it is that has brought a woman no longer young into this dock.’ Quietly, she
reminded Judge Coleridge, whom she addressed courteously as ‘My Lord’, that
his father forty-three years ago pleaded on behalf of women in a test case that
arose out of the Reform Act of 1867 as to the right of women to be placed on the
electoral register. One effect of that case decision, which said that women were
not persons for the privilege of voting, was that she and Emmeline Pethick
Lawrence were persons to be punished but not persons to have any voice in the
making of laws which they might break. Movingly, as in previous speeches, she
pointed out how her experiences as a Poor Law Guardian had revealed to her the
wretched living conditions of poor women and children and how she had sought
to change the law to help those less fortunate than herself. She had come to
realise, however, that the old constitutional methods she had followed in order
to get the vote for women had failed, and so in 1903 she founded the WSPU.
The militants in the WSPU, Emmeline reassured the court, were not criminals
but political activists, seeking political reform. Furthermore, she insisted:
I want you to realise that no step we have taken forward has been
taken until after some act of repression on the part of our enemy, the
Government – because it is the Government which is our enemy – it is
not the Members of Parliament, it is not the men in the country; it is
the Government in power alone that can give us the vote.Summing up her case, Emmeline maintained that it was not the defendants
who had conspired, but the government who had conspired against the mili-
tants as they tried to crush the suffrage agitation.^65 The fight of the militants
was a just war, based on moral conviction.
Emmeline’s admirers were visibly moved by her one and three-quarter hours’
oration. For Nevinson, it was ‘one of the noblest speeches I have heard’. For
Laurence Housman, a Bohemian suffragist, playwright and illustrator, who was
not present at the trial but later read a full account, Emmeline’s speech made
‘my heart ache more than any other speech I have ever read on the suffrage’.^66
The all-male jury found the defendants guilty although they unanimously
expressed the hope that, ‘taking into consideration the undoubtedly pure
motives’ which underlie the suffrage agitation, ‘the utmost clemency and
leniency’ would be exercised. Justice Coleridge coolly ignored the plea and,
refusing the appeal by the defendants to be treated as political prisoners,
pronounced the severe sentence of nine months in the Second Division.
Emmeline Pankhurst and Fred Pethick Lawrence were also ordered to pay the
prosecution costs.^67
Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence were soon back in
Holloway while Fred was sent to Brixton. The two Emmelines were warmly but
respectfully welcomed by the other imprisoned militants who invited them to
join in the various activities that they organised. Chairs were placed against the
wall of the wardresses’ home as the ‘dress circle’ for the two leaders who
THE WOMEN’S REVOLUTION