reversed their decision.^34 They now sent some of their own members to the
City Council, pleading that work should be found for the unemployed and that
joint action should be taken to prevent such crises occurring again. Emmeline’s
success in bringing about such unprecedented action revealed the extent of her
political skills and her powers as a speaker. It also gave her an esteemed position
on the Board of Guardians which she never lost.
As a Poor Law Guardian, Emmeline’s compassion for the poor was stirred to
its very depths. She was horrified at the conditions she found in the Chorlton
Workhouse and could still vividly recollect the detail some twenty years later in
her autobiography. Old men and women who were to end their days there sat
huddled on backless benches that made their bodies ache. ‘They had no privacy,
no possession, not even a locker. The old women were without pockets in their
gowns, so they were obliged to keep any poor little treasures they had in their
bosoms.’^35 Little girls of seven and eight years old, clad summer and winter in
thin cotton frocks with low necks and short sleeves, shivered as they scrubbed
the cold stones of the long draughty corridors and frequently caught bronchitis.
‘At night they wore nothing at all, night dresses being considered too good for
paupers.’^36 Pregnant women, most of them very young, unmarried, poor
servants did the hardest kind of work, including scrubbing, until their babies
were born. After staying for a short confinement of two weeks in hospital, they
faced the inevitable choice ‘of staying in the workhouse and earning their living
by scrubbing and other work, in which case they were separated from their
babies; or ... they could leave – leave with a two-weeks-old baby in their arms,
without hope, without home, without money, without anywhere to go’.^37
Inefficiency and waste was rife in regard to the management of the hospital,
insane asylum, school, farm, workshops and food. Each inmate was given daily a
poor diet mainly consisting of a certain weight of bread, a large portion of
which was left and fed to the pigs who did not thrive on stale bread and, there-
fore, fetched less when sold.
Emmeline, ‘with sorrowful wrath and persuasive plea’, did not ask for social
reform but demanded it.^38 Always a practical woman, she suggested a number of
solutions and, learning from her past political activities, formed alliances with
other Guardians sympathetic to her cause. Fierce exchanges took place between
Emmeline and the diehards, chief amongst whom was a boot merchant named
Mainwaring; when he realised that his outbursts of rudeness were helping ‘the
charming Mrs. Pankhurst’ to win supporters to her side, he tried to control
himself by writing ‘Keep your temper!’ on the blotting paper before him.^39 But
Emmeline and her reformers won the day. Within six months of her appoint-
ment as a Poor Law Guardian comfortable Windsor chairs with high backs were
introduced for the elderly to sit on in the workhouse, and diet and dress
changed. The bread was cut into slices and buttered with margarine, each
person being allowed to eat as much as they desired, the surplus being made into
puddings with milk and currants. Emmeline herself chose new material for
dresses and bonnets for the girls and women and was also successful in
SOCIALIST AND PUBLIC REPRESENTATIVE