to St. Stephen’s at the appointed hour, Chief Inspector Scantlebury, in charge
of the Commons police, passed Emmeline a note from the Prime Minister
saying he was unable to receive them. The small group, which included the
aged Georgiana Soloman and seventy-six-year-old Dorinda Neligan, who had
been headteacher for some thirty years at Croydon Girls’ High School, refused
to move as Emmeline insisted, ‘I and the ladies who are with me are subjects of
the King, and we have come here in the assertion of a right.’^51 Afraid that the
frail elderly women could not endure the inevitable jostling of being forced
back and returning again and again until arrested, Emmeline quickly decided to
secure immediate arrest by committing the technical assault of striking
Inspector Jarvis lightly on the cheek: ‘I understand why you did that’, he said
quietly. The other policemen, however, did not grasp the situation and began
pushing the women. ‘Shall I have to do it again?’ asked Emmeline softly, to
which the Inspector replied, ‘Yes’. So Emmeline struck him a second time, and
then he ordered the arrests.^52 Soon other small groups of suffragettes, in twos
and threes, surrounded by mounted police, made desperate dashes from Caxton
Hall towards the Commons, encountering on the way a ‘maelstrom of shouting
and swaying humanity’.^53 Lady Frances Balfour, although not a WSPU member,
was amongst the crowd with her sister, Lady Betty, also a non-militant. She
described to Millicent Garrett Fawcett, leader of the NUWSS, how at one
point they had both been knocked over but were picked up by the police and of
seeing ‘one tall girl driven like a leaf up and down Whitehall’ and others like
her.^54 In protest against the way their fellow militants were being brutally
treated, a small group of suffragettes broke windows in the Home Office, the
Privy Council Office, the Treasury Offices as well as in the official residence of
the First Lord of the Admiralty. In order to avoid harm to any persons inside the
buildings, the stones were wrapped in brown paper and attached to a string.
One of the stone-throwers, Mrs. Bouvier, later pointed out that stone-throwing
had been lately engaged in by miners in Staffordshire in order ‘to show their
displeasure’, while men who had thrown stones in the recent Winchester riots
had not been punished for it but ‘their grievances righted’.^55 It would appear
that none of the WSPU leadership knew of the action beforehand, but
approved of it retrospectively the following day when Christabel spoke of the
window-breaking as ‘essentially right, appropriate, and fitting’.^56
Emmeline was amongst the 108 women and 14 men arrested and it was
decided that her case, together with that of the Hon. Evelina Haverfield,
daughter of Lord Abinger, should be treated as the test cases for the right to
petition. At Bow Street Police Court the next morning, Emmeline and Evelina
Haverfield were charged with obstructing the police in the execution of their
duties. While Mr. Henle defended Evelina Haverfield and Emmeline presented
her own case, both women pleaded that by the Bill of Rights and the terms of
the Tumultuous Petitions Act, they were legally entitled to petition the Prime
Minister as the representative of the King. Since the magistrate was uncertain
about this particular point, the case was adjourned until 9 July when Lord
‘A NEW AND MORE HEROIC PLANE’