The following day, the final day of the trial, the three defendants gave their
summing-up speeches. Christabel spoke first, claiming that the police court was
like a ‘Star Chamber’ since there was no trial by jury. The authorities knew
perfectly well, she told the presiding magistrate, that if the case were heard
before a jury they would be acquitted.^13 When Emmeline rose to address the
court, she assumed an appearance of calm that she did not feel. Beginning
quietly and courteously, addressing Curtis Bennett as ‘Sir’, she endorsed all that
Christabel had said about the unfairness of their trial in a common police court.
Then, in her ‘irresistible voice, as rich in minor as in major tones’,^14 she made a
poignant speech, relating her life experiences as a wife associated with the polit-
ical work of her husband, and as a Poor Law Guardian and School Board member
where she had learnt about the unjust marriage, divorce and illegitimacy laws
that inflicted great suffering on women who had no right of legal redress. As a
widow, she had performed ‘the duties which ordinary men have had to perform,
by earning a living for her children, and educating them’. She had held an offi-
cial post for ten years, as a public officer, under the Registrar. ‘Well, sir, I stand
before you, having resigned that office when I was told that I must either do that
or give up working for this movement.’ The positioning of herself, in such a
public forum, in women’s traditional roles as wife, mother and hard-working
widow, enabled Emmeline to present herself as ‘feminine’, a public self that facil-
itated her political activism – and revealed the depth of her commitment to the
women’s cause.^15 Because of the legal injustices to women that she learnt about,
‘I have tried, with other women’, she pleaded, ‘to get some reform of these laws.’
Yet although they had tried to be patient and ‘womanly’, using constitutional
methods, presenting larger petitions than were ever presented for any other
reform, holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for any reform,
the vote was denied them.^16 Assuming the full responsibilities of leadership,
Emmeline stated, ‘I am here to take upon myself now, sir, as I wish the prosecu-
tion had put upon me, the full responsibility for this agitation’, a theme that was
to be reiterated throughout the years of WSPU campaigning. Then she closed
her speech with characteristically determined but inspiring words:
[I]f you decide against us to-day, to prison we must go, because we feel
that we should be going back to the hopeless condition this movement
was in three years ago if we consented to be bound over to keep the
peace we have never broken. ... Although the Government admitted
that we are political offenders, and, therefore, ought to be treated as
political offenders are invariably treated, we shall be treated as pick-
pockets and drunkards; we shall be searched. I want you, if you can, as
a man, to realise what it means to women like us. We are driven to do
this, we are determined to go on with this agitation, because we feel in
honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your fore-fathers, it is our duty
to make this world a better place for women than it is to-day. ... If you
had the power to send us to prison, not for six months, but for sixEMMELINE AND CHRISTABEL