Suffragette by Carol Drinkwater

oust this anti-suffrage lot!
    15th December 1909
    It has been snowing! I built a snowman in the yard and then Flora and I had great fun hanging Christmas decorations. She has invited Mother here for the festivities but Mother
says she wouldn’t feel at ease. These are the occasions when I feel torn between my two worlds.
    I asked Celia where she feels she belongs.
    “With grandmama, I suppose,” she told me. “I rarely see my parents.”
    18th December 1909
    We had a jolly “Bloomsbury Christmas Party” yesterday evening. Several of Flora’s friends came over for supper. Among them were Cicely Hamilton, actress and
novelist, Elizabeth Robins, who is writing now, and the Irishman, George Bernard Shaw – gosh, he’s brilliant! Their conversation was of plans to form a Women Writers’ Suffrage
League. It is to be fronted by some of the most eminent literary figures of today, men as well as women. The idea would be to support all suffrage leagues, whether militant or constitutional.
It’s so exciting. Flora is right behind it, too.
    “You see, Dollie,” she said, kissing me goodnight. “We can win this battle with intellect and not aggression.”
    I wish I could believe her!
    26th December 1909
    It has been a splendid Christmas. Yesterday morning I went to the hospital to visit Mother. All my brothers and their families were there. I wanted to run off but of course I
didn’t and everything was fine. We all got on quite well and Mother looked really relaxed.
    “All my families together in one place,” she laughed.
    Today, Celia came over for lunch. We had turkey and steaming baked potatoes and then talked in my room for ages. She told me all about her parents in Delhi and how much she misses them. She is
really nice. I think we might have more in common than I supposed.
    3rd January 1910
    According to the New Year issue of
Votes for Women
, working-class suffrage prisoners are being treated far worse than their more privileged sisters. Reading such articles
reassures me that I am right to fight with the WSPU.

24th January 1910
    Saw Mother. She looked well and wanted to know what I have been up to. I told her all about Lady Constance Lytton who was in prison last year and who was released after two days
of hunger strike without being force-fed. “She believes that she was treated with compassion because she is an aristocrat.”
    Mother frowned. “She probably was, but who cares about toffs like her?”
    “She cares about us,” I replied.
    “Oh, yeah?” she scoffed.
    “This year she returned to prison under the name of ‘Jane Wharton’, went on hunger strike and was force-fed on numerous occasions before her true identity was discovered.
Yesterday she was released from prison. She has been giving interviews to the press. Her story has scandalized the nation.”
    “People of our class have no rights, Dollie. I don’t have to be thrown in prison to learn that. It’s why I want you to do good at your school and stop this nonsense.”
    “I do work at school but I also know that I have to fight for women’s rights and that MUST include the interests of working-class women. Think, if you could read and write
–”
    “Keep your voice down,” she snapped. “You’ll wake the old girl in the next bed. You’ve the chance to rise above the abyss, Dollie. Grab it. Stop fussing about the
rest of it. Fight for yourself.”
    Sometimes I think she’ll never understand how much this matters to me, and why.
    31st January 1910
    A committee has been formed to draft a parliamentary bill. It will be known as the Conciliation Committee Women’s Franchise Bill and,
if passed
, will offer voting
rights to property-owning women. Married women and working-class women, which would include me if I were old enough and my mother, will still not be eligible to vote. The reasoning is that if we
fight for all women, no one will get it.
    I am disappointed by the narrowness of the Bill’s draft because it goes