| Main Performers | Miss Annie Kenney (Chair),
Mrs Annie Besant,
Mr Israel Zangwill,
Miss Elizabeth Robins,
Miss Evelyn Sharp - speakers |
| Performance Notes | Record numbers of WSPU members attended this event as it came after the failure of the Second Conciliation Bill. Emmeline Pankhurst was in Holloway Prison at this time, along with many other Suffragettes including Ethel Smyth. (Biography of Emmeline Pankhust by June Purvis, 2002).
The Hall's Council minutes [529, 12 March 1912] show that the Council questioned the advisability or otherwise of allowing the WSPU to hold this meeting. They decided the booking could remain unaltered but the WSPU would be required to take out a policy of indemnity insurance from Lloyds of London, in favour of the Corporation [The Hall] to the sum of £10,000 against any damage caused to the fabric of the building. (Most of the galleries in London had closed to the public because of feared attacks by Suffragettes)
A record amount of £10,000 was raised at this meeting breaking the previous record raised at an Albert Hall meeting of £8,000. An anonymous gift of £1000 was handed up in a bag. £50 was promised by a "constitutional suffragist as a protest against vindictive sentences". £50 came from the father of one of the prisoners and £10 from a woman Doctor in protest against the heavy sentences of Dr L Garrett Anderson and Dr Frances Ede. (Votes for Women, 29 March 1912)
Extract from Annie Besant's speech:
'There is not one nation in Europe, nor across the Atlantic, that is not today crying shame on the treatment which is being meted out to women. But the shame does not lie on the prisoners, but on those who are putting them in prison. And when I take up the Times, and read the disgraceful letter of Sir Almroth Wright, when I read about hysteria, when I read about women losing their self-control, I cannot but say to myself that the hysteria is on the bench rather than in the dock, and the loss of self control is to be seen more in the magistrate than in the prisoners.
But let us see what is taking place. We know well enough the penalty for the breaking of windows; but these women, because they have not been violent save in the breaking of non-sentient glass, are being sent to hard labour for six months. Why do you not punish wife-beaters as heavily as that! You reckon your glass windows more valuable than the limbs of the women of the poor. Where such sentences are given they dishonour the law, and they exalt the lawbreaker'.
(Votes for Women, 29 March 1912)
This meeting came on the same day as Sir Almroth Wright (1861-1947) who was a biologist of some note wrote a letter to The Times called 'Suffrage Fallacies' criticising suffrage activities. He attempted to medicalise militant activity by suggesting that those who persist in it suffer from 'physiological emergencies' that lead to hysteria. The letter received considerable publicity only halted by the sinking of the Titanic.
Extract from a Letter to The Times newspaper:
"No Doctor can ever lose sight of the fact that the mind of the woman is always threatened with danger from the reverberations of her physiological emergencies. It is with such thoughts that the Doctor rests his eyes upon the militant suffragist. He cannot ignore them to the fact that there is mixed up with the women's movement much mental disorder, and he cannot conceal from himself the physiological emergencies which lie behind the recruiting field for the militant suffragists is the half-million of our excess female population that half-million who had far better gone out to mate with it's complement of men beyond the sea."
From a prison letter from Louisa Garrett Anderson to her mother Elizabeth Harrett Anderson. Written from Holloway Prison (LSE Library, 26 March 1912):
"The Albert Hall meeting on thursday comes at an extraordinarily opportune moment. It ought to be a wonderful meeting. Evelyn in arranging it and is going to speak and she and Mr Nevison are editing the paper [Votes for Women]. It has sold tremendously since the row." |
| Related Archival Material | Event Publication - Speech by Mrs Annie Besant (RAHE/8/2/10) |
| Ticket Prices | Amphitheatre - 2s 6d, Balcony - 6d, Grand Tier Box £1 10s, Loggia £1 1s , Second Tier 12s 6d |