nothing when making momentous decisions they make themselves
unpleasantly felt later on. I hope therefore that there may not be too
much personal loss added to the severance of party ties which your
resignation must mean.^4Mary Leigh had been one of the first militant prisoners to be artificially fed
and now, using her case as a test case, the leaders of the WSPU began legal
proceedings against the Home Secretary and the prison authorities at Winson
Green on the grounds that an assault had been committed, a charge that came
to court some two months later and was not upheld, on the grounds that
forcible feeding was necessary to preserve her life and that minimum force had
been used.^5 That forcible feeding by the government could now be the expected
response to hunger striking by suffragettes added to Emmeline’s heavy responsi-
bilities as the WSPU leader.^6 But, in addition, private anxieties about the
health of the delicate Harry were also pressing.
As noted in the last chapter, for some months now Emmeline had been in
contact with Harriot Stanton Blatch about planning an autumn lecturing tour
of the USA, primarily as a means of earning extra income for Harry’s medical
fees. In 1907, Harriot Stanton Blatch had founded the New York Equality
League of Self-Supporting Women, an organisation that was open to ‘any
woman who earns her own living, from a cook to a mining engineer’.^7 This
suffrage society of working women, with an emphasis upon the common bond
between the industrial and professional woman worker, must have greatly
appealed to Emmeline who, as a penniless widow, had had to earn enough to
support herself and four children and was now financially responsible for her
only son. That the Equality League had brought into the American suffrage
movement a ‘new and aggressive style of activism’,^8 added to its attraction.
Once Harriot Stanton Blatch had elicited from the immigration authorities
that Emmeline’s prison convictions would be classified as political rather than
criminal offences, and thus serve as no bar to her entry to the USA, the
arrangements for her to speak under the auspices of the Equality League were
placed on a firmer footing.^9 By mid August, Emmeline was joyfully telling
Elizabeth Robins that her American tour was finally settled. ‘I am having a
whole cabin to myself in fact travelling quite “en prince”. ... I don’t think the
authorities will care to make a martyr of me.’^10 The White Star Line gener-
ously allocated Emmeline the best cabin, for the ordinary fare, on the steamer
Oceanic, due to sail on 13 October. Some months earlier, Miss Birnstingl had
offered to accompany Emmeline on the trip and warmly, Emmeline had
turned her down. ‘Do not fear that I shall be lonely for I have many friends
who will go with me, if I need them, who are not yet sufficiently keen to take
up active work as you have done. ... I greatly appreciate the affection which
led you to write to me.’^11 It was decided that Dorothy Pethick, sister of the
Treasurer of the WSPU, would accompany Emmeline on her tour, her first
visit to the USA.^12
PERSONAL SORROW AND FORTITUDE