Review of Reeieas, 118106. 



Character Sketches. 



i6i 



spending student of Ruskin College, Oxford, 

 gradually becoming more and more conscious of the 

 fact that in the denial of the franchise to woman 

 lies the root of all the injustices under which they 

 labour. 



She was a practical young woman schooled in the 

 shifts and resources of trades unionism in the mill 

 and of a large family at home, and when she saw 

 that the vote was the thing she began instinctively 

 to ask herself what she could do to secure it. About 

 this juncture she had the good fortune to come into 

 contact with Mrs. Tankhurst and her gifted and in- 

 trepid daughter. Her spirit responded to theirs. 

 and before she quite knew how it was Annie Kenney 

 found herself plunged headlong into the franchise 

 agitation. Her heart was full, and she soon found 

 ready utterance. Her timidity soon disappeared. 

 No one has yet appeared on the political platform 

 s-) fearless, so resourceful, so resolute. 



Like the Pankhursts and Mrs. Elmy, she saw in 

 a moment that the subject had been trifled with too 

 long, and that it would be trifled with indefinitely 

 unless women resented the perpetual postponement 

 of their claims. Patience had had its perfect work 

 with this result, that when women ventured to 

 ■isk a ci\il question of a statesman who, like Sir 

 Edward Grey, had been pledged for twenty years 

 in favour of woman's suffrage, he disdained to re- 

 turn any answer. Thereupon finding that their ques- 

 tion was ignored on the platform, Miss Pankhurst 

 and Miss Kenney displayed their famous oriflamme, 

 a white banner bearing the inscription " Votes for 

 Women," and asked why they could not have the 

 civility of a reply. Instead of an explanation the 

 l)olice were called in and the ladies were inconti- 

 nently pitched into the street. As Miss Kenney 

 attempted to address the crowd outside, she and 

 Miss Pankhurst were dragged off to the police sta- 

 tion, and next morning they were both sent to gaol. 

 Xothing could have happened more auspiciously for 

 their cause. The incident announced to all the land 

 . that at last women had arrived who were determined 

 to stand no more nonsense, and would take impris- 

 onment joyfully rather than acquiesce any longer in 

 the denial of their rights. From that moment it was 

 evident to all who are familiar with reform move- 

 ments that woman's suffrage had entered upon the 

 final struggle 



Future historians will marvel at the extraordinary 

 perversity, not to say intolerable incivility, of the 

 political leaders at this crisis. Most of them were 

 avowed supporters of woman's suffrage. They had 

 admitted by voice or by vote the justice of their 

 claim to enfranchisement. But when they were 

 asked a civil question as to whether they would take 

 effecti\e measures to remedy this injustice, they re- 

 sented it as an insult and called in the police to 

 throw the women into the street. 



In cases where the politicians honestly objected 

 to woman's suffrage anrl said so there was no dis- 



Photogmph bi/J [B. H. Mills. 



Mrs. Pethwick Lawrence. 



iHon. Treasurer, Woman's Social and Political Union.) 



turbanoe. The women took their answer and treated 

 them as enemies. But what irritated the women to 

 the last degree of exasperation was where men stood 

 up who had professed their l«lief in woman's suf- 

 frage, and who constantly relied upon won>en's help 

 to secure their election, but who at the same time 

 would not lift a finger to make woman's suft'rage a 

 plank in their own party programme. It was the same 

 dishonest shuffling insincerity which provoked the 

 outbreak in the Ladies' Gallery. Miss Kenney and 

 Mrs. Pankhurst waited until all hope of a division 

 was past, and then they protested, not assuredly 

 before time. 



Their protest evoked the same kind of nonsensical 

 outcry which was excited by the action of Jeanne 

 d'Arc to resuming man's apparel. Weak-kneed sup- 

 porters who had never done a stroke of work for 

 the cau.se professed themselves to be in despair over 

 the set-back administered to the movement. Com- 

 fortable women in their drawing-rooms, who had 

 never subscribed a penny [liece to the cause of the 

 enfranchisement of their sex, expressed their regret 

 o\er these misguided women who had so little tact 

 and who did not go the right way to secure the 

 success of their cause. But, meanwhile, the cause 

 gained more by that outburst of divine impatience 

 than hy all the meek and mild expostulations of the 

 patient crowd. The public l)egan to realise that 

 some women at least were in dead earnest, so much 

 in earnest as to be prepared to brave ridicule, abuse, 



