Emmeline had reason to be pleased. Now that well-known middle-class
women such as Annie Cobden-Sanderson were prepared to go to prison for the
women’s cause and aristocratic women such as Lady Cook were willing to
donate large sums of money to WSPU funds, the way was open for the Union to
attract women members from all social groupings and political persuasions,
rather than to rely upon those from working-class backgrounds with socialist
sympathies. Emmeline was less impressed, however, with the conduct of Fred
Pethick Lawrence. His imprisoned wife found her confinement so oppressive
that she was heading for a nervous breakdown. Fred, who had taken over his
wife’s duties as Honorary Treasurer of the WSPU during her absence, wanted to
get his spouse out of prison immediately and realised it could only be done if she
agreed to keep the peace for six months. When he told Emmeline Pankhurst
what he was going to do, she passed ‘some scornful remark about the attitude of
husbands’ but softened her attitude when Fred pleaded, ‘Do not make it harder
for me than it must be.’^52 After her early release on 28 October, Emmeline
Pethick Lawrence went to Italy to convalesce while Fred continued to stand in
as Honorary Treasurer until her return, a situation that must have made the
leader of the WSPU feel uneasy. Only women could be members of the Union
and hold official office yet an exception had been made for the husband of a
leading member. But, more importantly, Emmeline Pankhurst never liked Fred
Pethick Lawrence. They ‘never got on’, there was always ‘an “atmosphere”
between them’ recollected Jessie Kenney, one of Annie Kenney’s sisters and
Emmeline Pethick Lawrence’s private secretary.^53 And Emmeline had another
niggling concern on her mind at this time, in particular the name Elizabeth
Robins was giving to the heroine of her play Votes for women, a heroine who, in
her past, had become pregnant while unmarried and had then lost her child. ‘I
have been thinking a great deal about the play & hope you will forgive me if I
put two points of view’, Emmeline tactfully wrote on 19 November. The
heroine’s name Christian, suggested Christabel’s. ‘Now Christabel has no past
still many people might connect the imaginary with the real & say that
Christian’s story is Christabel’s. We should not like this to happen should we?’
Emmeline’s second suggestion was that the heroine should not be an actual
member of the WSPU but a sympathiser, drawn to it by ‘the insurgent work’ of
its members. ‘Don’t think me squeamish but our work is so difficult as it is
without paragraphs in the papers when the play appears suggesting that this
person or that is the original of the heroine.’^54 Elizabeth agreed with the sugges-
tions and changed the name of the heroine to ‘Vida Levering’.
Later that November, after the other prisoners were released early, Emmeline
Pankhurst took a small group with her to the by-election at Huddersfield. Their
prison stories were told with such effect, she claimed, that the Liberal majority
was substantially reduced.^55 The Labour vote also fell, much to the dismay of
the Labour Party organisers who, once again, blamed the WSPU women. The
resentment was expressed at the Labour Party Conference at Belfast in January
1907 when a motion to support a Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, strongly
TO LONDON