My Own Story

Our women took advantage of the occasion to make one of the most successful demonstrations of the year. A box was secured directly opposite the Royal Box, and this was occupied by three women, beautifully gowned. On entering they had managed, without attracting the slightest attention, to lock and barricade the door, and at the close of the first act, as soon as the orchestra had disappeared, the women stood up, and one of them, with the aid of a megaphone, addressed the King. Calling attention to the impressive scenes on the stage, the speaker told the King that women were to-day fighting, as Joan of Arc fought centuries ago, for human liberty, and that they, like the maid of Orleans, were being tortured and done to death, in the name of the King, in the name of the Church, and with the full knowledge and responsibility of established Government. At this very hour the leader of these fighters in the army of liberty was being held in prison and tortured by the King's authority.
The vast audience was thrown into a panic of excitement and horror, an

On the Sunday when I was in Holloway, following my arrest at Dover, certain women attending the afternoon service at Westminster Abbey, chanted in concert the following prayer: "God save Emmeline Pankhurst, help us with Thy love and strength to guard her, spare those who suffer for conscience' sake. Hear us when we pray to Thee." They had hardly finished this prayer when vergers fell upon them and with great violence hustled them out of the Abbey. One kneeling man, who happened to be near one of the women, forgot his Christian intercessions long enough to beat her in the face with his fists before the vergers came.
Similar scenes have taken place in churches and cathedrals throughout England and Scotland, and in many instances the women have been most barbarously treated by vergers and members of t

Besides this fire, which waged fiercely from midnight until dawn, a large unoccupied house at Bristol was destroyed by fire; a fine residence in Scotland, also unoccupied, was badly damaged by fire; St. Anne's Church in a suburb of Liverpool was partly destroyed; and many pillar boxes in London, Edinburgh, Derby and other cities were fired. In churches all over the Kingdom our women created consternation by interpolating into the services reverently spoken prayers for prisoners who were suffering for conscience' sake. The reader no doubt has heard of these interruptions, and if so he has read of brawling, shriekin

examination. "You are not a doctor," I told the man. "You are a Government torturer, and all you want to do is to satisfy yourself that I am not quite ready to die." The doctor, a new man since my last imprisonment, flushed and looked extremely unhappy. "I suppose you do think that," he

The police soon traced me to the house of my friend, the distinguished scientist, Mrs. Hertha Ayrton, and the place straightway became a besieged fortress. Day and night the house was surrounded, not only by police, but by crowds of women sympathisers. On the Saturday following my appearance at the Pavillion we gave the police a bit of excitement of a kind they d

She was a B. A. of London University, and had taken first class honours at Oxford in English Language and Literature. Yet the women's cause made such an appeal to her reason and her sympathies that she put every intellectual and social appeal aside and devoted herself untiringly and fearlessly to the work of the Union. She had suffered many imprisonments, had been forcibly fed and most brutally treated. On one occasion when she had barricaded her cell against the prison doctors, a hose pipe was turned on her from the window and she was drenched and all but drowned in the icy water while workmen were breaking down her cell door. Miss Davison, after this experience, expressed to several of her friends the deep conviction that now, as in days called uncivilised, the conscience of the people would awaken only to the sacrifice of a human life. At one time in prison she tried to kill herself by throwing herself head-long from one of the upper galleries, but she succeeded only in sustaining cruel injuries. Ever after that time she clung to her conviction that one great tragedy, the deliberate throwing into the breach of a human life, would put an end to the intolerable torture of women. And so she threw herself at the King's horse, in full view of the King and Qu

Emily Wilding Davison, who had been associated with the militant movement since 1906, gave up her life for the women's cause by throwing herself in the path of the thing, next to property, held most sacred to Englishmen—sport. Miss Davison went to the races at Epsom, and breaking through the barriers which separated the vast crowds from the race course, rushed in the path of the galloping horses and caught the bridle of the King's horse, which was leading all the others. The horse fell, throwing his jockey and crushing Miss Davison in such shocking fashion that she was carried from the course in a dying condition. Everything possible was done to save her life. The great surgeon, Mr. Mansell Moullin, put everything aside and devoted himself to her case, but though he operated most skilfully, the injuries she had received were so frightful that she died four days later without once having recovered consciousness. Members of the Union were beside her when she breathed her last, on June 8th, and on June 14th they gave her a great public funeral in London. Crowds lined the streets as the funeral car, followed by thousands of women, passed slowly and sadly to St. George's Church, Bloomsbury, where the memorial services were held.
Emily Wilding Davison was a character almost inevitably developed by

greatest revolutionary outbreak that had been witnessed in England since 1832. From one end of the island to the other the beacons of the women's revolution blazed night and day. Many country houses—all unoccupied—were fired, the grand stand of Ayr race course was burned to the ground, a bomb was exploded in Oxted Station, London, blowing out walls and windows, some empty railroad carriages were blown up, the glass of thirteen famous paintings in the Manchester Art Gallery were smashed with hammers—these are simply random specimens of the general outbreak of secret guerilla warfare waged by women to whose liberties every other approach had been barricaded by the Liberal Government of free England. The only answer of the Government was the closing of the British Museum, the National Gallery, Windsor Castle, and other tourist resorts. As for the result on the people of England, that was exactly what we had anticipated. The public were thrown into a state of emotion of insecurity and frightened expectancy. Not yet did they show themselves ready to demand of the Government that the outrages be stopped in the only way they could be stopped—by giving votes to women. I knew that it would be so. Lying in my lonely cell in Holloway, racked with pain, oppressed with increasing weakness, depressed with the heavy responsibili

He entirely ignored the motive of the acts in question, and he treated the whole affair as if the women had been burglars. This inverted statement of the matter, though accurate enough as to facts, was such as might have been given by King John of the signing of Magna Charta.

Rufus Isaacs has a clear-cut, hawk-like face, deep eyes, and a somewhat world worn air. The first words he spoke were so astoundingly unfair that I could hardly believe that I heard them aright. He began his address to the jury by telling them that they must not, on any account, connect the act of the defendants with any political agitation.
"I am very anxious to impress upon you," he said, "from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, that all questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a man, are questions which are in no sense involved in the trial of this issue.... Therefore, I ask you to discard altogether from the consideration of the matters which will be placed before you any viewpoint you may have on this no doubt very important political issue."
Nevertheless Sir Rufus added in the course of his rema