Emmeline Pankhurst's Treatment in Prison.
(Pankhurst, Emmeline) Smyth, Dame Ethel. Mrs. Pankhurst’s Treatment in Prison. Statement by Dr.
Ethel Smyth. London: Printed and published by the Women’s Social and Political Union, [1912].
4to.; 4 pp.; some contemporary annotations, and the withdrawl stamp at foot of p. 1 of the "The Women’s
Library"; disbound, as issued.
Rare survival of the composer Dame Ethel Smyth’s detailed and rather shocking statement regarding
Emmeline Pankhurst’s treatment in Holloway in March 1912, following her imprisonment after a
window-smashing demonstration in which Smyth herself took part, and was subsequently given the cell
next to Pankhurst. Smyth begins,
"Sir Frederick Cawley asked the Home Secretary whether Mrs. Pankhurst was, on her recent committal to
prison, at first put in a cell half underground, in which drainage from the ground above flowed in the
direction of her cell; whether there were cockroaches and other abominations in it; and, if so, whether
steps will be taken to prevent such conditions in future.
"The Home Secretary, in his reply, absolutely denied there being any foundation for such statements, and
amid the cheers and laughter of English gentlemen proceeded, in the words of a daily newspaper, to
describe the cell as a sort of earthly paradise. Having been myself to Holloway during nearly the whole
period of Mrs. Parnkhurst’s incarceration, may I ask you to publish the following account of events, to the
absolute accuracy of which several witnesses are prepared to testify?’ (p. 1).
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