Emmeline Pankhurst on Trial, April 1913

Emmeline Pankhurst on trial, April 1913. On 3rd April Emmeline was found guilty of incitement and sentenced to three years' penal servitude. The image depicts her in the Court awaiting the verdict. In the front of the image are Chief Inspector James McBrien, the arresting officer. The full charge on which she was found guilty was 'feloniously procuring and inciting a person or persons unknown to commit felony; unlawfully soliciting and inciting persons unknown to commit felony and certain misdemeanours'. In her speech to the jury Emmeline explained that she had pleaded Not Guilty because the indictment accused her of 'wickedly and maliciously inciting,' and she protested that she was not wicked or malicious. But she accepted responsibility for all the speeches she had made. She was only animated by a sincere desire to get political power into the hands of women. Whether the sentence was long or short she should not submit to it. The moment she left the Court—if she were sent to prison, whether to penal servitude or to a mild form of imprisonment—she would quite deliberately refuse to eat food. She would join the women in Holloway who were already on 'hunger strike.' She would come out of prison—dead or alive—at the earliest possible moment, and once out, so soon as she was physically fit, she would enter into the fight again.