sit down like a flock of sheep? ... Militancy will be more furious than before.’
She asked those who sympathised with militancy to join the WSPU and ‘to do
one deed within the next 48 hours’.^71 The following day, a fresh wave of secret
militancy began; empty country houses and railway carriages were set on fire, a
bomb exploded in Oxted Station blowing out all the walls and windows, the
glass of famous paintings was smashed with hammers.^72 Through all this guer-
rilla activity, as with previous and future militancy, orders were given that
human life should not be endangered. As Emmeline reiterated to one audience,
‘Human life for us is sacred’, a command that was still vividly remembered by
one aged suffragette in the 1960s. ‘Mrs Pankhurst gave us strict instructions ...
there was not a cat or a canary to be killed; no life.’^73 Consequently, arson and
bombing attacks on empty buildings were usually planned to take place at
night. Nor were suffragettes to be fanatical, committing suicide for their cause.
‘[W]e say’, continued Emmeline, ‘if any life is to be sacrificed it shall be ours; we
won’t do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy in the position where they will
have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death.’^74 Such consider-
ations weighed lightly with the public who condemned bitterly the attacks on
property. The Standardechoed the thoughts of many when it noted that the
campaign of reprisal was wearing out the public patience. The WSPU, it was
alleged, was nothing more than ‘a little band, of notoriety-seeking and
misguided females ... drawn almost exclusively from ... an upper class of more
or less well-educated and well-to-do women’. The only solution was for the
militant movement, ‘a mischievous imposture’, to be broken up.^75
HONORARY TREASURER OF THE WSPU AND AGITATOR