Their precautions were in vain, for the determined Suffragettes found more than one way in which to turn Mr. Asquith's triumph into a fiasco. Although no women gained access to the hall, there were plenty of men sympathisers present, and before the meeting had proceeded far thirteen men had been violently thrown out for reminding the Prime Minister that "the people" whose right to govern he was professing to uphold, included women as well as men. Outside, mingling in the vast crowds, bands of women attacked the barricades, the outer barricades being thrown down in spite of the thousands of police. From the roof of a neighbouring house Mrs. Leigh and Charlotte Marsh tore up dozens of slates and threw them on the roof of Bingley Hall and in the streets below, taking care, however, to strike no one. As Mr. Asquith drove away the women hurled slates at the guarded motor car. The fire hose was brought forth and the firemen were ordered to turn the water on the women. They refused, to their credit be it said, but the police, infuriated by their failure to keep the peace, did not scruple to play the cold water on the women as they crouched and clung to the dangerous slope of the roof. Roughs in the streets flung bricks at them, drawing blood. Eventually the women were dragged down by the police and in their dripping garments marched through the streets to the police station.
The Suffragettes who had rushed the barricades and flung stones at Mr. Asquith's departing train received sentences from a fortnight to one month, but Miss Marsh and Mrs. Leigh were sent to prison for three and four months respectively. All of the prisoners adopted the hunger strike, as we knew they would.
Several days later we were horrified to read in the newspapers that these prisoners were being forcibly fed by means of a rubber tube thrust into the stomach. Members of the Union applied at once both at the prison and at the Home Office to learn the truth of the report, but all information was refused. On the following Monday at our request, Mr. Keir Hardie, at question time in the House, insisted on information from the Government. Mr. Masterman, speaking for the Home Secretary, reluctantly admitted that, in order to preserve the dignity of the Government and at the same time save the lives of the prisoners, "hospital treatment" was being administered. "Hospital treatment" was the term used to draw attention from one of the most disgusting and brutal expedients ever resorted to by prison authorities. No law allows it except in the case of persons certified to be insane, and even then when the operation is performed by skilled nursing attendants under the direction of skilled medical men, it cannot be called safe. In fact, the asylum cases usually die after a short time. _The Lancet_, perhaps the best known medical journal in the language, published a long list of opinions from distinguished physicians and surgeons who condemned the practice as applied to the suffrage prisoners as unworthy of civilisation. One physician told of a case which had come under his observation in which death had occurred almost as soon as the tube had been inserted. Another cited a case where the tongue, twisted behind the feeding tube, had, in the struggle, been almost bitten off. Cases where food had been injected into the lungs were not unknown. Mr. C. Mansell-Moullin, M.D., F.R.C.S., wrote to _The Times_ that as a hospital surgeon of more than thirty years' experience he desired indignantly to protest against the Government's term "Hospital treatment" in connection with the forcible feeding of women. It was a foul libel, he declared, for violence and brutality have no place in hospitals. A memorial signed by 116 well-known physicians was addressed to the Prime Minister protesting against the practice of forcible feeding, and pointing out to him in detail the grave dangers attaching to it.