§ Mr. BYLESasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the number of suffragettes who have been committed to prison for refusing to enter into recognisances for good behaviour, as distinguished from others, and how many of them have been treated in the first division; and whether the women in the second category, to the number of 195, were arrested for acts of violence, such as assaulting the police and breaking windows?
1819W
§ Mr. GLADSTONEI find that, on further examination, a slight correction is necessary in the reply I gave to the question by my hon. Friend on 23rd August. The corrected figures are: For refusing to enter into recognisances for good behaviour, or for attending unlawful assemblies, 154; for offences such as obstruction, assaulting police, or breaking windows, 197. Of the 154 prisoners first mentioned, all but one were committed for refusing to enter into recognisances to be of good behaviour. The 197 other prisoners include 159 convicted of obstruction and resisting the police; but it would be impossible, without examination of the evidence in every case, to distinguish between those cases where there was violence of a serious nature and those where the offence was of a more technical character. Fourteen of the women in the first category and 118 of those in the second category were placed by the courts in the first division, the reason for the difference being that the greater number of those in the latter category were sent to prison early in the agitation at a time when the courts awarded first division treatment.