The leaders of the W.S.P.U. determined to go on a deputation to the House of Commons on Tuesday, November 21, with Mrs. Pethick Lawrence to lead them. I intended to accompany them as a stone-thrower; the police on Black Friday (1910) had made the other way--that of going on a deputation--impossible for me, unless I were to see death, and this seemed useless. It was an understood thing that this time, if we were imprisoned, we should not hunger-strike.
HOLLOWAY REVISITED: MY FOURTH IMPRISONMENT
I determined that I would do my work alone. I was afraid that, if I combined with others, I might fail them, through illness, when they counted on me. Some days later Miss Lawless said she would come too, and, as she kindly chose to do the job with me, all was well. I selected a post office window in Victoria Street, on the left-hand side, facing Westminster. I went to buy some stamps there the day before to make sure of my bearings. I studied all the windows where it would be safe, and where not safe, to do the work of smashing without hurting anyone inside.
A friend, Mrs. MacLeod, came to see me the evening before, November 20, 1911. She brought me flowers, lovely lilies-of-the-valley and two bunches of violets. She told me she had bought them in Piccadilly from a girl that was sitting round the fountain. “They are for a friend of mine who is going to fight for the women to-morrow”; she wasn’t sure she had said it in a way the girl could understand. “Oh! May God bless her, God bless them all! Here, lady, take this extra bunch of violets for her.” She called this out enthusiastically, as she collected the flowers.
This time I had a small hammer as well as three stones wrapped in paper. The hammer, of course, was the safest as well as the most efficient of my tools, but one had to be quite near to the window in order to use it. Another dear friend, Dr. Alice Ker, came to me from Liverpool on the day, Tuesday, November 21. She was coming to the fray in Westminster, but she did not wish to get arrested. Towards six o’clock we took a taxi and went together to the beginning of Victoria Street. Then we got out and each went our own way. I walked up and down the street, first along one side, then along the other, and I inspected the side parallel streets. Victoria Street I had always supposed was rather a long one, but on this occasion it was infinitely short, and I seemed to pass the same people over and over again. Once I jumped into a ’bus to go up again towards Westminster, and there I came across many of my friends, who doubtless were going to the preliminary meeting at Caxton Hall. At last when standing, as it seemed to me, for the fiftieth time in front of a door with pillars, which was our trysting place, I met Miss Lawless and soon after Miss Douglas Smith, who had said she would join us for a little, as she had to go to all who were “active” in Victoria Street. We turned into a “Lyons” for some tea, the whole place was full of our friends and a detective or two. A cat was there; she came to lie on my lap and I had to turn her off when we left.