Such words were honey to the ears of Christabel and the Pethick Lawrences
who were soon planning large demonstrations in the provinces and in London.
Emmeline was released from prison on 19 March, one day earlier than
expected. The WSPU were holding a meeting at the Albert Hall that evening
to mark the end of a Self-Denial Week during which women had stood in the
gutter with collecting boxes, sold papers, flowers and toys, swept crossings, sung
in the street, abstained from butter, sugar, meat and sweets, held drawing-room
meetings and tea parties – all with the aim of contributing towards the £20,000
appeal. Emmeline could have rested quietly at home, surrounded by her loving
friends, but ever restless, and with a flair for the dramatic, she made an unex-
pected entrance at the packed Albert Hall meeting. There was always a sense of
performance, of the theatre, in Emmeline’s keen use of timing, oratory and
costume, and she used it to great effect that evening. Like an actress in the
wings, she waited till all the others were seated and then walked quietly onto
the stage, to an outburst of ecstatic applause, waving arms and fluttering hand-
kerchiefs. She removed the placard saying ‘Mrs. Pankhurst’s Chair’ and sat
down, deeply moved by the warmth of her reception. ‘It was some time before I
could see them for my tears, or speak to them for the emotion that shook me
like a storm.’^49 Waiting till order was restored, Emmeline urged the women to
do ‘ten times more in the future’ than they had ever done. She continued:
I for one, friends, looking round on the muddles that men have made,
looking round on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex, I say
men have had the control of these things long enough, and no woman
with any spark of womanliness in her will consent to let this state of
things go on any longer. We are tired of it. ... They said, ‘You will
never rouse women.’ Well, we have done what they thought and what
they hoped to be impossible. We women are roused!^50By the end of the meeting Emmeline Pethick Lawrence proudly announced that
the total sum collected for Self-Denial Week, including the pledges made that
evening, was £7,000.^51 The sum would help towards the organisation of a great
demonstration planned for 21 June in Hyde Park.
The next morning, Emmeline and the other released prisoners were enter-
tained to a welcome breakfast at the Great Central Hotel, some 300 women
being present. When Emmeline rose to speak, the audience stood up and
clapped and cheered. With emotion in her voice, she spoke of her prison expe-
riences and then, in a common theme that was to recur in her speeches,
enjoined the rich women who were present and whose lives had been sheltered,
to go to prison to see the depths of bitterness and hardship there. ‘Give us not
only your money, but your lives’, she pleaded. ‘Come and fight with us to win
freedom for women.’^52 Soon after Emmeline and the released prisoners were off
to the by-election at Peckham Rye, London. In open brakes the women paraded
AUTOCRAT OF THE WSPU?