“CENTRAL POLICE STATION, “NEWCASTLE, “_October 10, 1909_.”
FOOTNOTE: [11] I handed this letter to a friend on Monday morning. At the trial Miss Davison was dismissed, so her name was taken from the signatures.
I wrote on the wall of my cell my name and the words which rung in my head over and over again, from the Book of Joshua: “Only be thou strong and very courageous.”
I received a letter in the police cell, saying that I had thrown my stone not far from a family residence of relatives of ours--did I not feel it hence a double disgrace? In answer to this I had thought some time. Who were those for whom we fought? I seemed to hear them in my cell, the defenceless ones who had no one to speak for their hungry need. The sweated workers, the mothers widowed with little children, the women on the streets, and I saw that their backs were bent, their eyes grown sorrowful, their hearts dead without hope. And they were not a few, but thousands upon thousands. Side by side I considered what they could do, what they had done, where women had the vote. The wife has half her husband’s wages, by law, and when he does not give it, she can have the amount paid direct to her. She is given money for her children by the State when her husband dies. When she is not married, if she has a child she is paid for it, not by the father direct, but through the public authority, and she has not to apply to the father for her money. I thought of all these helpless women, of the Parliament that had given its theoretic consent for over twenty years, but refused to pass a Bill, and I thought what are my relations? I do not know, but if anything, they are for us, and if they are still asleep, in the fog of the “don’t know and don’t care,” am I bound to consider their dreaming?
“To defend the oppressed, To fight for the defenceless, Not counting the cost.”
The next morning, Monday, October 11, we got up early, with a sense of excitement that we were to be “tried.” We were allowed to wash in a basin arrangement all together. The water was cold, but clean and fresh. The roll towel was horrible, I have never seen anything so dirty--blood had freely been wiped upon it. Nothing could surpass the kindness and civility of the wardresses. One, who thought only of the hunger-strike, cried as we left. We were then led off to the cells upstairs, which were rather cleaner and much lighter. A man came to mend something outside my window; it was open and I could see out by two or three square inches. He looked in at me with great curiosity, but without ill-will. I had the policeman’s pencil still, and wrote on a paper to hand up to him that he should not be afraid of the Suffragettes, but help them to get the vote. I was still thinking about it when the police began to rattle the keys, so I refrained, although it was some time before they came to fetch me.