WOMEN IN COMMONS.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 341, 30 October 1908, Page 7

WOMEN IN COMMONS.

A PADLOCKED PAIR. REFUSE TO UNLOCK THEMSELVES. CONCERTED OUTBREAKS. MALE INTERRUPTERS-FOURTEEN ARRESTS. (BY TBLECBAPn—PUESS ASSOCIATION—COPIUIQIIT.) (Rec. October 29, 9.50 p.m.) London, October 29. The House of Commons was startled last evening by seeing a suffrage placard thrust through the iron trellis of the ladies' gallery, whence issued shrill cries of "Votes for women." Two women were found padlocked to the grating with a chain engirdling their bodies, and declined to unlock themselves. They continued to shout and upbraid the male legislators below them until the police removed a portion of the grating and conveyed the offenders, still attached to the seotions of the grating, to a committee room, where locksmiths filed away the links of the chain. Both vfomen were then liberated in the Old Palace Yard. Simultaneously with their demonstration a man in the strangers' gallery opposite demanded "Justioe for women," and threw leaflets on the floor of the House. He was expelled. Later, another man shouted "Justice for the unemployed, votes for women," and showered pamphlets on the beads of the below. He was expelled, shouting and struggling fiercely. Meanwhile, members of the Women's Freedom League, who in twos and threes had penetrated far into St. Stephen's Hall, pretending that they were waiting to see individual members of the Commons, suddenly made an ineffectual concerted rush for the lobby. Fourteen werag arrested, including several who were outside.

Notable among the latter was Miss Maloney, of bell-ringing fame. She-mounted on top of the pedestal of the Richard Coeurde Leon Statuo near tho entrance of the House of Lords, and tried to harangue the crowd in tho Palace Yard.

Tho Speaker (Hon. J. W. Lowther) has ordered tho ladies' and the strangers' galleries to be closed in. future.

Miss Muriel Matters, one of the padlocked women, informed an interviewer after her release that she had voted twice in Australian elections. At a later stage she was arrested for participating in the disturbance in the yard.

Her companion, Miss Fox, who was nol arrested, disappeared. ; ,

Missi Dorothjr Maloney is the Irish-lady mv •5 un 5 e b ,r°lcoti°n, pursued Mr. Churchill, with a handbell, which proved an effective means of persecution. At one meetmng from which she ivas ejected, she complained bitterly of tho method of ejection, stating that she had been injured in the ribs and had been caused considerable pain. She had been very roughly handled, she said; whereas, at Mr. Sydney Buxton's meeting she had been thrown out in "the proper wa.y," by being caught behind the. elbows, when "a girl could do nothing."