FROM THE ARCHIVES:Barrister and sometime nationalist MP Tim Healy defended Gladys Evans, one of the English suffragettes accused of trying to set fire to Dublin's Theatre Royal on the eve of a Home Rule rally there addressed by British prime minister Herbert Asquith. This is what he told the jury before she was convicted and jailed for five years. -
JOE JOYCE
MR HEALY then proceeded to address the jury on behalf of the prisoner, who, he said, was no ordinary criminal. Not in her view, and the view of those who sympathised with her, was she a criminal at all, and when the objects for which she stood indicted had been achieved, she would be held in honour and respect.
She represented a cause which had, not once, but many times, been approved by the solemn vote of Parliament. She represented an order of thought which said that when women were taxed to sustain the community they should have a voice in the governing and distribution of their taxes. She represented the cause of those who said that when women were allowed to choose town councillors and county councillors, they might well be allowed a voice in the selection of members of Parliament, who, from what he had seen of them, were really not the body of sacrosanct persons that they might imagine.
The accused, with others, had been engaged in this agitation for a considerable time. In the course of it promises had been held out to them by responsible Ministers that legal effect should be given to the wishes of that section in the community who wished to have a voice in the distribution of the taxes which they provided.
These Ministers – not all of them, but several of them – instead of making good their words met these ladies with deceit and with injury, and one of them – a gentleman occupying the responsible position of the President of the King’s Council – told them they would not be taken seriously unless they protested, as other franchise reformers had protested 50 years ago by burning down castles, as at Nottingham, or by tearing up the railings of Hyde Park, as they were torn up in ’67. [. . .]
These ladies . . . maintained and insisted that until the promise so often made to them was kept no Minister of the Crown should have peace or ease. Further, they said that Parliament never listened to the voice of any unprotected class until outrage and crime had proved the seriousness of the demand. [. . .]
When the hands of horror were thrown up at the acts for which Gladys Evans was charged, it was well to remember what the past of the country [Ireland] was, and by what means the liberties which we now enjoy were achieved, and it was for following in the footsteps of these successful criminals [like O’Connell and Parnell] – if they liked – that these ladies stood in the dock. [. . .]
“These girls will suffer. You will convict them – my lord will send them reluctantly to prison. Others will take their places, and that is the only defence I have to make.”