The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester Page A

the dock looking like they had spent a rough night in the cells;
young women, old women, women in torn silk and dirty-looking fine-cut clothes, women in jute and linen and ill-fitting jackets. They were all in high spirits, laughing and linking arms as if they
hadn’t a care for what was coming to them. As Frankie watched she felt a growing sense of bewilderment and a strange envy.
    Mrs Gibbons had tweaked a nerve. It was true a sharp-tongued woman at the WSPU had told her a few years ago that if she wanted to write for
Votes for Women
she would need to find
something to say. But it wasn’t the reason she hadn’t joined the suffragettes. It was the righteousness that unsettled her, the knowing look they had in their eyes. It made her
uncomfortable and she didn’t quite know why. They knew what they wanted and they knew they were right.
    The first two groups were sentenced to two weeks each in second division, after being offered a fine to pay and refusing. As the magistrate’s gavel slammed down someone in the gallery
cried, ‘Well done, duckies, you’ll get your Holloway degrees!’
    When the third group was led in, the little boy beside Frankie leapt out of his seat and plunged his arms through the gallery bars. His father and sister quickly moved to grab him, prising his
fists from where they were clutched round the wood.
    ‘It’s all right. Mamma’s going on holiday again. Mamma’s very brave and so must you be. Brave boy. Home by Christmas.’ The father rocked the boy back and forth.
    The yellow-wigged magistrate looked put out to have been interrupted, then turned to his clerk who read out the charges. ‘Breaching both Section 12 and Section 51 of the Malicious Damage
to Property Act 1861, by smashing glass windows on Old Bond Street. In doing so you did create tumultuous assembly. Three among you, Mary Clune, Florence Jackson and Edith Craggs, did also breach
an order, allowing you release from prison for recuperation from hunger-striking, on the condition you engage in no further acts of vandalism.’
    ‘I never signed no order saying I’d not keep protesting,’ a large woman in a crumpled tweed jacket called out.
    The magistrate removed his pince-nez. ‘Your sentences will of course be commuted if you are willing to pledge not to engage in further acts of vandalism, you do all realise
that?’
    He was met with cries of ‘Shame!’ and ‘No surrender!’
    ‘It is an insolence of your worship,’ the mother of the little boy spoke up, ‘to expect us to put up with torture in that prison, and then to be asked to behave ourselves when
we’re set free. All we want to do is to be treated as equal citizens. Instead we are treated like animals. Your worship.’ Two Holloway wardresses on the edge of the dock exchanged a
glance.
    ‘Over one hundred doctors,’ she continued, ‘have signed a petition against force-feeding. I dare this magistrate to swallow vomit, take a slap across the face and not feel
bitterness with the whole country . . .’
    ‘Quiet!’ the magistrate slapped his gavel down.
    ‘That’s it, duckie, go on, have your say,’ a woman leaned over the gallery rails close to Frankie. Frankie looked at her hands. They were gripping the bar, shaking.
    Then a voice cut through, deep and male. ‘Let the lady have her say. She has a degree in law. Allow her to use it.’
    An uneasy silence spread through the court. Some of the police on the benches turned round to look for the source. Frankie frowned and scanned the gallery before realising with a start that the
man who had spoken was in the middle of the group in the dock. He was squashed between two women, both of whom looked old enough to be his mother. His thick straw-coloured hair was ruffled like a
bird’s nest. He looked less than thirty and had a clean handsome face, a sharp nose and large blue eyes with tired purple rings spreading round them.
    The magistrate squinted at him. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘William