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Arrest and Imprisonment of Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney. October, 1905.

Whilst the educational propaganda work of the Women's Social and Political Union was being quietly carried on, stirring events were in preparation. The resignation of the Conservative Government was daily expected. The Liberal leaders were preparing themselves to take office, and every newspaper in the country was discussing who the new Ministers were to be. A stir of excitement was spreading all over the country and now the organisers of the Liberal Party decided to hold a great revival meeting in that historic Manchester Free Trade Hall, which stands upon the site of the old franchise battle of Peterloo. The meeting was fixed for October 13th, and here it was determined that the old fighting spirit of the Radicals should be revived, the principles and policy of Liberalism should be proclaimed anew and, upon the strength of those principles and of that policy, the people should be called upon to support the incoming Government with voice and vote.

When the evening of the thirteenth came, the great hall was filled to overflowing with an audience mainly composed of enthusiastic Liberals, for the meeting was almost entirely a ticket one, and the tickets had been circulated amongst the Liberal Associations throughout the length and breadth of Lancashire. The organ played victorious music, and then the Liberal men, whose party had been out of office for so long and who now saw it coming into power, rose to their feet and cheered excitedly as their leaders came into the hall. After a few brief words from the chairman, words in which he struck a note of triumphant confidence in the approaching Liberal victory, Sir Edward Grey was called upon to speak. The future Cabinet Minister, in a speech full of fine sentiments and glowing promises, named all the various great reforms that the Liberal Government would introduce, and appealed to the people to give the Liberal Party its confidence, and to return a Liberal ministry to power. Whilst he was speaking, Sir Edward Grey was interrupted by a man who asked him what the Government proposed to do for the unemployed. Sir Edward paused with ready courtesy to listen. "Somebody said the unemployed," he explained to the audience; "well, I will come to that," and he did so, saying that this important question would certainly be dealt with. Then he came to his peroration; he spoke of the difficulties of administration, difficulties which were especially great at the present time. "We ask for the Liberal Party," he said, "the same chance as the Conservative Party has had for nearly twenty years. … There is no hope in the present men, but there is hope in new men. … It is to new men with fresh minds, untrammelled by prejudice and quickened by sympathy, and who are vigorous and true, that I believe that the country will turn with hope. What I ask for them is generous support and a fair chance." The thunder of applause that greeted his final words had scarcely died away when, as if in answer to Sir Edward Grey's appeal and promise, a little white cotton banner, inscribed with the words, "Votes for Women," was put up in the centre of the hall, and a woman was heard asking what the Government would do to make the women politically free. Almost simultaneously two or three men were upon their feet demanding information upon other questions. The men were at once replied to, but the woman's question was ignored. She therefore stood up again and pressed for an answer to her question, but the men sitting near her forced her down into her seat, and one of the stewards of the meeting held his hat over her face. Meanwhile, the hall was filled with a babel of conflicting sound. Shouts of "Sit down!" "Be quiet!" "What's the matter?" and "Let the lady speak!" were heard on every hand. As the noise subsided a little, a second woman sitting beside the first got up and asked again, "Will the Liberal Government give women the vote?" but Sir Edward Grey made no answer, and again arose the tumult of cries and counter cries. Then the Chief Constable of Manchester, Mr. William Peacock, came down from the platform to where the women were sitting, and asked them to write out the question that they had put to Sir Edward Grey, saying that he would himself take it to the Chairman and make sure that it received a reply. The women agreed to this suggestion, and the one who had first spoken now wrote:

Will the Liberal Government give votes to working women?

Signed on behalf of the Women's Social and Political Union,

ANNIE KENNEY,

Member of the Oldham Committee of the Card and Blowing Room Operatives.

To this she added that as one of the 96,000 organised women cotton workers, and for their sake, she earnestly desired an answer. Mr. Peacock took the paper on which the question had been written back to the platform, and was seen to hand it to Sir Edward Grey, who, having read it, smiled and passed it to the Chairman, from whom it went the round of every speaker in turn. Then it was laid aside, and no answer was returned to it. A lady, sitting on the platform, who had noticed and understood all that was going on, now tried to intervene.[4] "May I, as a woman, be allowed to speak—?" she began, but the Chairman called on Lord Durham to move a vote of thanks to Sir Edward Grey. When this vote had been seconded by Mr. Winston Churchill, and when it had afterwards been carried, Sir Edward Grey rose to reply. But he made no reference, either to the enfranchisement of women, or to the question which had been put. Then followed the carrying of a vote of thanks to the Chair, and by this time the meeting showed signs of breaking up. Some of the audience had left the hall, and some of the people on the platform were preparing to go. The women's question still remained unanswered and seemed in danger of being forgotten by everyone concerned. But the two women were anxiously awaiting a reply, and the one who had first spoken now rose again, and this time she stood up upon her seat and called out as loudly as she could, "Will the Liberal Government give working women the vote?" At once the audience became a seething, infuriated mob. Thousands of angry men were upon their feet shouting, gesticulating, and crying out upon the woman who had again dared to disturb their meeting.

She stood there above them all, a little, slender, fragile figure. She had taken off her hat, and her soft, loosely flowing hair gave her a childish look; her cheeks were flushed and her blue eyes blazing with earnestness. It was Annie Kenney, the mill girl, who had gone to work in an Oldham cotton factory as a little half-timer at ten years of age. A working woman, the child of a working woman, whose life had been passed amongst the workers, she stood there now, feeling herself to be the representative of thousands of struggling women, and in their name she asked for justice. But the Liberal leaders, who had spoken so glibly of sympathy for the poor and needy, were silent now, when one stood there asking for justice; and their followers, who had listened so eagerly and applauded with so much enthusiasm, speeches filled with the praise of liberty and equality, were thinking now of nothing but Liberal victories. They howled at her fiercely, and numbers of Liberal stewards came hurrying to drag her down. Then Christabel Pankhurst, her companion, started up and put one arm around Annie Kenney's waist, and with the other warded off their blows, and as she did so, they scratched and tore her hands until the blood ran down on Annie's hat that lay upon the seat, and stained it red, whilst she still called, "The question, the question, answer the question!" So, holding together, these two women fought for votes as their forefathers had done, upon the site of Peterloo.

At last six men, Liberal stewards and policemen in plain clothes, seized Christabel Pankhurst and dragged her away down the central aisle and past the platform, then others followed bringing Annie Kenney after her. As they were forced along the women still looked up and called for an answer to their question, and still the Liberal leaders on the platform looked on apparently unmoved and never said a word. As they saw the women dragged away, the men in the front seats—the ticket holders from the Liberal clubs—shouted "Throw them out!" but from the free seats at the back, the people answered "Shame!"

Having been flung out into the street, the two women decided to hold an indignation meeting there, and so, at the corner of Peter Street and South Street, close to the hall, they began to speak, but within a few minutes, they were arrested, and followed by hundreds of men and women, were dragged to the Town Hall. Here they were both charged with obstruction, and Christabel Pankhurst was also accused of assaulting the police. They were summoned to attend the Police Court in Minshull Street next morning.

Meanwhile, as soon as the women had been thrown out of the hall, there came a revulsion of feeling in their favour and the greater part of the meeting broke up in disorder. Believing that some explanation was expected of him, Sir Edward Grey now said that he regretted the disturbance which had taken place. "I am not sure" he continued "that unwittingly and in innocence I have not been a contributing cause. As far as I can understand, the trouble arose from a desire to know my opinion on the subject of Women's Suffrage. That is a question which I would not deal with here to-night because it is not, and I do not think it is likely to be, a party question." He added that he had already given his opinion upon votes for women and that, as he did not think it a "fitting subject for this evening," he would not repeat it.

Thus, within a few days of the fortieth anniversary of the formation of the first Women's Suffrage Society (perhaps even upon that very anniversary), and after forty years of persevering labour for this cause, Sir Edward Grey announced that Women's Suffrage was as yet far outside the realm of practical politics, and the two women who had dared to question him upon this subject were flung with violence and insult from the hall.

The next morning the police court was crowded with people eager to hear the trial. The two girls refused to dispute the police evidence as to the charges of assault and obstruction, and based their defence solely upon the principle that their conduct was justified by the importance of the question upon which they had endeavoured to secure a pronouncement and by the outrageous treatment which they had received. But though ignoring the violence to which they had been subjected and exaggerating the disturbance which they had made, the Counsel for the prosecution had dwelt at length upon the scene in the Free Trade Hall; the women were not allowed to refer to it and, though it was evident that but for what had taken place in the meeting they would not have been arrested for speaking in the street, they were ordered to confine their remarks to what had taken place after they had been ejected. Both defendants were found guilty, Christabel Pankhurst being ordered to pay a fine of ten shillings or to go to prison for seven days and Annie Kenney being fined five shillings with the alternative of three days' imprisonment. They both refused to pay the fines and were immediately hurried away to the cells.

Now the whole country rang with the story. In Manchester especially, the news created tremendous excitement. The father of one of the prisoners, was, as we have seen, a Manchester man. Dr. Pankhurst's[5] remarkable ability and learning, his wonderful eloquence, his wide range of interests, and the number of causes in which he had taken a foremost part, had secured for him an unusually large amount of public recognition. There was scarcely a man or woman in the city to whom he was not a familiar figure. Moreover, his fascinating personality, and his well-known tenderness of heart, illustrated as it was by thousands of kindly acts, as well as by his long life of service and sacrifice for the public good, had endeared him to many of his strongest political opponents. Whatever bitterness may have been aroused against him by his strenuous advocacy of advanced and frequently unpopular causes, had disappeared when the news of his sudden death, which took place in the midst of a legal case that he was conducting on behalf of the Manchester Corporation, had become known, and public sympathy had gone generously forth to Mrs. Pankhurst in her tragic home-coming when she had read of her great loss in the evening papers in the train. Mrs. Pankhurst by her work on public bodies was also known of course, and Christabel Pankhurst herself had recently attracted notice because, having wished to follow her father's profession, she had applied to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn for admission to the Bar. Her application had been refused on the ground of her sex, as had also a request to be heard by the Benchers in support of her claim, but she had not abandoned her endeavours to secure the opening of this avenue of employment to women and she was now a Law student at the Victoria University of Manchester.

Votes for Women in those days was regarded by the majority of sober, level-headed men as a ladies' fad which would never come to anything and the idea that it could ever be a question upon which governments would stand or fall, or be associated with persecution, rioting and imprisonment had been alike unthinkable to them. Therefore, for many reasons, this trial and imprisonment came as a tremendous shock to the general public of Manchester. Questions addressed to political speakers by men in the audience both during and at the close of the speeches were, as everyone knew, the invariable accompaniment of every public political meeting in this country. These questions were almost always replied to. When dissatisfied with the answer the interrogators frequently began a running commentary of disapproval, which sometimes terminated in their ejection, but not until they had become a source of general disturbance to the meeting. These facts were of course a matter of common knowledge, but the newspapers now ignored them and treated the questioning of Sir Edward Grey in the manner adopted by the two women in the Free Trade Hall as an absolutely new and entirely reprehensible departure. They were all agreed that such behaviour would inevitably injure the Women's Suffrage Cause of which, though they had hitherto boycotted it, most of them now implied that they were supporters. Extracts from two newspapers are enough to convey the attitude which in varying degrees of severity was adopted by them all. The Evening Standard:

The Magistrates were lenient in inflicting a small fine. … If Miss Pankhurst desires to go to gaol rather than pay the money, let her go. Our only regret is that the discipline will be identical with that experienced by mature and sensible women, and not that which falls to the lot of children in the nursery.

The Birmingham Daily Mail:—

If any argument were required against giving to ladies political status and power, it has been furnished in Manchester, and by two of the people who are most strenuously clamouring for the franchise.

The reason why the Press as a whole was against the women was of course because every great newspaper in this country is a special pleader, for one or other of the two great political Parties—the Liberals and the Conservatives—and both these Parties looked upon the question which the women were striving to urge forward, as something of a nuisance. Unfortunately, vast numbers of people, instead of examining into and thinking out a thing for themselves, begin, at any rate, by allowing their opinions to be formed for them by the particular newspapers which they happen to read. Therefore some people at once made up their minds that the women were entirely in the wrong, because the papers said so. Others, with strange obliquity of vision, because they did not like the idea of women mixing themselves up in scenes of violence, found it easier to disapprove of the women who had been ill-used than of those who had ill-used them. Besides the unthinking ones, there were also many who had become so much inflamed by Party spirit that their sole idea was to whitewash and bolster up the Liberal leaders and to cast a slur upon the character of any who had dared to turn too fierce a light upon their faults and weaknesses.

But with all this the imprisoned women were not friendless and though for the time being, stone walls and iron bars might prevent their speaking, there were those outside who were determined to defend and uphold them and to turn what they had done to good. The Women's Social and Political Union at once published a statement explaining that in view of the approaching general election the intentions of the Liberal leaders with regard to Women's Suffrage had been recognised to be of immense importance, and Sir Edward Grey had therefore been asked to receive a deputation of members of the Union, in which the questions it was desired that he should answer were clearly stated. No reply or acknowledgment of this request had been received, and it had thereupon been decided that two delegates from the Union should attend the Free Trade Hall meeting to question Sir Edward Grey.

Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney

Many who witnessed the scene in the Free Trade Hall wrote to the newspapers expressing their sympathy with the women.

A "sympathiser" apologised for having helped to shout the women down saying that he would never have done so had he realised what was really taking place. On first reading the accounts, Mr. Keir Hardie, the only Member of Parliament to come forward in support of the prisoners, telegraphed, "The thing is a dastardly outrage, but do not worry, it will do immense good to the Cause. Can I do anything?" Sir Edward Grey's wife, Lady Grey, made no public statement but she told her friends that she considered the women justified in the means they had adopted of forcing their question forward. "What else could they do?" she asked. Whilst Mr. Winston Churchill, fearing probably that his approaching candidature in Manchester might be damaged by the imprisonment of the women, visited Strangeways Gaol and offered to pay their fines, but the Governor refused to accept the money from him.

On Friday, October 20th, a crowded demonstration was held to welcome the Ex-prisoners in the Free Trade Hall from which they had been flung out with ignominy but a week before, and now, as they entered, the audience rose with raised hats and waving handkerchiefs and greeted them with cheers. Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney did not speak of their imprisonment. We knew that they had been treated as belonging to the third and lowest class of criminals, and that they had been dressed in the prison clothes, fed on "skilly" and brown bread, and kept in solitary confinement in a narrow cell both day and night; that they had attended services with the other prisoners in the Chapel and with them had gone out to exercise in the prison yard, that they had performed the daily routine of prison tasks and, losing their own names, had answered only to the number of their cell. These things we know, but they refused to speak of them then, wishing that all attention should be concentrated upon the cause of the enfranchisement of women for which they had been willing to endure all.

But in spite of their own silence we have one picture of Christabel during that first imprisonment. It was brought out to us by one of the Visiting Justices, a friend of her father, who, in the hope of inducing her to allow her fine to be paid, had gone in to see her in the prison cell. He found her clad in strangely made, coarse serge garments, with large heavy shoes upon her feet and with a white cap framing her rosy face, and partly covering her soft brown hair. Seated on a wooden stool she was working away at her allotted task—the making of a shirt for one of the men prisoners. Her dinner, consisting of two or three small sodden-looking unpeeled potatoes and a chunk of coarse brown bread, was lying beside her and she was taking a bite of the bread every now and then. "Don't you think you're a very silly girl to sit here eating brown bread and potatoes and sewing that shirt when you might be freely doing what you please outside?" the Justice asked her. But she smiled up at him brightly "Oh, no," she said, "I always liked brown bread."

Fresh and bright and full of cheer as she had been in her cell, though more serious, she was now, as she stood on the Free Trade Hall platform to make her speech. When she began to tell the meeting of the disturbance that had taken place upon the previous Friday there were some cries of protest from Liberals who disagreed with her, but she stopped them saying "I am sure you want to hear my side of the story," and when she had finished, Resolutions calling for the immediate extension of the franchise to women, commending the bravery of the released prisoners' action and condemning the behaviour of those who had refused to answer their question were carried with tremendous enthusiasm.

DR. PANKHURST—BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

In addition to his activities for Women's Suffrage, and indeed, for all questions affecting the welfare of women, which have been already referred to, Dr. Pankhurst had taken an important part in many other reform movements. He had been one of the most distinguished of the students of Owen's College which paved the way for, and became incorporated with, the newer Victoria University of Manchester. Having studied at Owen's, he had taken his B.A. degree at the London University in 1858, his LL.B., with honours in Principles of Legislation in 1859, and LL.D. with the gold medal in 1863. Called to the Bar in Lincoln's Inn in 1867 he had joined the Northern Circuit and become a member of the Bar of the County Palatine and Lancaster Chancery Court. He had been Honorary Secretary to the Union of Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes from 1863 to 1876 in which years he had laboured zealously in the promotion of education, devoting much time to visiting the various Mechanics Institutes, which largely owing to his work were beginning to spring up as the forerunners of the Technical Schools and Municipal Evening Classes of to-day, teaching and addressing the students on educational questions, and enlisting public sympathy in this important work. Later, when in 1893, the subject of citizenship had, owing primarily to his influence, been made a part of the teaching of the evening continuation schools in Manchester, Dr. Pankhurst had issued a scheme of political studies in the form of an outline of political and social theory, and in 1894 he had delivered a series of addresses on the "Life and Duties of Citizenship," which were afterwards published. In 1882 he had become a member of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and was recognised to be an authority upon many commercial questions. He was one of the earliest and most active workers of the Social Science Association which did so much to educate public opinion upon many questions affecting the welfare of women and the community in general. Dr. Pankhurst had also been the author of many important papers on the Patent Laws, Local Courts and Tribunals, International Law, the study of Jurisprudence, and other subjects. He had interested himself greatly in public health and the general field of sanitation, and had been concerned in many public inquiries in regard to this matter. He had been a life member of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, and had laid before that body a scheme of international arbitration as a substitute for war, a principle for which he had for many years strenuously contended. He had three times been a candidate for Parliament, having contested Manchester in 1883, Rotherhithe in 1885, and Gorton in 1895, but because, admittedly, he was too fearlessly honest and outspoken he had on each occasion failed to secure election. Even by his bitterest political opponents he was respected, for it was a matter of common knowledge that, for the sake of his principles, he had over and over again sacrificed his own material advancement. He had begun life as an advanced Radical, having been a friend of John Stuart Mill, also of Ernest Jones, and other well-known Chartists. So long ago as 1873 he had been a pronounced Home Ruler. He had been a member of the executive of the National Reform Union, and the declaration of principles which he had issued in his candidature of 1883 has been ascribed as "a third Charter in itself." By his fearless championship of their interests, and his sympathy for them in time of trouble, he had especially endeared himself to the working people. So early as the days of George Odger and other leaders of the Labour cause, he had taken part in a movement which resulted in the recasting of the labour laws. He had acted as arbitrator for the men in many cases of trade dispute. Whilst taking an active part in the effort to secure both the later extensions of the franchise which took place in 1867 and 1884, Dr. Pankhurst had, as we have seen, done all he could to get women included under them.

Footnotes:

[4] She had no connection with the two women, and no previous knowledge that the question was to be put.

[5] See biographical note at the end of this chapter.