presented Emmeline with her licence that Friday evening, she summoned up
what strength she could and tore it into strips. ‘I have no intention of obeying
this infamous law. You release me knowing perfectly well that I shall never
voluntarily return to any of your prisons.’^4
The Home Office instructed the Governor to telephone Special Branch at
Scotland Yard as soon Emmeline had left and, in particular, to give the address
of her destination; it was 9 Pembridge Gardens, the nursing home run by
Catherine Pine. One stone lighter in weight, suffering from irregularities in her
heartbeat, weakness and prostration, Emmeline should have been conveyed
there on a stretcher; the prison authorities sent her away sitting up in a cab.
Visiting the nursing home, Ethel Smyth found the sight of Emmeline heart-
rending; her skin had turned yellow and was tightly drawn over her face, her
eyes were deep sunken, and there was a dark flush on her cheeks. Some twenty
years later Ethel was still haunted by ‘the strange, pervasive, sweetish odour of
corruption’ hanging about Emmeline’s room, as she was nursed back to health, a
smell unlike any other and due, she supposed, to the body feeding on its own
tissue. ‘I often hoped that Mrs. Pankhurst, the most meticulously dainty of
beings, had no idea of this sinister effect of hunger-striking and am glad to
believe she hadn’t, for she would have minded that almost more than
anything.’^5 It was while she was in the nursing home that Emmeline heard that
Annie Kenney had been arrested and released on bail, and summonses issued
against Flora Drummond and George Lansbury.
Unable to walk or digest solid food, Emmeline was given a liquid diet of raw
eggs and lemon.^6 Her slow recovery was not helped by the presence of hordes
of detectives who constantly watched the building, night and day. Emmeline
worried that their presence, and the crowds of curious onlookers who came to
stare, were doing harm to the nursing home, the main source of Nurse Pine’s
livelihood. Dr. Flora Murray, who was attending to her, arranged for her
patient to be transferred to the home of WSPU member Hertha Ayrton, at 41
Norfolk Square. On the day of her departure, probably 23 April, Emmeline was
strong enough to write to Agnes Harben thanking her for the gift of a ‘pretty
“sitting up” jacket’. She explained, ‘I had sent all my trunks down in to the
country & had not one at hand so that it is most useful. I am wearing it today
with very great delight.’^7 That evening, Emmeline was conveyed in an ambu-
lance to 41 Norfolk Square where the waiting Hertha Ayrton was shocked by
what she saw:
It was horrible to see her being carried upstairs in a long white bed,
looking as if it were no living thing that was lying there. She had a
white silk handkerchief over her head, and was lying quite still, and it
was all ghastly. ... There are two or more detectives in front, two at the
back, one at least on the roof of the nearest empty house; and a taxi
waiting to pursue, if Mrs. P. should get up and run away!^8PRISONER OF THE CAT AND MOUSE ACT