have been delighted when he heard that £5,664 had been raised and 250 new
members recruited to the WSPU.^44 As he now seemed fit, Emmeline thought it
would be best if he went back to the farm since she believed, mistakenly, that
an active, outdoor life would help him to become stronger. Perhaps also, at the
back of her mind, was the thought that her gentle, shy boy needed to mix more
in the company of men rather than with his sisters and all the other women in
the WSPU.^45
Emmeline was in London in mid June for the welcome breakfast party for
Patricia Woodlock, a member of the Liverpool WSPU, who was released after
three months’ imprisonment in Holloway. She spoke of how over and over
again Patricia Woodlock had ‘taken a front place in the fighting line ... being
five times arrested and four times imprisoned’. Her own resolve, she confided to
her audience, to lead the deputation on 29 June was largely due to the way in
which Patricia Woodlock had endured her solitary prison confinement. Amid
great applause, Emmeline then pinned on the breast of ‘this brave pioneer’ in
the suffrage army a special medal ‘For Valour’, as well as presenting her with an
illuminated address and Holloway brooch. During that evening’s grand proces-
sion, Emmeline sat next to Patricia Woodlock in an open carriage and then
travelled with her, and the WSPU drum and fife band, to the public welcomes
in Lancashire.^46
On 23 June, six days before the important ‘Right of Petition’ deputation that
she had called for late June, when Emmeline would run the risk of imprison-
ment again, the indomitable leader of the WSPU wrote to Elizabeth Robins, ‘I
wish I could get the breathing space in the country on the eve of the battle but
it cannot be. I am resting as much as possible this week.’^47 But despite her
preparation, Emmeline could neither predict nor control the direction the
movement might take. She attached no particular importance to the action, the
following day, of WSPU member Marion Wallace Dunlop, a sculptor and illus-
trator, who was arrested for printing on the wall of St. Stephen’s Hall in the
House of Commons an extract from the 1689 Bill of Rights, ‘It is the right of
the subject to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such
petitioning are illegal.’^48 Yet Wallace Dunlop’s subsequent behaviour, when
later imprisoned, was to shape the future direction of WSPU policy.
Obviously, Emmeline could not be aware of these future developments when
on 29 June she led a small deputation of eight women through the crowded
streets to the House of Commons. The leader of the WSPU, commented the
journalist Henry Nevinson, walked alone, in front, ‘pale, but proud and
perfectly calm, with that look of courage and persistency on her face which I
should not like my enemies to wear’.^49 Emmeline, who had already written to
Asquith, stating that a deputation would wait on him at eight o’clock on the
evening of the 29th, knew that there was a strong feeling in the Commons that
this time the women should be received; Keir Hardie, also asked questions in
the House about the matter, much to the delight of the recently formed Men’s
Committee for Justice to Women.^50 Yet when the women reached the entrance
‘A NEW AND MORE HEROIC PLANE’