floor; her followers, thinking her seriously injured, crowded around her protec-
tively and refused to move until she was able to regain herself. Ten women
were arrested, including Adela, Annie Kenney, Teresa Billington, Emmeline
Pethick Lawrence, Minnie Baldock, and Annie Cobden-Sanderson, daughter
of Richard Cobden, the well-known agitator for the repeal of the Corn Laws.
The following day they were ordered to agree to keep the peace for six months
or be sentenced to two months’ imprisonment, in the Second Division, the
place for common offenders. All chose prison. When Sylvia attempted a
speech of protest, on the court steps, she was sentenced to a fortnight in the
lowest section, the Third Division. Although Emmeline now had two daugh-
ters in prison, it did not deflect her from chairing a meeting at Caxton Hall,
immediately after the trial, at which money was readily given to boost WSPU
funds. Lady Cook, Mrs. Cobden-Unwin and Mr. Cobden-Sanderson each
donated £100 while Frederick Pethick Lawrence promised to give £10 a day for
each day his wife was in prison. A wave of public sympathy was felt for the
militants at the disgraceful way they had been treated. ‘By what means, but by
screaming, knocking, and rioting, did men themselves ever gain what they
were pleased to call their rights?’ asked theDaily Mirror. At a NUWSS meeting
of over 2,000 women, held on 24 October, the ‘noisy methods’ of the
suffragettes were not condemned but applauded.^48 For the first time, Millicent
Garrett Fawcett, president of the NUWSS, publicly supported the suffragettes
and their militant deeds:
Every kind of insult and abuse is hurled at the women who have
adopted these methods. ... But I hope the more old-fashioned suffrag-
ists will stand by them ... in my opinion, far from having injured the
movement, they have done more during the last 12 months to bring it
within the region of practical politics than we have been able to
accomplish in the same number of years.^49Florence Fenwick Miller, whose daughter Irene was one of the imprisoned
women, poignantly wrote of how she and Emmeline Pankhurst, who had both
been workers for women’s suffrage since their teens, were ‘proud and thankful’
that their daughters are ‘willing to give their youth, their rare talents, their
prospects, without reserve’ to the cause to which their mothers were devoted.^50
Pressure was put on the government by Keir Hardie and others to treat the
women prisoners as political offenders and place them in the more comfortable
First Division where they could wear their own clothes and have access to
writing materials. On 31 October, the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone,
announced in the Commons that the women would be transferred to the First
Division. A jubilant Emmeline Pankhurst told the press how the ‘most powerful
Government of the time’ had been forced to climb down in the face of growing
public opinion. ‘We are at last recognised as a political party; we are now in the
swim of politics, and are a political force.’^51
TO LONDON