The Suffragette Read online

  Sylvia Pankhurst designing a part of the decorations of the Prince’s Skating Rink

  THE SUFFRAGETTE

  THE HISTORY OF THE WOMEN’S MILITANT SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

  SYLVIA PANKHURST

  PREFACE BY

  EMMELINE PANKHURST

  DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  MINEOLA, NEW YORK

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 2015, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1911 by the Sturgis & Walton Company, New York. In the original edition, several chapters were numbered incorrectly; these errors have been retained to keep the present volume as close to the original as possible.

  ILibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pankhurst, E. Sylvia (Estelle Sylvia), 1882-1960

  The suffragette: the history of the women’s militant suffrage movement / Sylvia Pankhurst; preface by Emmeline Pankhurst. — Dover edition.

  pages cm

  Originally published: Sturgis & Walton Company, New York, 1911.

  Includes index.

  eISBN-13: 978-0-486-80731-7

  1. Women—Suffrage—Great Britain. I. Title.

  JN979.P3 2015

  324.6’230941—dc23

  2015014171

  Manufactured in the United States by RR Donnelley

  80484401 2015

  www.doverpublications.com

  Contents

  Preface

  Illustrations

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Index

  PREFACE BY MRS. PANKHURST

  THIS history of the Women’s Suffrage agitation is written at a time when the question is in the very forefront of British politics. What the immediate future holds for those women who are most actively engaged in fighting for their political freedom no one can foretell, but one thing is certain: complete victory for their cause is not far distant.

  When the long struggle for the enfranchisement of women is over, those who read the history of the movement will wonder at the blindness that led the Government of the day to obstinately resist so simple and obvious a measure of justice.

  The men and women of the coming time will, I am persuaded, be filled with admiration for the patient work of the early pioneers and the heroic determination and persistence in spite of coercion, repression, misrepresentation, and insult of those who fought the later militant fight.

  Perhaps the women born in the happier days that are to come, while rejoicing in the inheritance that we of to-day are preparing for them, may sometimes wish that they could have lived in the heroic days of stress and struggle and have shared with us the joy of battle, the exaltation that comes of sacrifice of self for great objects and the prophetic vision that assures us of the certain triumph of this twentieth-century fight for human emancipation.

  E. PANKHURST.

  4, Clement’s Inn, W. C, London.

  JANUARY, 1911.

  PREFACE

  IN writing this history of the Militant Women’s Suffrage Movement I have endeavoured to give a just and accurate account of its progress and happenings, dealing fully with as many of its incidents as space will permit. I have tried to let my readers look behind the scenes in order that they may understand both the steps by which the movement has grown and the motives and ideas that have animated its promoters.

  I believe that women striving for enfranchisement in other lands and reformers of future days may learn with renewed hope and confidence how the “family party,” who in 1905 set out determined to make votes for women the dominant issue of the politics of their time, in but six years drew to their standard the great woman’s army of to-day. It is certain that the militant struggle in which this woman’s army has engaged and which has come as the climax to the long, patient effort of the earlier pioneers, will rank amongst the great reform movements of the world. Set as it has been in modern humdrum days it can yet compare with any movement for variety and vivacity of incident. The adventurous and resourceful daring of the young Suffragettes who, by climbing up on roofs, by sliding down through skylights, by hiding under platforms, constantly succeeded in asking their endless questions, has never been excelled. What could be more piquant than the fact that two of the Cabinet Ministers who were carrying out a policy of coercion towards the women should have been forced into the witness box to be questioned and cross-questioned by Miss Christabel Pankhurst, the prisoner in the dock? What, too, could throw a keener searchlight upon the methods of our statesmen than the evidence put forward in the course of that trial?

  To many of our contemporaries perhaps the most remarkable feature of the militant movement has been the flinging-aside by thousands of women of the conventional standards that hedge us so closely round in these days for a right that large numbers of men who possess it scarcely value. Of course it was more difficult for the earlier militants to break through the conventionalities than for those who followed, but, as one of those associated with the movement from its inception, I believe that the effort was greater for those who first came forward to stand by the originators than for the little group by whom the first blows were struck. I believe this because I know that the original militants were already in close association with the truth that not only were the deeds of the old time pioneers and martyrs glorious, but that their work still lacks completion, and that it behoves those of us who have grasped an idea for human betterment to endure, if need be, social ostracism, violence, and hardship of all kinds, in order to establish it. Moreover, whilst the originators of the militant tactics let fly their bolt, as it were, from the clear sky, their early associates rallied to their aid in the teeth of all the fierce and bitter opposition that had been raised.

  The hearts of students of the movement in after years will be stirred by the faith and endurance shown by the women who faced violence at the hands of the police and others in Parliament Square and at the Cabinet Minister meetings, and above all by the heroism of the noble women who went through the hunger strike and the mental and physical torture of forcible feeding.

  A passionate love of freedom, a strong desire to do social service and an intense sympathy for the unfortunate, together made the movement possible in its present form. Those who have worked as a part of it know that it is notable not merely for its enthusiasm and courage, but also for its cheery spirit of loyalty and comradeship, its patient thoroughness in organisation which has made possible its many great demonstrations and processions, its freedom from bitterness and recrimination, and its firm faith in the right.

  E. SYLVIA PANKHURST.

  London, May, 1911.

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Sylvia Pankhurst designing a part of the decorations of the Prince’s Skating Rink

  Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney

  First Women’s Suffrage Demonstration ever held in Trafalgar Square, May 19th, 1906. Mr. Keir Hardie speaking: Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy in centre of the platform

  Selling and advertising “Votes for Women” in Kingsway

  Mrs. Pankhurst carrying a petition from the Third Women’s Parliament to the Prime Minister on February 13th, 1908
/>   The Head of the Procession to Hyde Park, June 21st, 1908

  A Section of the great “Votes for Women” meeting in Hyde Park on June 21st, 1908

  Lord Rosebery and other Members of both Houses watching the Suffragettes’ struggle in Parliament Square, June 30th, 1908

  Christabel Pankhurst inviting the public to “rush” the House of Commons, at a meeting in Trafalgar Square, Sunday, October 11th, 1908

  Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel hiding from the police in the roof garden at Clement’s Inn, October 12th, 1908

  Reading the Warrant, October 13th, 1908

  Mr. Curtis Bennett listening to Miss Pankhurst’s speech from the Dock, October, 1908

  Miss Christabel Pankhurst questioning Mr. Herbert Gladstone

  Mr. Herbert Gladstone in the witness-box being examined by Miss Christabel Pankhurst, October, 1908

  Members of the Women’s Freedom League attempting to enter the House after the taking down of the grille, October 28th, 1908

  Mrs. Pankhurst in Prison

  Ejection of a woman questioner from Birrell’s meeting in the City Temple, November 12th, 1908

  The Chelmsford Bye-Election

  The human letters dispatched by Miss Jessie Kenney to Mr. Asquith at No. 10 Downing Street, Jan. 23, 1909

  Procession to welcome Mrs. Pankhurst, Christabel, and Mrs. Leigh on their release from prison, December 19th, 1908

  Mrs. Lawrence’s Release Procession, April 17th, 1909

  The arrest of Miss Dora Marsden, the Standard Bearer, March 30th, 1909

  Elsie Howey who as Joan of Arc, rode at the head of the procession formed to celebrate Mrs. Pethick Lawrence’s release from prison

  A part of the decoration of the Exhibition held in the Prince’s Skating Rink, May, 1909

  The band out for the first time, May, 1909

  Mrs. Pethick Lawrence’s release, April 17th

  Christabel waving to the hungry strikers from a house overlooking the prison, July, 1909

  The hunger strikers waving to Christabel from their prison cells, July, 1909

  Forcible Feeding with the Nasal Tube

  Lady Constance Lytton before she threw the stone at New Castle, October 9th, 1909

  Arrest of Miss Dora Marsden outside the Victoria University of Manchester, October 4th, 1909

  Jessie Kenney as she tried to gain admittance to Mr. Asquith’s meeting on Dec. 10, 1909, disguised as a telegraph boy

  THE SUFFRAGETTE

  THE SUFFRAGETTE

  CHAPTER I

  EARLY DAYS

  FROM THE FORMATION OF THE WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION TO THE SUMMER OF 1905.

  FROM her girlhood my mother, the founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union, had been inspired by stories of the early reform movements, and even before this, at an age when most children have scarcely learnt their alphabet, her father, Robert Goulden, of Manchester, set her to read his newspaper to him at breakfast and thus awakened her lasting interest in politics.

  The Franco-German War was still a much-discussed event when Robert Goulden took his thirteen-year-old daughter to school in Paris, placing her at the Ecole Normale, where she became the room-companion of Henri Rochfort’s daughter, Noémie. Noèmie Rochfort told her little English schoolfellow much of her own father’s adventurous career, and Emmeline Goulden soon became an ardent and enthusiastic republican. She was now delighted to discover that she had been born on the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille and was proud to tell her friend that her own grandmother had been an earnest politician, and one of the earliest members of the Anti-Corn Law League, and that her grandfather had narrowly escaped death upon the field of Peterloo. Even before her school days in Paris she had been taken by her mother to a Women’s Suffrage meeting addressed by Miss Lydia Becker.

  On returning home to England, Emmeline Goulden settled down at seventeen years of age to help her mother in the care of her eight younger brothers and sisters, and when she was twenty-one she married Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst, who was many years older than herself, and had long been well known as a public man.

  Dr. Pankhurst had been one of the founders of the pioneer Manchester Women’s Suffrage Committee and one of its most active workers in the early days. He had drafted the original Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, then called the Women’s Disabilities Removal Bill, to give votes to women on the same terms as men, which had first been introduced by Mr. Jacob Bright in 1870 and had then passed its Second Reading in the House of Commons by a majority of thirty-three. With Lord Coleridge, Dr. Pankhurst had acted as counsel for the women who had claimed to be put upon the Parliamentary Register in the case of Chorlton v. Lings in 1868. He was also at the time one of the most prominent members of the Married Women’s Property Committee and had drafted the Bill to give married women the absolute right to their own property and to sue and be sued in the Courts of Law, which was so soon to be placed as an Act upon the Statute Book. Two years before this great Act became law, Mrs. Pankhurst was elected to the Married Women’s Property Committee, and at the same time she became a member of the Manchester Women’s Suffrage Committee.

  In 1889 my parents helped to form the Women’s Franchise League. My sister Christabel and I, then nine and seven years old, already took a lively interest in all the proceedings, and tried as hard as we could to make ourselves useful, writing out notices in big, uncertain letters and distributing leaflets to the guests at a three days’ Conference held in our own home. About this time we two children had begun to attend Women’s Suffrage and other public meetings, and these we reported in a little manuscript magazine, which we both wrote and illustrated. When some few years afterwards, owing chiefly to lack of funds and the ill health of its most prominent workers, the Women’s Franchise League was discontinued, Dr. and Mrs. Pankhurst returned to Manchester and worked mainly for general questions of social reform. Years before, my mother had joined the Women’s Liberal Federation in the hope that it would work to remove both the political and economic grievances of women and to raise the status of women generally, but finding that the Federation was being used merely to forward the interests of the Liberal Party, of which women could not be members and in the formation of whose programme they were allowed no voice, she had resigned her membership. In 1894 she and Dr. Pankhurst joined the Independent Labour Party, one of the decisive reasons for this step being that, unlike the Liberal and Conservative parties, the Independent Labour Party admitted men and women to membership on equal terms. In the same year Mrs. Pankhurst was elected to the Chorlton Board of Guardians, and remained a member of that body for four years. This experience taught her much of the pressing needs of the poor, and of the bitter hardships, especially, of the women’s lives.

  After Dr. Pankhurst’s death, in 1898, Mrs. Pankhurst retired from the Board of Guardians and became a Registrar of Births and Deaths.

  For the next few years, my mother took no active part in politics, except as a member of the Manchester School Board,1 but in 1901 my sister Christabel became greatly interested in the Suffrage propaganda organised by Miss Esther Roper, Miss Eva Gore-Booth, and Mrs. Sarah Dickinson amongst the women textile workers. She was also elected to the Manchester Women’s Suffrage Committee, of which Miss Roper was Secretary. Christabel soon struck out a new line for herself. Impressed by the growing strength of the Labour Movement she began to see the necessity of converting to the question of Women’s Suffrage the various Trade Union organisations, which were upon the eve of becoming a concrete force in politics. She therefore made it her business to address as many of the Trade Unions as were willing to receive her.

  We were all much interested in Christabel’s work and my mother’s enthusiasm was quickly re-awakened. The experiences of her later years had brought her a keener insight into the results of the political disabilities of women, against which she had rebelled as a high-spirited girl, and she now realised more strongly than ever before, the urgent and immediate need for the enfranchisement of her sex.
She became filled with the consciousness that her duty lay in forcing this one question into the forefront of practical politics, even if in so doing she should find it necessary to give up all her other work. The Women’s Suffrage cause, and the various ways in which to further its interests were now constantly present in all our minds. A glance at the early history of the movement, to say nothing of personal experience, was enough to show that the Liberal and Conservative parties had no intention of taking the question up, and, after mature consideration, my mother at last decided that a separate women’s organisation must be formed. Therefore, on October 10, 1903, she invited a number of women to meet at our home, 62 Nelson Street, Manchester, and the Women’s Social and Political Union was formed. Almost all the women who were present on that original occasion were working-women, Members of the Labour Movement, but it was decided from the first that the Union should be entirely independent of Class and Party.

  The phrase “Votes for Women” was now for the first time in the history of the movement adopted as a watchword by the new Union. The propaganda work was at first mainly carried on amongst the women workers of Lancashire and Yorkshire and, in the Spring of 1904, as a result of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s activities, the Annual Conference of the Independent Labour Party instructed its Administrative Council to prepare a Bill for the Enfranchisement of Women to be laid before Parliament in the forthcoming session. This Resolution, though carried by an overwhelming majority, had been bitterly opposed by a minority of the Conference, who asserted that the Labour Party should not concern itself with a partial measure of enfranchisement, but should work directly to secure universal adult suffrage for both men and women.

  Therefore, before preparing any special measure, the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party went very carefully into the whole question. They were advised by Mr. Keir Hardie and others who understood Parliamentary procedure that a measure for universal adult suffrage, which would not only bring about most sweeping changes, but would open countless avenues for discussion and consequent obstruction, could never hope to be carried through Parliament except by the responsible Government of the day. It was, therefore, useless for the Labour representatives to attempt to introduce such a measure. In addition to this, it was pointed out that, whilst a large majority of the Members of the House of Commons had already pledged themselves to support an equal Bill to give votes to women on the same terms as men, no substantial measure of Parliamentary support had as yet been obtained for adult suffrage, even if confined to men. Taking into consideration also the present state of both public and Parliamentary feeling and with a million more women than men in the British Isles, there was absolutely no chance of carrying into law any proposal to give a vote to every grown man and woman in the country. Having thus arrived at the conclusion that an adult suffrage measure was out of the question, the Council now carefully inquired into the various classes of women who were possessed of the qualifications which would have entitled them to vote had they been men. On its being ascertained that the majority would be householders, whose names were already upon the register of Municipal voters, the following circular was addressed to all the Independent Labour Party branches.