Emmeline implored Keir Hardie to help the women’s cause by asking questions
about the forcible feeding of the Winson Green prisoners at question time in
the House of Commons, a request he willingly undertook at the first available
opportunity, on Monday, 27 September, when Philip Snowden, Labour MP for
Blackburn, also persisted in demanding information from the government.
Emmeline’s anger deepened when she heard that Mr. Masterman, speaking for
the Home Secretary, justified the practice as the ‘ordinary hospital treatment’
that was applied in cases where prisoners refused food, and that his replies had
been punctuated by ‘laughter’ from other members of the House.^1 The impas-
sioned and compassionate WSPU leader, who claimed that she was hopeless at
writing, took up her pen and wrote an article for Votes for Women, accusing ‘a
Liberal Government in Free England’ of torturing women in an attempt to
crush the women’s struggle for their citizenship rights.^2
Emmeline and her militants were not alone in their condemnation. In addi-
tion to a storm of indignant letters to the press, the Prime Minister was sent a
memorial of protest signed by 116 doctors, including well-known names such as
Victor Horsley, C. Mansell Moullin and W. Hugh Fenton. Henry W. Nevinson
and H. N. Brailsford, leader-writers for theDaily Newsand supporters of the
women’s cause, resigned from that newspaper in protest against their editor’s
support for the government’s action pointing out, ‘We cannot denounce torture
in Russia and support it in England’.^3 Emmeline knew about their resignation
the day before their letter appeared inThe Timesand, reflecting on her own past
life, immediately wrote to Nevinson, on 4 October 1908, expressing her concern:
I am sorry Mr. Brailsford & you have been driven to resign. Your
absence from the paper will in so many ways be a loss.
I know you don’t want me to say anything about the material conse-
quences to you yet I can’t help telling you that I am thinking a good
deal about them.
Through all our married life my husband and I had to contend with
the little worries which for most of us must always be the accompani-
ment of doing one’s public duty and although small things count for