ABSTRACT
Emmeline implored Keir Hardie to help the women’s cause by asking questions about the forcible feeding of the Winson Green prisoners at question time in the House of Commons, a request he willingly undertook at the first available opportunity, on Monday, 27 September, when Philip Snowden, Labour MP for Blackburn, also persisted in demanding information from the government. Emmeline’s anger deepened when she heard that Mr. Masterman, speaking for the Home Secretary, justified the practice as the ‘ordinary hospital treatment’ that was applied in cases where prisoners refused food, and that his replies had been punctuated by ‘laughter’ from other members of the House.1 The impassioned and compassionate WSPU leader, who claimed that she was hopeless at writing, took up her pen and wrote an article for Votes for Women, accusing ‘a Liberal Government in Free England’ of torturing women in an attempt to crush the women’s struggle for their citizenship rights.2
