spinsters’ and exclude the ‘married women of the country’ and ‘women lodgers’
(who lacked property).^70 On the day, Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and her
husband arrived early at the hall and found that League supporters had not only
leafleted the seats but were about to take over the platform – which Mr. Elmy
tried to prevent happening. During the scuffle, Emmeline presented her plat-
form ticket which Mr. Elmy tore up, claiming that it was forged.^71 When the
meeting began, further interruptions occurred. Richard Pankhurst ‘and a lady’
sent up an amendment urging that no measure for women’s suffrage was worthy
of support which did not embody the principle of full legal enfranchisement for
all women, a proposition that was vigorously supported by George Bernard
Shaw, the author and playwright, who then entered into a fiery exchange of
views with Herbert Burrows who was sitting at the back of the hall.^72 As the
noise grew louder and louder, Burrows rapidly made his way towards the plat-
form amidst threats from the chair of the meeting that he would be removed
from the hall. League friends, thinking Burrows was being ejected from the
meeting, followed him in a rush. The reporters’ table on the platform collapsed
under the onslaught, coats, hats and notebooks being trampled under foot.
During the hand-to-hand fight that ensued, massive brass railings in front of the
platform were torn down. League members and their supporters, estimated to be
about 200, gained control of the platform where they cheered and denounced
Rollit’s bill.^73
The League’s response to the Rollit bill caused four resignations from its
Executive Committee, including that of Harriot Stanton Blatch. ‘She is not a
strong soul like dear old Mrs. Cady Stanton’, Ursula Bright later confided to
Emmeline.^74 The furore was widely reported in the press and Richard Pankhurst
felt obliged to state, in the columns of the Personal Rights Journal, that there had
been no plan to break up the meeting.^75 Emmeline retold the story to the
League Executive Committee meeting held on 2 May 1892, where approval was
given, with one exception, for the £20 that had been spent on printing,
distributing and posting the leaflet.^76
Emmeline would have had family matters on her mind at this time since her
father, to whom she had not spoken for a number of years, had died unexpect-
edly in late April, when on a visit with his wife to the Isle of Man. Memories of
happier times probably entered her thoughts as she wrote of his ‘sad & dread-
fully sudden death’ to Mr. Nodal, a Stockport newspaper proprietor, asking him
to commemorate her father’s memory. ‘I, his eldest daughter, can remember the
earnest part he took in the great struggle against slavery in the United States of
America, in the Free Trade movement & in all good causes’, she reminisced.
‘When a boy of, I think, 14 he became a member of the Anti-Corn Law League.
In later years he, as you know, did & suffered much to throw light into dark
places in Municipal affairs.’ Emmeline continued:
It would be a great comfort & solace to his family to see some public
recognition in the press of his native city, of the services rendered byPOLITICAL HOSTESS