WOMEN'S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION.

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A Demonstration in the Royal Albert Hall, Saturday, June 15th. A pamphlet flyer for a suffragette rally described in Votes for Women newspaper as "a seething cauldron of revolt" (p. 614). At the time, suffragettes were incensed by the government's continued indifference towards their demands. The inner pages contain a list of "Suffragist prisoners still under sentence", many of whom were on hunger strike, including Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethwick Lawrence. In March 1912, the latest in a series of bills proposed to give property-owning women the vote failed to pass in Parliament. The frustrated suffragettes increasingly resorted to militant action, for which perpetrators continued to be imprisoned as common offenders and mistreated while in custody. Votes for Women reported that "we have known many Albert Hall WSPU audiences in the past few years: we do not remember one in which indignation was with such difficulty kept under restraint" (p. 614). Amongst the speakers at the event was the actress, playwright and feminist Elizabeth Robins, who had reservations about militancy. However, at this point, she accepted the futility of peaceful petitioning: "even if it were moral, if it were decent to make woman the eternal supplicant … by appealing and imploring, has she a chance of getting what she asks for - what she needs?" (Robins, pp. 321-322).Provenance: from the collection of the suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford.

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