next day, in Westminster police court, the magistrate meted out sentences varying from twenty shillings or fourteen days to forty shillings or one month's imprisonment. Two of the women, Miss Woodlock and Mrs. Chatterton, who had left Holloway only a week before, were, as "old offenders," given thirty days without the option of a fine. Another woman, Mary Leigh, was given thirty days because she offended the magistrate's dignity by hanging a "Votes for Women" banner over the edge of the dock. Those of my readers who are unable to connect the word "militancy" with anything milder than arson are invited to reflect that within the first two months of the year 1907 the English Government sent to prison one hundred and thirty women whose "militancy" consisted merely of trying to carry a resolution from a hall to the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. Our crime was called obstructing the police. It will be seen that it was the police who did the obstructing.
It may be asked why neither of these deputations was led by me personally. The reason was that I was needed in another capacity, that of leader and supervisor of the suffrage forces in the field to defeat Government candidates at by-elections. On the night of the second "riot," while our women were still struggling in the streets, I left London for Hexham in Northumberland, where by our work the majority of the Liberal candidate was reduced by a thousand votes. Seven more by-elections followed in rapid succession.
Our by-election work was such a new thing in English politics that we attracted an enormous amount of attention wherever we went. It was our custom to begin work the very hour we entered a town. If, on our way from the station to the hotel, we encountered a group of men, say, in the market-place, we either stopped and held a meeting on the spot, or else we stayed long enough to tell them when and where our meetings were to be held, and to urge them to attend. The usual first step, after securing lodgings, was to hire a vacant shop, fill the windows with suffrage literature, and fling out our purple, green, and white flag. Meanwhile, some of us were busy hiring the best available hall. If we got possession of the battle-ground before the men, we sometimes "cornered" all the good halls and left the candidate nothing but schoolhouses for his indoor meetings. Truth to tell, our meetings were so much more popular than theirs that we really needed the larger halls. Often, a candidate with the Suffragettes for rivals spoke to almost empty benches. The crowds were away listening to the women.
Naturally, this greatly displeased the politicians, and it scandalised many of the old-fashioned Liberal partisans. In one place, I think it was Colne Valley in Yorkshire, an amusing instance of masculine hostility occurred. We had arrived on a day when both Conservative and Liberal committees were choosing their candidates, and we thought it a good opportunity to hold a series of outdoor meetings. We tried to get a lorry for a rostrum, but the only man in town who had these big vans to let disapproved of Suffragettes so violently that he wouldn't let us have one. So we borrowed a chair from a woman shopkeeper, and went at it. Soon we had a large crowd and an interested audience. We also got the attention of a number of small boys with pea-shooters, and had to make our speeches under a blistering fire of dried peas.
While I was speaking the fire ceased, to my relief—for dried peas sting. I continued my speech with renewed vigor, only to have one of my best points spoiled by roars of laughter from the crowd. I finished somehow, and sat down; and then it was explained to me that the pea-shooters had been financed by one of the prominent Liberals of the town, another man who disapproved of our policy of opposing the Government. As soon as the ammunition gave out this man furnished the boys with a choice supply of rotten oranges. These were not so easily handled, it appeared, for the very first one went wild, and struck the chivalrous gentleman violently in the neck. This it was that had caused the laughter, and stopped the attack on the women.
We met with some pretty rough horse-play, and even with some brutality, in several by-elections, but on the whole we found the men ready, and the women more than ready, to listen to us. We tamed and educated a public that had always been used to violence at elections. We even tamed the boys, who came to the meetings on purpose to skylark. When we were in Rutlandshire that spring three schoolboys came to see me and told me, shyly, that they were interested in suffrage. They had had a debate on the subject at their school, and although the decision had been for the other side, all the boys wanted to know more about it. Wouldn't I please have a meeting especially for them? Of course I consented, and I found my boy audience quite delightful. Indeed, I hope they liked me half as well as I did them.
All through the spring our by-election work continued with amazing success, although our part in the Government losses was rarely admitted by the politicians. The voters knew, however. At an election in Suffolk, where we helped to double the Unionist vote, the successful candidate, speaking to the crowd from his hotel window, said, "What has been the cause of the great and glorious victory?" Instantly the crowd roared, "Votes for Women!"—"Three cheers for the Suffragettes!" This was not at all what the successful candidate had intended, but he waved his hand graciously and said, "No doubt the ladies had something to do with it."
The newspaper correspondents were not so reluctant to acknowledge our influence. Even when they condemned our policy, they were unsparing in their admiration for our energy, and the courage and ardour of our workers. Said the correspondent of the London Tribune, a Liberal paper hostile to our tactics: "Their staying power, judging them by the standards of men, is extraordinary. By taking afternoon as well as evening meetings, they have worked twice as hard as the men. They are up earlier, they retire just as late. Women against men, they are better speakers, more logical, better informed, better phrased, with a surer insight for the telling argument."
After a summer spent in strengthening our forces, organising new branches, holding meetings—something like three thousand of these between May and October—invading meetings of Cabinet Ministers—we managed to do that about once every day—electioneering, and getting up huge demonstrations in various cities, we arrived at the end of the year. In the last months of the year, I directed several hotly contested by-elections, at one of which I met with one of the most serious misadventures of my life.
This by-election was held in the division of Mid-Devon, a stronghold of Liberalism. In fact, since its creation in 1885, the seat has never been held by any except a Liberal member. The constituency is a large one, divided into eight districts. The population of the towns is a rough and boisterous one, and its devotion, blind and unreasoning, to the Liberal party has always reflected the rude spirit of the voters. A Unionist woman told me, shortly after my arrival, that my life would be unsafe if I dared openly to oppose the Liberal candidate. She had never dared, she assured me, to wear her party colours in public. However, I did speak—in our headquarters at Newton Abbott, the principal town of the division, at Hull, and at Bovey Tracey. We held meetings twice a day, calling upon the voters to "beat the Government in Mid-Devon, as a message that women must have votes next year." Although some of the meetings were turbulent, we were treated with much more consideration than either of the candidates, who, not infrequently, were howled down and put to flight. Often the air of their meetings was thick with decayed vegetables and dirty snowballs. We had some rather lively sessions, too. Once, at an outdoor meeting, some young roughs dragged our lorry round and round until it seemed that we must be upset, and several times the language hurled at us from the crowd was quite unfit for me to repeat. Still, we escaped actual violence until the day of the election, when it was announced that the Unionist candidate had won the seat by a majority of twelve hundred and eighty. We knew instantly that the deepest resentment of the Liberals would be aroused, but it did not occur to us that the resentment would be directed actively against us.
After the declaration at the polls, my companion, Mrs. Martel, and I started to walk to our lodgings. Some of our friends stopped us, and drew our attention to the newly elected Unionist member of Parliament, who was being escorted from the polling place by a strong guard of police. We were warned that our safety demanded an immediate flight from the town. I laughingly assured our friends that I was never afraid to trust myself in a crowd, and we walked on. Suddenly we were confronted by a crowd of young men and boys, clay-cutters from the pits on the edge of town. These young men, who wore the red rosettes of the Liberal party, had just heard of their candidate's defeat, and they
