against forcible feeding and exposing the double standard that the government
was operating; WSPU prisoners, including untried prisoners charged with the
crimes of incitement and conspiracy which Sir Edward Carson and his Unionist
associates were openly committing daily, without arrest, and for which she had
been sentenced to three years’ penal servitude, were being tortured by a barbaric
practice. ‘I ask you to publish this letter’, the defiant rebel said, ‘because I desire
to inform the Home Secretary and his colleagues that to-morrow I shall openly
resume my work for the enfranchisement of women, and that when they have
effected my re-arrest with its usual accompaniment of brutality and insult I shall
resume the strike.’^54
On 8 July, the day her letter was published, Emmeline was rearrested as she
entered the old WSPU headquarters at Lincoln’s Inn. Late that night, Frances
Parker and Ethel Moorhead attempted to blow up Robert Burns’ cottage at
Alloway, near Ayr. Back in the Reception Wing in Holloway, Emmeline was
stripped and thoroughly searched, the new rule having been introduced since
the attempt to smuggle an emetic to Grace Roe. Deeply offended by this new
procedure and determined to resist, she was charged with being abusive and
using offensive language towards the matron and wardresses who searched her,
and with striking one of them. After being subjected to the degrading proce-
dure, during which only indigestion tablets were found, Emmeline lay on the
floor, refusing to be helped on with her clothes. As Crawford aptly comments,
the image of Mrs Pankhurst, usually so fastidious and personally reticent, lying
naked on the floor, under the gaze of prison officials, is not one conjured up by
history books. The private view, however, became public, when notes about the
strip search were written up for the Home Office, and stored in an archive, now
open for all to consult. For Crawford, ‘This humiliation more than her
commanding oratory and platform presence represents Emmeline Pankhurst’s
apotheosis and perfectly demonstrates what Teresa Billington-Greig identified
as her willingness to be ruthless with herself.’^55
Brought before a three-man Visiting Committee on 10 July, to be tried for
her offences, Emmeline had regained some of her composure. ‘I put it to you,
gentlemen ... that the Matron has admitted that it was an unpleasant duty. ...
Is it not an indignity to subject a woman like me to a forcible search?’ Her plea
fell on deaf ears. She was sentenced to seven days’ close confinement and the
forfeit of 168 remission marks.^56 Continuing her hunger and thirst strike, during
which she lost nearly a stone in weight and suffered greatly from nausea and
gastric disturbances, she was released in an emaciated condition the following
day, due to return on 15 July.^57 Cared for by Nurse Pine at Pembridge Gardens,
Emmeline was determined not to return to Holloway but to attend a great
WSPU meeting to be held at Holland Park Hall on the 16th. On the evening of
the meeting, she set out, on a stretcher, accompanied by a number of doctors
and clergymen who were to conduct her to the waiting ambulance. Hundreds of
people watched as, during a short struggle with the police, she was rearrested
and taken back to Holloway.^58 Anticipating such a move, Emmeline had
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