member, Ada Cecile Wright who had six convictions against her and was trav-
elling to New York.^30 When Sylvia visited her mother she found her ‘worn and
haggard’ but less exhausted than she expected; she listened to stories about her
father, how Emmeline had dreamt about him in prison and seen ‘his kind face’
looking down on her.^31 On 2 June, Emmeline wrote to Henry Harben, reas-
suring him that although she was physically very weak, ‘I can again face the
ordeal if they decide to take me back to prison. I shall not ask for any extension
of the license of course.’ What Emmeline did not know was that the
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis had recommended that if she did not
return to prison when her licence expired, she should not be rearrested,
provided she stayed quietly at home and refrained from attending WSPU meet-
ings, a constraint with which she would never have agreed.^32
Fate intervened on 8 June when Emily Wilding Davison, the freelance mili-
tant, died as a result of injuries sustained when she ran onto the race course on
Derby Day and tried to catch hold of the reins of the King’s horse, Anmer. The
incident was captured on newsreel and seen by thousands who went to the
cinema, including Mary Leigh and Ruth Gollancz.^33 It was widely assumed that
Emily had committed suicide, sacrificing her life as a ‘petition’ to the King as a
way to end the suffering of her comrades and to ensure the granting of votes for
women, although there is no conclusive evidence that this was the case.^34 Her
death, occurring at a time when militants were protesting about Emmeline’s
own treatment under the Cat and Mouse Act, fearing that she would die,
stunned the WSPU rank-and-file and its leader. Although Morley and Stanley
rightly point out that Christabel wrote of Emily’s death inThe Suffragetteas a
‘ “martyr’s death” pure and simple’, a plausible explanation that was ‘far too
good an opportunity to be missed’, it is important not to minimise how the
tragedy must have affected Emmeline Pankhurst.^35 She must have pondered on
whether Emily who, after all, had been a friend of the trusted Grace Roe – now
given the task of organising the funeral – had been protesting against her
Union leader’s treatment. In shock and grief, Emmeline forgot about the trou-
bled relationship that Emily had often had with the WSPU leadership and
wrote a warm tribute to ‘one of our bravest soldiers’ who had ‘gladly laid down
her life for women’s freedom ... in our grief we rejoice that she succeeded by her
heroic deed in calling attention to the great struggle for the emancipation of
women. We who remain can but honour her memory by continuing our work
unceasingly.’^36
Scarcely able to leave her bed, Emmeline was none the less determined to
attend the funeral knowing, as she explained to a journalist, that she expected
to be returned to prison and the hunger strike.^37 As she stepped into the street
from her flat on 14 June, accompanied by Sylvia and Nurse Pine, Emmeline was
rearrested. Five thousand women marched in the solemn funeral procession,
clad in black carrying purple irises or in white bearing white lilies. The coffin
was draped with a purple pall on which were worked in white two large broad
arrows. An empty carriage, drawn by two horses, with groups of hunger strikers
PRISONER OF THE CAT AND MOUSE ACT