THE SUFFRAGETTES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 47, 13 July 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SUFFRAGETTES

Reports were issued on May 23 of the J speeches made at the Home Office when Mr. McKenna, the Home Secretary, received a deputation which urged that , persons convicted of a political offence should be treated differently from those who were guilty of crimes involving moral turpitude. The deputation included Lady Aberconway, the Countess De La Warr, the Countess Brassey, Lord Russell, and) others. Mr| McKenna, in his reply, said the Prison Commissioners and the Home Office officials were as conscious as the deputation that in the great majority of the suffragette cases the primary motive had not been criminal. They would find, however, that the doctrine of motive, as advocated by the deputation, was to receive acceptance administration of the law would become impossible. He could not find in the Home Office records, since prisons came under the Home Office, a i single instance showing that political prisoners had ever been treated differently from anybody else. The Irish Office informed him that no such distinction was drawn in-Ireland. One of the deputation: What about Dr. Jameson? Mr. McKenna said that the Lord Chief Justice did not find that the Jameson raiders were political prisoners. As to the treatment of suffragette prisoners, the Home Secretary promised that if they would behave reasonably in prison and accept the ordinary prison discipline there would be no reason to complain of their treatment. Towards the close of their trial in May, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst pleaded in emotional appeals for treatment as first-class misdemeanants. Mrs. Pankhurst clutched the rail in front of her and in a broken voice exclaimed: "I would rather spend seven years in prison as a political offender than I would spend seven days and-be degraded among common felons." With uplifted arms at the close of her appeal, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence cried, "May God defend us, as our cause is just!" Mr. Pethick Lawrence, in his final speech, instanced the cases of Mr. W. T. Stead and of Dr. Jameson, who were treated as first-class misdemeanants. "If in the course of this case," said Mr. ] Justice Coleridge, "I had observed any contrition or disavowal of the acts which you have committed, or any hope that you would have avoided repetition of them in future, I should have been very much prevailed upon by the arguments you have addressed to me." Sir Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney-Gen-eral, looking rather jaded, uttered the warning that steps would be tak-m to see that attacks on the trade and property of private persons for the purpose of calling attention to a grievance were not allowed to continue with impunity. Referring to what they had heard of the wrongs of women at the hands of men, Sir Rufus Isaacs said. "Remember that in these matters, and particularly in moments of danger, the balance is not all on the side of men. When there is grave peril when there is a question of only limited safety capable of being provided for those who are in peril, the order is "iven, 'Women and children first.'"