Now do talk to Dr. H or get her to find you something temporary.
Love
Mother
Sylvia is very weak but improving^65Despite her heavy responsibilities as the leader of the WSPU, Emmeline did
not ignore her private duties as a mother, however inadequately Sylvia and
Adela thought she performed them. But, as noted earlier, Emmeline was always
very possessive of her daughters, even when they were grown women. This,
together with their early socialisation that stressed the importance of fighting
enthusiastically for worthy causes, was not a situation likely to create family
unity. Emmeline passed onto her daughters a high dose of her own rebellious
spirit so that, eventually, they would scatter to different parts of the world. For
that Easter of 1913, however, she was pleased when Adela gained her diploma
and was then offered employment as head gardener at Road Manor near Bath,
the home of Mrs. Batten Pooll, a WSPU supporter.^66
Such family issues intruded on the time that Emmeline had to prepare her
defence for her trial at the Old Bailey, which began on 2 April. The night
before, she wrote to Elizabeth Robins who was unwell and unable to travel to
London to see the trial, ‘I am wonderfully well all things being considered.’ She
added, reflectively, ‘Of course tonight I am full of doubts & fears that I shall not
be equal to the part tomorrow but I daresay I shall be “all right on the day”.’^67
At her trial, where Emmeline pleaded not guilty to the charges of inciting
certain persons unknown to place explosives in the house being built for Lloyd
George at Walton Heath, she conducted her own defence, aided by her solic-
itor, Alfred Marshall. Basing her case not on legal grounds but on moral and
political considerations, she outlined the wrongs that women suffered and then
delivered a magnificent oration:
Over one thousand women have gone to prison in the course of this
agitation, have suffered their imprisonment, have come out of prison
injured in health, weakened in body, but not in spirit. I come to stand
my trial from the bedside of one of my daughters, who has come out of
Holloway Prison, sent there for two months’ hard labour for partici-
pating with four other people in breaking a small pane of glass. ... She
submitted herself for more than five weeks to the horrible ordeal of
feeding by force, and she has come out of prison having lost nearly two
stone in weight. She is so weak that she cannot get out of her bed. And
I say to you, gentlemen, that is the kind of punishment that you are
inflicting upon me or any other woman who may be brought before
you. I ask you if you are prepared to send an incalculable number of
women to prison ... if you are prepared to go on doing that kind of
thing indefinitely. ... We are women, rightly or wrongly, convinced
that this is the only way in which we can win power to alter what for usHONORARY TREASURER OF THE WSPU AND AGITATOR