Suffragette Girl by Margaret Dickinson

days.’
    There was a murmur around the courtroom and a shuffling as the onlookers believed that to be the end of the matter, but the magistrate wasn’t finished yet. ‘And a fine of fifty
pounds towards the cost of the restoration of the painting by an expert.’
    Then he rose and left the court, whilst a warder grabbed Florrie by the arm and led her down the steps back to the cells, but not before she’d given a cheery wave to her three friends in
the gallery.
    ‘Well, it could have been a lot worse,’ Lady Lee said as they arrived back home and she rang the bell in her morning room for tea to be served.
    ‘It’s bad enough.’ Isobel was still anxious. ‘Gervase will get to hear of it for sure. Florrie’s “speech” will make headlines.’
    ‘Wasn’t it splendid? And from one so young too. Oh, she’ll deserve our medal when she comes out, for there’s no doubt she’ll go on hunger strike.’
    ‘Oh, don’t,’ Isobel groaned and covered her face.

Eleven
    It was dark by the time Florrie was led from the cell and pushed roughly into the prison van, along with three other suffragettes arrested and sentenced on the same day. A
small crowd had waited outside the court and pressed forward as the four women appeared.
    A voice rang through the night air. ‘Take heart, girl. Be strong.’
    ‘Thank you . . .’ Florrie tried to shout back, but her voice was only a whisper and, before she could say more, she was in the vehicle and being shoved into a tiny compartment,
locked away from the others. The vehicle bumped over the rough road and Florrie was thrown from side to side. By the time it stopped outside the ominous high walls of Holloway women’s prison,
she felt battered and bruised. The prisoners were led along cold, dimly lit corridors, through heavy doors that clanged shut behind them with a terrifying finality. The four women were shut in a
cubicle together. There was nowhere to sit, nowhere to lie down except on the stone floor. They squatted against the wall, huddling together for warmth.
    ‘What will happen to us?’ Florrie murmured.
    ‘This your first time, dear?’ The woman next to her spoke kindly.
    ‘Yes,’ Florrie answered, trying to keep her voice steady.
    The woman put her arm about Florrie and drew her close. ‘All new to you, ducks, is it? Well, they’ll leave us here till morning, by which time they hope the damp and the cold will
have broken our spirit and made us see the error of our ways.’ She chuckled. ‘No chance of that, I’m afraid. We’re all old hands at this game. It isn’t pleasant, dear.
I won’t lie to you. But our sufferings won’t go unnoticed. You can bank on those outside to see to that.’ The woman ran her fingers gently along Florrie’s cheek.
‘You’re very young, my dear, and far too lovely to be in this awful place. Who are you with?’
    ‘How – how do you mean?’
    ‘Who introduced you to the Cause?’
    Florrie hesitated. She wasn’t sure whether it was wise to give names to strangers. This was such an alien world to her. She was no longer sure what was right or wrong. If anyone had told
her only a few months ago that she’d have taken part in an act of violence, she’d have told them they’d lost their senses. Yet now, here she was in prison for having committed a
criminal act.
    ‘A friend, I. . .’ She hesitated again.
    The woman’s chuckle came out of the darkness. ‘It’s all right. You’re among friends. They haven’t yet thought of planting spies amongst us.’ She laughed again
and the other women joined in. ‘They’re very slow – these men.’
    ‘I think I know you.’ One of the other women spoke up for the first time. ‘You’re with Lady Leonora and Isobel Richards, aren’t you?’
    There was no point in trying to hold back the truth now. ‘Yes – yes, I am.’
    ‘I saw you at one of Lady Lee’s meetings a few—’
    What more she might have said, Florrie didn’t know and was never to know, for at that