SUFFRAGETTES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 37, 19 June 1913, Page 5

SUFFRAGETTES.

MRS KENNY’S TRJ AL. SHE IS PREPARED TO DIE. [By Electrii Telegraph-—Copyright] | [United Press Association.] I London, June 18. | Mrs Kenny, addressing the jury, referred to the Ulster discovery of rifles, and added that had women said that ‘Titles for women; women will fight with rifles,” the Government would be justified in prosecuting them. She would rebel until the Government gave her a vote. She would rebel _ against an abominable system—econo- 1 mic, industrial and political—under ( which women lived. If, like Miss; Davison, she must die to get a vote, she would do so, whatever the vex-; diet.

The Solicitor-General replied that defendants were prosecuted not for their opinions, but for flagrant breaches of tho criminal law in pursuit of objects perfectly legitimate in themselves.

Justice Phillimore, summing up, said that this was one of the saddest trials in his experience. It had been urged that great causes were never .van without breaking the law'. Possibly this was true in some cases, hut it was very untrue in others, and it 3 very recorded act of anarchy was used to justify further acts of anarchy the human race w'ould soon reach a position of absolute savagerj. The :ase had been treated as a case of one sex against the other. He imagined that the jury would find that it was not women against men, hut some ,vomen against all other women and Tiildren, and some men against all other men.

The jury were fifty-seven minutes absent.

Mr Justice Phillimoro, in passing sentence, said that he believed that some suffragettes wore actuated pai t,y by ambition and pride and love of aower, and others, young people chiefly, from a spirit of mischief. Others made it a matter of pay. Many had x sincere belief that they were forvarding a good object.

JUDGE’S STRONG INDICTMENT

“RECKON WITH OWN CONSCI-

ENCE.”

(Received 10.30 a.m.) London, J une 18

Continuing. Justice Pbillimore said ae assumed that defendants’ motive ,vas an idea that they were forwarding a good object. He commended j them to a woman writer’s statement | chat it was treason to the Almighty! to believe*that the end justified the means. He agreed with the jury in I discrimination between the younger j ,md the older defendants. Ho was j thinking particularly of the incite-j neats which defendant and others md given to young chivalrous,women, j whose emotion led them to do things which in future years they would j wholly regret. The distinction be-j tween the third and second division was that in the former there were | fewer means of communicating with outsiders, and in the present case the less opportunity defendants had of I giving or receiving had advice while | in prison the better. One counsel, had suggested that the time for the I Executive’s leniency had passed. He lid not think the defendants would meet with the same leniency as others had, and .if Mr McKenna (Home Secretary) consulted him as often as he consulted other judges he would advise that the ringleaders, at any-rate, ought not to be released under any consideration.

Mrs Kenny, excitedly: “They will have to kill us then!”

Justice Phillimore: “If you violate the canon which for everlasting nae been fixed against self-slaughter, you must reckon with your own consci-

ence.”

Mrs Kenny rejoined: “I am prepared to do that.” Baret Kenny threatened to hunger strike, Mrs Kenny, clutching the edge of the dock, shouting: “Tho judge ought to be ashamed to receive £6OOO i year for hounding down women.”

justice Phillimore ordered her removal, which required the exertion of two warders and two wardresses. Justice Phillimore remarked in Clayton’s case; “Nothing worse, more wicked, or more mischevious than the proposals wherewith he tried to tempt the women could be imagined.” THE HUNGER STRIKE. Linton has been released owing to hunger striking.

MRS PANKHURST

London, June 18. Mrs Pankhurst’s condition is critical.