The suffragettes at Bow Street: What was it like?

By Catherine de Guise

Catherine de Guise looks at the suffragettes’ time at Bow Street — from their arrest, to their trial and departure for prison. Bow Street for them was a place of fear and anxiety but also one of unity, pride and passion for the cause. 

The suffragettes became very familiar with Bow Street Magistrates’ Court and Police Station. The headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a stone’s throw away on the Strand, as were Parliament and Downing Street, where they held demonstrations and petitioned for the vote.^[1] An index showing the names of all the suffragettes arrested reveals over 1300 arrests across 71 courts, and more than half of these incidents took place at Bow Street.^[2]

The suffragettes found themselves imprisoned as a result of the tactics they used to gain the vote. Their methods followed their motto “Deeds not words”, which meant that they would do whatever it took to achieve the vote, whether these actions were legal or not.^[3] Before 1905, they had used largely constitutional methods to gain attention; peaceful petitions and marches were a favoured approach.^[4] After this point, failure to coerce anything from the government encouraged them to pursue other methods, such as window-breaking and arson.^[5]

Being arrested was a terrifying experience. The suffragettes faced hostility and brutality from the police, even when they were taking action that was legal, such as presenting petitions at Parliament. One Bow Street policeman was explicitly called out in a complaint lodged by a suffragette, a Mrs Richardson. She reported that while outside a police cordon in Whitehall she was told to leave by a policeman and when she did not he “made a leap, clutched me by the throat and the next instant the back of my head crashed on the pavement.”^[6] She remembered the number on his uniform as P.C. 503. E division, making him a Bow Street officer. The officer in question strongly denied the allegations. Complaints of police brutality were condemned as “exaggerated account[s] of the necessary force used by the police in replying to the rushes of large numbers of women.”^[7]

Treatment could improve for the suffragettes once they had actually been taken to the police station, away from the violence of the streets. When Lady Constance Lytton went to Parliament on a deputation to the Prime Minister in 1909, she was handled roughly as she was arrested so the police station felt like “a harbour after a storm.” She found the police officers suddenly much more pleasant, saying that “nothing could exceed their courtesy and even sympathy.”^[8]

The suffragettes generally found they were treated hospitably during their short spell at Bow Street as they waited to go before the magistrate. They often were not put into cells, due to a lack of capacity, especially on days when there were a high number of arrests. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence recorded that on one occasion after a demonstration in Parliament Square, 223 were arrested and taken to Bow Street.^[9] On extremely busy days such as this, where it took days for all the cases to be dealt with, the suffragettes were given use of the police officers’ rooms.^[10] This was generally a time when the suffragettes could see each other again after their arrest. Constance Lytton was buoyed by this and the sense of unity between the women within these spaces.^[11] Mrs Pethick-Lawrence described the atmosphere as being surprisingly light-hearted and full of laughter.^[12]

Being arrested and tried could be invigorating as it allowed the suffragettes to show their commitment to the cause together. Christabel Pankhurst described a Police Court arrest and trial as a badge of honour.^[13] They used the experience to make their message clear to the public, wearing the suffragette colours and their sashes, united spectacles of pageantry even when under arrest. Votes for Women, the official newspaper of the WSPU, reported that the women who were made to queue outside Bow Street made a picturesque scene, dressed, as they were, in every variation of purple, white and green.”^[14]

The suffragettes who retained their liberty came to Bow Street to offer support to those facing the ordeal of their trial. Limitations were attempted to halt these displays of unity, such as preventing them from getting into court. In 1913, when Annie Kenney and several other suffragettes were arrested and tried at Bow Street, only a few women were actually allowed to attend the court.^[15] On this occasion, fellow suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was able to attend, and when Annie Kenney was allowed bail, Sophia provided a surety of £250.^[16] Those who were not let in would stand outside and drum up support or offer a friendly face.

Photos were widely distributed in newspapers, as were their words in court, and Bow Street became a place for the suffragettes to argue their case. The women who first pioneered the strategy of window smashing, used it as such.^[17] When asked whether something like this could happen again, Edith New said “It will depend upon whether justice is done to the women of this country.”^[18] As justice failed to be done, the window smashing continued. Marion Wallace Dunlop was charged for stamping words onto the walls of the House of Commons, reminding those within that it was their right to petition and that the prosecutions of suffragettes for doing this was therefore illegal.^[19] At her trial she said “I wrote these words because I thought they were in danger of being forgotten by our legislators and because I intended that they should be indelible.”^[20] Her words in court and a photo of the words on the wall were both circulated widely so that they indeed could not be forgotten.

Witnessing the suffragettes in court sometimes encouraged the public to side with the suffragettes and mobilise others to act on their behalf. After having spent a day at Bow Street witnessing the “savage sentences” that her fellow suffragettes were given, such as two month’s hard labour for damaging a pane of glass, Margaret Parkes was horrified and sought to look into how the organisation she was a part of could go about reducing these sentences.^[21] One woman whom she spoke to at Bow Street came as an opponent of the suffragettes but left with her mind changed, appalled by the way women were treated.^[22]

The suffragette experience at Bow Street was certainly not a wholly positive one. When they did spend time in the cells, they had to endure some unpleasant conditions. The cells were small, described by Sylvia Pankhurst as being five feet wide by seven feet long, with only a wooden bench and a “sanitary convenience.”^[23] For Christabel Pankhurst it was a “modern dungeon.”^[24] With Bow Street so busy, there would be four or even five to a cell. It was also frightening and disorientating to experience the sensation “of being in ignorance of what is going on outside your cell”.^[25]

The prospect of impending imprisonment loomed large in these moments. Many worried about the people they were leaving behind; friends and family would come to their cells to say goodbye through “small grating of iron bars”.^[26] For women with children, particularly working-class women whose families relied on them, this anxiety would likely have been amplified. Mrs Alice Singer had two young daughters when she was taken to Bow Street in 1912 for window breaking. She wrote to her family, warning them that they might not see her for some weeks. She was fortunate to have a supportive husband, but the woman next to her at Bow Street was not so lucky. She asked her husband and children to help the family of Mrs Lane and asked them to try to help out where they could and “make their Daddy more reasonable.”^[27]

These accounts of anxieties also give a sense of these women supporting each other through the hardships that imprisonment posed. Lady Constance was particularly pleased when Christabel Pankhurt herself came to say thank you to the women in the cells, “The sound of her voice and the look in her eyes remained stamped upon my mind, and played the part of a sort of talisman of consolation whenever the trials of my imprisonment weighed upon my spirits.”^[28] She must have remembered the reassurance that Christabel gave to her at Bow Street, as when fellow-suffragette Millicent Browne found herself at Bow Street, she wrote to her at Bow Street to say how proud she was of her.^[29]

At Bow Street the suffragettes would trade tips on how to survive life in prison. They would instruct each other with exercises to keep them healthy in prison and how to communicate by knocking on the cell walls and speaking on the hot-water pipe running through the cells when the wardresses were away.^[30] They made each other laugh in court to put themselves at ease.^[31] A colourful gesture could be made when they were driven from Bow Street to Holloway in a Black Maria van. They would pass scarves with their colours of green, purple and white on them and sing the Women’s Marseillaise to keep their spirits up before they were to be shut away and not allowed to communicate with each other.^[32]

Bibliography

Manuscripts and archives

• Fawcett Library Autograph Letter Collection, 9/20/115, Margaret Parkes to Mr [Sadd] Brown, 11 March 1912
• National Archives, MEPO 3/203, Suffragettes: complaints against police
• National Archives, HO 45/24665, SUFFRAGETTES: Amnesty of August 1914: index of people arrested, 1906-1914.
• Liverpool Daily Post, ‘Women’s conspiracy case committal for trial’, Friday 16 May 1913
• Manchester Courier, ‘Suffragists’ war plans conspiracy charge revelations’ May 3 1913
• Morning Post, 2 July 1908
• Morning Post, ‘Charge of Wilful Damage’, 30 June 1909
• Votes for Women,  ‘At Bow Street’, 2 July 1909

Printed Material

• Atkinson, D. (2018). Rise up, women! : the remarkable lives of the Suffragettes. Bloomsbury.
• Kenney, A. (1924). Memories of a militant. E. Arnold & Co.
• Lytton, C. (1976). Prisons and prisoners : experiences of a suffragette. EP Publishing.
• Pankhurst, C. (1959). Unshackled : the story of how we won the vote. Hutchinson.
• Pankhurst, E. (2015). My own story. Vintage Books.
• Pankhurst, E., & Pethick-Lawrence, F. W. P.-L. (1908). The Trial of the Suffragette Leaders [i.e. of Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Mrs Drummond]. [With an introduction by F. W. Pethick-Lawrence.]. Woman’s Press.
• Pankhurst, E. S. (Estelle S. (1911). The Suffragette. The history of the women’s militant suffrage movement 1905-1910. [With illustrations.]. Sturgis & Walton Co.
• Purvis (1995). The prison experiences of the suffragettes in Edwardian Britain, Women’s History Review, 4:1, 103-133.
• Lawrence, E. P. (1938). My Part in a Changing World. [An autobiography With a portrait.]. Victor Gollancz.
• Marlow, J. (Ed.). (2015). Suffragettes : the fight for votes for women. Virago.

Websites

• https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2018/08/08/clements-inn-the-first-home-of-the-womens-social-and-political-union-in-london/ [11/3/25]
• https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/the-suffragettes/ [11/3/25]

Images

• Waiting suffragettes outside Bow Street, https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/22505697908 [11/3/25]
• Pankhurst at the Black Friday demonstration, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pankhurst_at_the_Black_Friday_demonstration.jpg [11/3/25]
• Photograph of November 1910’s Black Friday Demonstration, National Archives: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/suffragettes-and-the-black-friday-protests-18-november-191 [11/3/25]
• 1908, Bow Street: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bow_Street_(14262638753).jpg [11/3/25]
• 1909, Evelina Haverfield and Emmeline Pankhurst in court: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/22935155781 [11/3/25]
• 1912, Lesley Lawless, Constance Lytton and others waiting to be sentenced: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lesley_Lawless,_Constance_Lytton_and_others_waiting_to_be_sentenced,_1912._(22274843823).jpg [11/3/25]
• Letter to Millicent Browne Suffragette Bow Street Police Court from Lady Constance Lytton, July 1909: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Papers_on_Millicent_Browne_Suffragette_05.jpg [11/3/25]
• C.1908-1912, Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence leaving court: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/22910553752 [11/3/25]

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