“After these stormy meetings the police and hosts of sympathisers always escorted us home to protect us from the rowdies. Just as we reached our door there was generally a little scuffle with a band of youths who waited there to pelt us with sand and gravel as we passed.... At Uppingham, the second largest town, the hostile element was smaller than at Oakham, but its methods were more dangerous. While Mary Gawthorpe was holding an open-air meeting there one evening, a crowd of noisy youths began to throw up peppermint ‘bull’s eyes’ and other hard-boiled sweets. ‘Sweets to the sweet,’ said little Mary, smiling, and continued her argument, but a pot-egg, thrown from the crowd behind, struck her on the head and she fell unconscious....” This is what happened on October 16th, 1909, at an open-air gathering near Dundee, where Mr. Winston Churchill was to speak: “ ... Standing in the road were some thirty or forty men, all wearing the yellow rosettes of official Liberal stewards, and as the car (containing four prominent suffragettes) slowed, they rushed furiously towards it, shouting and tearing up sods from the road and pelting the women with them. One man pulled out a knife and began to cut the tires, whilst the others feverishly pulled the loose pieces off with their fingers. The suffragettes tried to quiet them with a few words of explanation, but their only reply was to pull the hood of the motor over the women’s heads and then to beat it and batter it until it was broken in several places. Then they tore at the women’s clothes and tried to pull them out of the car, whilst the son of the gentleman in whose ground the meeting was being held drove up in another motor and threw a shower of pepper in the women’s eyes.... The only excuse for the stewards who took part in this extraordinary occurrence is that many of them were intoxicated.”[5] And the most pitiful part of the business was that such conduct seemed to be regarded by its perpetrators as engaging pieces of gallantry. While a recitation of these incidents might be continued indefinitely, one more will suffice to show with what contempt and dishonor the western world has treated its women. On August 2, 1909, a great Liberal fete was held at Canford Park, near Poole in Dorsetshire. There were sports and games and Mr. Churchill was to deliver an address on the budget. Annie Kenney with three companions attended the fete, and the story of what took place is best told in her own words. She says: