloway?
Police feared the women's body guard organised to resist her arrest, so they seized her at Dover and cleared Victoria Station, carrying her between lines of police into a guarded motor car. At Holloway she refused medical examination, calling the doctor a Government torturer, and began a hunger and sleep strike, taking no food or water from Saturday until Wednesday morning.
Chapter 66
Section 674 cards
What did Pankhurst resolve to do in her cell before release?
She told the Governor she intended to leave prison soon, dead or alive, and vowed to walk her cell without resting on the concrete floor until released or dead from exhaustion. She kept pacing all day, stumbling and falling, until the doctor told her that evening she was ordered released the next morning.
Chapter 67
How did the Government respond to the Bishop of London's visit to forcible-fed women?
The W.S.P.U. asked the Bishop to witness forcible feeding himself. He visited two tortured women but did not see them fed, then gave the public an account matching the Government's version. The W.S.P.U. was indignant, while Government supporters hailed him as backing the torture policy; the author argues he whitewashed the iniquity.
Chapter 67
What did Mary Richardson argue about struggling during forcible feeding?
Writing in the Suffragette, she compared it to not jumping when a cinder enters your eye: one struggles because the pain is excruciating and the nerves are so tortured that resistance is inevitable. She also gave a moral reason: forcible feeding is an immoral assault, and remaining passive would feel like the sin of concurrence.
Chapter 67
How did the author describe the church prayer protests and clergy reactions?
Women chanted prayers for imprisoned suffragettes during services; at Westminster Abbey vergers hustled them out violently and one man beat a woman with his fists. Some congregations stayed silent, some clergymen added amen or offered prayers voluntarily, but the author argues the Church as a whole failed to demand justice or protest forcible feeding.
Chapter 67
Section 684 cards
Why did the WSPU abandon petitioning the King's Ministers and turn to the King directly?
The WSPU resolved on direct petition to the king because it had been, in the author's words, tricked and betrayed at every turn by the Liberal Government. The organization announced it would no longer put even a pretence of confidence in the ministers and would carry its demand for justice to the throne of the Monarch instead.
Chapter 68
How did suffragettes demonstrate at the December 1913 Covent Garden gala?
Three beautifully gowned women occupied a box opposite the Royal Box, locked and barricaded the door, and at the close of the first act one addressed the King through a megaphone, comparing women's fight to Joan of Arc's. After they were ejected, forty or more women in an upper gallery showered suffrage literature on the audience.
Chapter 68
What three grievances did Pankhurst's planned deputation to Buckingham Palace protest?
The deputation was to protest the continued disfranchisement of women; the forcible feeding and cat and mouse torture of suffragettes; and the Government's tolerance of men opponents of Home Rule in Ireland who openly announced a policy of attacking property and destroying human life.
Chapter 68
What constitutional argument did Pankhurst's letter to the King make for a personal audience?
The author argued that voteless women live constitutionally in the era of unlimited monarchical power, so like oppressed men of old they may appeal directly to the King as source of power and justice. She cited George III receiving an Irish Catholic deputation in 1793 as precedent, and refused to be referred to ministers she had no part in electing.
Chapter 68
Section 694 cards
How did Pankhurst reach Glasgow for the February 1914 meeting?
She left London unknown to the police in a motor car, evading efforts to apprehend her, and succeeded in reaching Glasgow and getting onto the platform of St. Andrews' Hall, where she faced an enormous and manifestly sympathetic audience. Plans had been made to resist a suspected police rush on the platform, and the bodyguard was present in force.
Chapter 69
What was Pankhurst's stated 'text' for her Glasgow speech?
She proposed as her text: 'Equal justice for men and women, equal political justice, equal legal justice, equal industrial justice, and equal social justice.' She argued that if fighting for common ordinary equal justice is justifiable, then women have greater justification for revolution and rebellion than men have had in the whole history of the human race.
Chapter 69
How did the police raid on the Glasgow meeting unfold?
As Pankhurst said 'injustice,' police burst in, rushed the platform with truncheons drawn, headed by Scotland Yard detectives. They met a fusillade of flower-pots, tables, chairs and other missiles, and found barbed wire concealed under the decorations. The bodyguard and audience repelled them with clubs and planks; many bled. A woman firing a revolver loaded with blank cartridges held off a body of police. Pankhurst was seized and dragged to a waiting cab.
Chapter 69
What protests followed Pankhurst's Glasgow arrest, and what did Mary Richardson say at trial?
A large timber-yard was burnt in Bristol, a Scottish mansion was destroyed by fire, and eighteen windows were broken at the Home Secretary's house. Mary Richardson attacked the Rokeby 'Venus' in the National Gallery, saying she cared more for justice than art, that her act was premeditated, and that the Government's treatment of Pankhurst was 'murder, slow murder, and premeditated murder.'
Chapter 69
Section 704 cards
What did the magistrate say about the sentence for smashing a window versus an art treasure?
The magistrate regretfully noted that if Miss Richardson had smashed a window instead of an art treasure, he could have given her a maximum sentence of eighteen months. The author cites this as one more queer anomaly of English law, since attacking a painting drew only six months' imprisonment.
Chapter 70
How did the Government's treatment of Ulster militants differ from its treatment of suffragettes in Hyde Park?
The Government refused the W.S.P.U. permission to hold public meetings in Hyde Park, citing the women's militant policy. Yet it permitted Ulster militants to advocate their war policy there. On the day of the Ulster meeting, the militant men were allowed to speak in defence of bloodshed, but General Drummond was arrested before she had uttered more than a few words.
Chapter 70
What happened at the May 21st deputation to Buckingham Palace?
Pankhurst had appointed May 21st for a deputation to the King despite his refusal, through his Ministers, to receive them. She led the women to the Palace gates, where an army of several thousand police met them. The author argues the police violence and insult exceeded Black Friday. Pankhurst was seized bodily by an Inspector and taken to Holloway.
Chapter 70
What did the Dorothy Evans and Maud Muir case reveal about the Government's law enforcement?
The two suffragettes were arrested in Belfast for possessing explosives, though houses secreting tons of gunpowder for anti-Home Rule rebels went unsearched. The women refused trial unless the men rebels were also prosecuted, protesting loudly until dragged from court. They were imprisoned on remand and released unconditionally after a four-day hunger and thirst strike.
Chapter 70
Section 714 cards
What final message did Pankhurst give the Deputation before it set out?
Pankhurst made a short speech warning the Deputation of what might happen, and her final message was: "Whatever happens, do not turn back." They obeyed, pressing forward toward the Palace despite the violence inflicted on them. Many were arrested and imprisoned, and though for most it was a first imprisonment, they adopted the hunger strike, going seven or eight days without food and water before release, weak and ill.
Chapter 71
How did the W.S.P.U. respond to government raids and efforts to suppress the Suffragette?
The Government issued summonses, raided headquarters at Lincolns Inn House and other temporary offices, and pressured wholesale news agents to refuse the paper. Each successive raid caused less disruption because the organization was better prepared. Every effort to suppress the Suffragette failed and it appeared weekly; women built their own distribution system independent of the newspaper trade, and a Suffragette Defence Fund covered the extra costs.
Chapter 71
What mistakes did Lord Robert Cecil say the Government made in handling militancy?
In the June 11 Commons debate, Lord Robert Cecil moved a reduction of 100 pounds on the Home Office vote to force discussion. He said the Government took a more sanguine view than anyone else in the United Kingdom, and argued its leaders could never have induced followers into crime but for repeated serious mistakes: the shameful treatment of women on Black Friday, forcible feeding, and the differing treatment of Lady Constance Lytton and "Jane Warton." He still favored deportation.
Chapter 71
Why did Pankhurst call McKenna's claim about falling imprisonments misleading?
McKenna cited commitments dropping from 290 in 1912 to 183 in 1913 and 108 so far that year, calling it a lesson of the Cat and Mouse Act. Pankhurst argues this was incorrect or misleading: imprisonments fell not because offences declined but because militants, who formerly went willingly to prison, now escaped it wherever possible. Comparatively few "mice" were ever rearrested.
Chapter 71
Section 724 cards
What four methods did McKenna say were suggested for dealing with militancy?
McKenna listed four methods suggested to him by public correspondence: to let the suffragists die, to deport them, to treat them as lunatics, and to give them the franchise. He noted each drew only moderate applause and said he hoped to give reasons why none should be adopted at that time.
Chapter 72
Why did McKenna oppose the 'let them die' policy?
McKenna argued the policy rested on a delusion: rather than ending militancy, deaths in prison would be the greatest incentive to it, as scores of women would seek martyrdom. He also predicted a violent public reaction after twenty or more deaths, and said he could never take a hand in carrying it out.
Chapter 72
Why did McKenna say the King's refusal to receive the deputation was proper?
McKenna said subjects may petition the King respectfully, but have no right to a personal audience. It is the Home Secretary's duty to present petitions and advise the King. Since the petition came from a person under sentence of penal servitude, McKenna said it was his plain duty to advise the King not to grant it.
Chapter 72
How did McKenna dismiss Lord Robert Cecil's deportation remedy?
McKenna said deportation would merely move the difficulty to another country. If the distant island were run as a prison, the women would hunger strike there as in English prisons; if it were not, the Suffragettes' rich friends would come and rescue them in yachts.
Chapter 72
Section 734 cards
What proposal did Mr. McKenna reject as a remedy for lawlessness?
Mr. McKenna rejected giving the militants the franchise, saying that whatever its merits, it was not something he could discuss in Committee of Supply. He added that he was not responsible as Home Secretary for the franchise law and did not think it could be seriously treated as a remedy for the existing state of lawlessness.
Chapter 73
What legal tactic did the Government plan against W.S.P.U. subscribers?
McKenna said the society's funds were beyond the reach of British law, but the Government hoped to stop future subscriptions by suing subscribers in civil action, making them personally liable for all damage done. He also directed consideration of criminal proceedings. He said evidence came from raids on the offices, and hoped insurance companies would follow with their own actions.
Chapter 73
How did Keir Hardie respond to the Government's policy?
Keir Hardie criticized the Government for not offering any ray of hope on the franchise. He said he was not among those who believe a right thing should be withheld because some advocates use weapons of which we do not approve. He also said the bulk of the people look calmly and indifferently on events while the vote is withheld from women.
Chapter 73
What does the author argue militancy accomplished for the suffrage cause?
The author argues that militancy never set the cause back but set it forward at least half a century. She contrasts the House of Commons' earlier scorn, insults, and coarse jokes that talked out suffrage bills with this debate, and calls McKenna's speech a token of the Government's complete surrender.
Chapter 73
Section 742 cards
What did the Home Secretary promise about Suffragette fund subscribers?
The Home Secretary promised that subscribers to Suffragette funds would, if possible, be held legally responsible for damage done to private property by the Suffragettes. Pankhurst calls this a perfectly absurd promise that few Members of Parliament were deceived by, noting subscribers can remain anonymous and would take refuge behind that privilege if ever attacked for the movement's deeds.
Chapter 74
What does Pankhurst predict about future militancy after the war?
Pankhurst argues that Cabinet changes resulting from the warfare will make future militancy by women unnecessary. She asserts no future Government will repeat the mistakes and brutality of the Asquith Ministry, and none will undertake the impossible task of crushing or even delaying women's march toward political liberty and social and industrial freedom.
Chapter 74
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #34856 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-28. Cards reviewed 2026-10-28.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
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