She felt conspicuous, but nobody looked at her. She had always had the vague impression that if she went out alone strange men would embarrass her in unspecified ways. In reality they did not seem to see her. The men were not lurking; they were all going somewhere, wearing their evening clothes or their worsted suits or their frock coats. How could there be any danger? she thought. Then she remembered the madman in the park, and she began to hurry.

As she approached the hall she noticed more and more women heading the same way. Some were in pairs or in groups, but many were alone like Charlotte. She felt safer.

Outside the hall was a crowd of hundreds of women. Many wore the suffragette colors of purple, green and white. Some were handing out leaflets or selling a newspaper called Votes for Women. There were several policemen about, wearing rather strained expressions of amused contempt. Charlotte joined the queue to get in.

When she reached the door, a woman wearing a steward’s arm-band asked her for sixpence. Charlotte turned, automatically, then realized she did not have Marya, or a footman, or a maid, to pay for things. She was alone, and she had no money. She had not anticipated that she would have to pay to get into the hall. She was not quite sure where she would have got sixpence even if she had foreseen the need.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t any money… I didn’t know…” She turned to leave.

The steward reached out to stop her. “It’s all right,” the woman said. “If you’ve no money, you get in free.” She had a middle-class accent, and although she spoke kindly, Charlotte imagined that she was thinking: Such fine clothes, and no money!

Charlotte said: “Thank you… I’ll send you a check…” Then she went in, blushing furiously. Thank Heaven I didn’t try to have dinner in a restaurant or catch a train, she thought. She had never needed to worry about carrying money around with her. Her chaperone always had petty cash, Papa kept accounts with all the shops in Bond Street, and if she wanted to have lunch at Claridge’s or morning coffee in the Café Royal she would simply leave her card on the table and the bill would be sent to Papa. But this was one bill he would not pay.

She took her seat in the hall quite close to the front: she did not want to miss anything, after all this trouble. If I’m going to do this kind of thing often, she thought, I’ll have to think of a way to get my hands on proper money-grubby pennies and gold sovereigns and crumpled banknotes.

She looked around her. The place was almost full of women, with just a scattering of men. The women were mostly middle-class, wearing serge and cotton rather than cashmere and silk. There were a few who looked distinctly more well-bred than the average-they talked more quietly and wore less jewelry-and those women seemed-like Charlotte-to be wearing last year’s coats and rather undistinguished hats, as if to disguise themselves. As far as Charlotte could see, there were no working-class women in the audience.

Up on the platform was a table draped with a purple, green and white VOTES FOR WOMEN banner. A small lectern stood on the table. Behind it was a row of six chairs.

Charlotte thought: All these women-rebelling against men! She did not know whether to be thrilled or ashamed.

The audience applauded as five women walked onto the stage. They were all impeccably dressed in rather less-than-fashionable clothes-not a hobble skirt or a cloche hat among them. Were these really the people who broke windows, slashed paintings and threw bombs? They looked too respectable.

The speeches began. They meant little to Charlotte. They were about organization, finance, petitions, amendments, divisions and by-elections. She was disappointed: she was learning nothing. Ought she to read books about this before going to a meeting, in order to understand the proceedings? After almost an hour she was ready to leave. Then the current speaker was interrupted.

Two women appeared at the side of the stage. One was an athletic-looking girl in a motoring coat. Walking with her, and leaning on her for support, was a small, slight woman in a pale green spring coat and a large hat. The audience began to applaud. The women on the platform stood up. The applause grew louder, with shouts and cheers. Someone near Charlotte stood up, and in seconds a thousand women were on their feet.

Mrs. Pankhurst walked slowly to the lectern.

Charlotte could see her quite clearly. She was what people called a handsome woman. She had dark, deep-set eyes, a wide, straight mouth and a strong chin. She would have been beautiful but for a rather fat, flat nose. The effects of her repeated imprisonments and hunger strikes showed in the fleshlessness of her face and hands and the yellow color of her skin. She seemed weak, thin and feeble.

She raised her hands, and the cheering and applause died down almost instantly.

She began to speak. Her voice was strong and clear, although she did not seem to shout. Charlotte was surprised to notice that she had a Lancashire accent.

She said: “In 1894 I was elected to the Manchester Board of Guardians, in charge of a workhouse. The first time I went into that place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors. These little girls were clad, summer and winter, in thin cotton frocks, low in the neck and short-sleeved. At night they wore nothing at all, night-dresses being considered too good for paupers. The fact that bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time had not suggested to the Guardians any change in the fashion of the clothes. I need hardly add that, until I arrived, all the Guardians were men.

“I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world. Many of them were unmarried women: very, very young, mere girls. These poor mothers were allowed to stay in the hospital after confinement for a short two weeks. Then they had to make a choice of staying in the workhouse and earning their living by scrubbing and other work-in which case they were separated from their babies-or of taking their discharges. They could stay and be paupers, or they could leave-leave with a two-week-old baby in their arms, without hope, without home, without money, without anywhere to go. What became of those girls, and what became of their hapless infants?”

Charlotte was stunned by the public discussion of such delicate matters. Unmarried mothers… mere girls… without homes, without money… And why should they be separated from their babies in the workhouse? Could this be true?

There was worse to come.

Mrs. Pankhurst’s voice rose a fraction. “Under the law, if a man who ruins a girl pays down a lump sum of twenty pounds, the boarding home is immune from inspection. As long as a baby farmer takes only one child at a time, the twenty pounds being paid, the inspectors cannot inspect the house.”

Baby farmers… a man who ruins a girl… the terms were unfamiliar to Charlotte, but they were dreadfully self-explanatory.

“Of course the babies die with hideous promptness, and then the baby farmers are free to solicit another victim. For years women have tried to get the Poor Law changed, to protect all illegitimate children, and to make it impossible for any rich scoundrel to escape liability for his child. Over and over again it has been tried, but it has always failed-” here her voice became a passionate cry “-because the ones who really care about the thing are mere women!”

The audience burst into applause, and a woman next to Charlotte cried: “Hear, hear!”

Charlotte turned to the woman and grabbed her arm. “Is this true?” she said. “Is this true?”

But Mrs. Pankhurst was speaking again.

“I wish I had time, and strength, to tell you of all the tragedies I witnessed while I was on that board. In our out-relief department, I was brought into contact with widows who were struggling desperately to keep their homes and families together. The law allowed these women relief of a certain very inadequate kind, but for herself and one child it offered no relief except the workhouse. Even if the woman had a baby at her breast she was regarded, under the law, as an able-bodied man. Women, we are told, should stay at home and take care of their children. I used to astound my men colleagues by saying to them: ‘When women have the vote they will see that mothers can stay at home and care for their children!’