Emmeline, in her lonely Holloway prison cell early in April 1913, went on
hunger strike for nine terrible days, subsisting only on water. A vigil was kept at
the prison gates by relays of her loyal followers. A migraine attack added to her
anguish of body and mind as she sadly reflected on how distant, though certain,
their goal of women’s suffrage seemed to be. The eiderdown, quilt and pillow
that had been sent in from outside were now taken away, on orders from the
Governor who offered instead to send her a Nonconformist minister. Desperate
to appear at the 10 April meeting at the Albert Hall (it was to be the last
WSPU meeting to be held there), she threatened to take off her clothes or walk
about all night in order to ensure release. Mrs. Pankhurst ‘appears to be very
nervous about herself ’ noted a Home Office report.^1 Vulnerable, depressed and
in a state of collapse, Emmeline believed she would not survive and wrote some
messages on two small cards to Ethel Smyth which she asked Miss Harper, a
kind wardress of whom she was fond, to post secretly. ‘You will smile to hear
that during sleepless nights I sang the “March” and “Laggard Dawn” [another of
Ethel’s suffrage songs] in such a queer cracked voice’, she told Ethel.
Acknowledging that she had been through a difficult time, Emmeline neverthe-
less optimistically noted, ‘But that is over, and now that the end is perhaps near
I want you to know how happy I am, lifted above these dismal surroundings and
feeling certain that if I am to die good will come of my going.’^2
Keir Hardie regularly asked questions in the House of Commons about
Emmeline’s health and treatment, thus helping to keep the issue in the public
eye.^3 On 11 April, the day after the Albert Hall meeting at which the large sum
of £15,000 was raised, the Governor came to her cell and read out a Special
Licence under the Penal Servitude Acts which would release her for only fifteen
days, provided she informed the police of all her movements. The notorious
Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health Bill, which had been rapidly
passed through its various readings, had been specially drafted to deal with such
troublesome suffragettes; but it did not receive the Royal Assent until 25 April.
Under the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, as it became known, suffragettes or ‘mice’ in a
state of poor health could be released into the community to recover sufficiently
to be clawed back by the ‘cat’ to complete their sentence. When the Governor
nancy kaufman
(Nancy Kaufman)
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