The Merry Past 



politics by unostentatiously utilising their natural 

 sagacity and feminine charm. To-day a certain num- 

 ber of ladies, by way of showing their fitness for the 

 franchise, behave in a manner which by no stretch 

 of imagination can be called consonant with the 

 dignity of their sex. Mrs. Pankhurst, for instance, 

 boxes Inspector Jarvis*s ears merely, it would seem, 

 on general grounds, the worthy official in question 

 having never publicly expressed any opinion as to 

 the question of giving women votes. Meaningless 

 " policeman-smacking " appears to be growing in 

 popularity with the militant suffragettes. It is, there- 

 fore, not unconsoling to the lover of fair play to 

 know that they too have had their " castigations." 



In July of the present year a band of these ladies 

 descended upon the small village of Rhos, in North 

 Wales, which they hoped to awaken to a burning 

 sense of feminine wrongs. The female portion of the 

 population, however, were not in sympathy with 

 their aims, and on the arrival of the suffragettes they 

 were quickly surrounded by a number of brawny 

 matrons, in turn placed across the knees of a powerful 

 Amazon and, after the simple preparations usually 

 adopted towards erring children, heartily whipped. 

 The powerful smacks (which were described in a 

 Liverpool paper as having sounded like pistol-shots) 

 struck no sympathetic chords in the hearts of a laugh- 

 ing crowd, which would appear to have thoroughly 

 approved of this discipline of the scourge. When 

 the ordeal was over the subdued suffragettes made 

 a rush for the station, and left by the next train, 



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