67 
Refuge
By the time Amanda found herself on the street walking toward the familiar house she had left that morning, she was in nearly as bad a state as the day before. She had been wandering about the West End all afternoon.
Amanda knocked at the door of the Halifax home just before teatime.
Mrs. Halifax, who had been more than half expecting her, answered it.
“Come in . . . come in, my dear,” she said, in words that sounded more soothing and comforting than any Amanda had heard all day. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” she added. “We have your room all ready for you.”
Ramsay appeared behind his mother a moment later. The mere sight of his face caused Amanda to break into tears.
“I . . . I didn’t know where else to go,” she sobbed.
He approached and took her in his arms. She cried a minute as he held her, stroking her hair gently and whispering soft, comforting words into her ear. As he did so, he glanced with an imperceptible nod toward his mother. She closed the door, then turned and left them alone.
“I’m so sorry, Ramsay,” blubbered Amanda. “I’m sorry for the dreadful things I said. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Of course,” he whispered tenderly. “We will not speak of it again.”
“You were upset and confused.”
“I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”
“I understand . . . don’t worry, everything will be fine now.”
They stood another moment or two in silence. Ramsay stepped away. With his arm around her shoulder, he led her into the dining room, where Ramsay’s mother awaited them along with a well-spread tea. By the time Amanda lay down two hours later—after a satisfying meal, another relaxing bath, and many reassurances on the part of Ramsay and his mother—in the same bed she had slept in the night before, it seemed as if a week had passed.
Physically and emotionally exhausted from the ordeal, Amanda remained in bed most of the next day. On the day following that, the activities of her sister-colleagues in the fight for women’s rights proceeded without her.
When news of it reached her, Amanda could scarcely believe she had so recently been part of such outlandish activities. In light of the continued escalation of suffragette tactics, aided in no small measure by Ramsay’s article, published later in the week without his temporarily tarnished byline, police interest in the apprehension of Amanda Rutherford quickly disappeared.
Midway through the afternoon of Amanda’s second day in the Halifax home, Amanda, Mrs. Thorndike, and Ramsay’s mother sat down to enjoy a leisurely cup of tea. Amanda had sent for her things from the Pankhurst home, thinking no one but the servants would be home because of a scheduled demonstration before the Houses of Parliament. Her two or three bags arrived save and sound. The demonstration, however, turned out to be a ruse. News of the event had been so widely publicized that thousands of spectators gathered throughout the day about the square and along the nearby streets. By afternoon as many as three thousand policemen were on hand to prevent a riot.
Everyone waited. But no suffragette appeared, and no demonstration took place. Again they had outwitted the government. For while the crowd waited, more than a hundred women strolled along Knightsbridge, where not a policeman was to be seen, smashing the windows of every shop for blocks, then made good their escape. Not a single arrest took place.
Two weeks later, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mrs. Tuke, and both Mr. and Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence all appeared before the Bow Street magistrate. He released Mrs. Tuke, but committed the others for trial at the Old Bailey. The charge was straightforward enough: “Conspiring to incite certain persons to commit malicious damage to property.” In the meantime, led on by false trail after false trail planted by the suffragettes, the police continued to comb London for Christabel Pankhurst. Within days, however, she had fled to Paris.
The trial date arrived. Mrs. Pankhurst and the Pethick-Lawrences were sentenced to nine months, the two women in Holloway prison, Mr. Pethick-Lawrence in Pentonville. A hunger strike followed, which spread throughout to the other suffragettes in Brixton and Aylesbury jails. Christabel Pankhurst, living in Paris under the name Miss Amy Johnson, sent orders to the troops across the Channel.
In the various prisons where suffragettes were being held, the authorities now had no choice but to release their prisoners or resort to force-feeding. The first option would admit defeat. They therefore embarked upon a program to employ the second.
To get food into the belly of an unwilling prisoner required that several wardresses—however many were required, two, perhaps, at the feet, and at least two or three keeping the writhing head and shoulders motionless—held the prisoner down on her bed. Medical personnel forced the jaws open to insert wood or metal gags in place to hold them. This process cut the gums dreadfully, insuring that whatever food eventually found its way into the system was mingled with a good deal of blood. The feeding tube was then thrust down with extreme difficulty, doing the throat no more good than the gags did the lacerated gums. Through it was passed liquid nourishment, most of which was almost immediately vomited back up. It reportedly took nine women to subdue Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence—a large and extremely strong-willed lady. The ordeal left her in such bad condition that she was soon released on medical grounds.
Meanwhile, from Paris, Christabel urged the battle forward. Nothing in England was safe. Britain’s golfing enthusiasts now felt the suffragette wrath, discovering the words votes for women burned in acid across their greens, and teeing up to discover the flags on the pins replaced by purple suffragette banners.
Government officials were harrassed, accosted, heckled, even attacked. Incidents of arson increased everywhere. At first the women found empty houses in the country to burn, but gradually the tactics grew more dangerous and disturbing, with far-reaching effects everywhere.
Somehow the prison personnel managed to keep their captives alive, though the women who resisted with most determination were reduced to a dreadful state of nerves and health. But the hunger strikes continued.
One of the doctors in Holloway was so brutal in his application of feeding techniques that Emily Davison, already of nerves none too reliable, shrieked in horror at the mere sight of him and threw herself from the corridor into which her cell door opened onto the floor one story below.
If she had been trying to kill herself, she did not succeed. A wire screen broke her fall.