in a nursing chair, with a nurse in attendance. The hurricane of cheers subsided
as the audience saw how frail and emaciated their leader looked. She tried to
rise, but sank back into the cushions in her chair. ‘[A]fter the first broken efforts
[she] recovered that superb & pathetic voice’, noted Nevinson. Emmeline told
of her recent prison experiences and ended her message on her familiar defiant
note. ‘I mean to carry on my work as a speaker until the close of the Session, so
far as my strength allows, and if rearrested shall resume the hunger and thirst
strike. In all seriousness, we say that the Government must give us the vote, or
give us death.’^63 Amidst a great outburst of cheering, Annie Kenney ran
forward spontaneously and throwing her arms around Emmeline’s neck, kissed
her several times. After Emmeline had left the platform, her licence was
auctioned and sold for £100 to an American who was present, a particularly
innovative way for the Government to contribute to WSPU funds!
The day of the Pavilion meeting, a worried C. P. Scott, editor of the
Manchester Guardian, wrote to Lloyd George complaining that there seemed to
be ‘no sense’ in the way Mrs. Pankhurst was being treated. ‘The woman is obvi-
ously being killed by inches & the Home Secretary is merely dodging death.’^64
Many clergymen too were now of the view that Emmeline should be pardoned.
On 7 August, 160 of them presented a petition to Asquith expressing their
abhorrence at the workings of the Cat and Mouse Act, which was not only
‘exciting much unrest and widespread indignation’ but also ‘seriously endan-
gering the moral standard of the nation, as well as the stability of the law and
order in the State’. Although the Prime Minister received the petition, he
refused to grant an audience.^65 Four days previously, forty militants had inaugu-
rated a new form of protest at St. Paul’s Cathedral. During the litany at the
morning service, they chanted a special verse:
Save Emmeline Pankhurst!
Spare her! Spare her!
Give her light and set her free!
Save her! Save her!
Hear us while we pray to Thee!At the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, the women continued to sing and were
asked to leave the Cathedral.^66 From now on, such protests frequently took
place at services in places of worship. And from September onwards, additional
protests were made in theatres and restaurants against forcible feeding.^67
Emmeline did carry on her work as a speaker that summer, without rearrest.
An International Medical Congress was held in London, at which she spoke,
and a number of the delegates attended WSPU meetings at the Kingsway Hall
on 5 and 11 August since the effects of the Cat and Mouse Act on the physical
well-being of suffragettes was a hot topic of debate. On 5 August Emmeline
delivered a rousing speech condemning those doctors who administered forcible
feeding on women caught under the notorious Act, which was a disgraceful
PRISONER OF THE CAT AND MOUSE ACT