Chapter III: From Easter to Whitsuntide (3)

More definite signs of social change were exhibited in the series of further outrages by militant suffragists. As usual, some were very grave in character, others merely vexatious and even childish, but all were carried out with great determination by women for whom the punishments provided by the law appeared to have no terrors. On April 17 the pier pavilion at Yarmouth had been burnt down, apparently through the explosion of a bomb; on April 28 the Bath Hotel at Felixstowe, just made ready for the season, was also burnt, the damage being estimated at 35,000_l._; on May 4, at the first public view of the Royal Academy Exhibition, a portrait of Mr. Henry James, the novelist, presented to him by his admirers and painted by Mr. Sargent, R.A., was damaged with a chopper by Mrs. Mary Wood; a week later (May 12) a similar outrage was committed on Herkomer's portrait of the Duke of Wellington in the same exhibition; at the gala performance in honour of the King of Denmark at the Italian opera (May 11) there were unsuccessful attempts to interrupt the performance by addressing King George V.; while on May 14 the houses of Lord Lansdowne and Sir Edward Carson were picketed by suffragists to emphasise the contention that the Ulster leaders should also be treated as in revolt. A few days later a cricket pavilion was burnt at Harborne, near Birmingham (May 15), and a like fate befell the grandstand and offices on the Birmingham racecourse; and on May 21 a deputation of women, in defiance of the principles of British constitutional government, attempted to force their way to Buckingham Palace to present a petition against forcible feeding to the King. The police had formed a cordon around the Palace, and a crowd had naturally assembled; the procession appeared suddenly to emerge from it near the top of Constitution Hill, and the painful and distressing spectacle was presented of a conflict, before a jeering crowd, between a group of women and the police. Sixty-six women and two men were arrested, and, for the most part, was sentenced to be bound over to keep the peace; they refused to be bound over, and were sentenced in default to one day's imprisonment. Others, sentenced to longer terms of incarceration, were speedily released after hunger-and-thirst strikes. Mrs. Pankhurst, who had appeared in the front of the procession, was rearrested, but released again after four days' thirst-and-hunger strike, and her arrest was the signal for fresh outbursts. The day after it five very valuable Italian pictures at the National Gallery were damaged, as well as a picture by Mr. Clausen, R.A., at the Royal Academy; and hence the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the Tate Gallery, and a few days later the Watts Gallery near Guildford, were closed till further notice. Again, at a special _matinée_ of "The Silver King," attended by the King and Queen (May 22), a woman stood up and addressed His Majesty as "Russian Tsar"; another interrupter had chained herself to her stall; and others in the galleries showered suffragist literature on the audience. Next day Mr. Lavery's portrait of the King in the Royal Scottish Academy was damaged, and an attempt was made to cut off the aqueduct supplying Glasgow with water from Loch Katrine; but the criminals in this last case escaped. Finally, windows were broken at Buckingham Palace on May 27. The two Felixstowe incendiaries were sentenced at the Suffolk Assizes (May 29) respectively to nine months and two years' imprisonment, but the "Cat and Mouse Act" afforded them a certain, though painful, escape. A more efficient method of suppression was foreshadowed by the raiding of a flat on May 21 at Maida Vale, where several women and a man were arrested, and stones, hammers, and choppers were seized. Two days later, the offices of the Women's Social and Political Union in Kingsway were raided also, and the secretary was charged with conspiring with the inmates of the Maida Vale flat. The accused persons, following the example of the Felixstowe criminals, behaved outrageously in court, and their conduct and, indeed, the whole of the outrages, probably gave a severe set-back to the suffragist cause.

The Labour outlook, too, continued alarming. The railway servants' leaders decided on May 16 to demand the recognition by the companies of their trade union, a forty-eight hours' week, and an increase of wages in all grades by 5_s._ weekly; and in the building trade, the ballot taken upon an offer of compromise by the employers, which the men were advised by their leaders to accept, resulted, on the contrary, in its rejection by 21,017 votes to 5,705. The struggle was causing extreme suffering, and was kept up with a determination ominous of its long continuance. And behind all these signs of multifarious social unrest loomed the spectre of civil war.