Whilst Press representatives were congregating in Downing Street, to snapshot the Ministers and to gain material for foolish paragraphs describing their appearance and manner of arrival at the first Cabinet Council of the Season, and whilst police were assembling to dance attendance upon the Prime Minister and his colleagues, three or four of the Women appeared to demand an interview. The police pulled them aside and the Cabinet Ministers brushed past as they tried to speak, and when they applied at the door of the official residence, no notice was taken. Then Miss New, well knowing that her words would be heard both inside the House and by the crowd that was collecting in the street, began to make a speech explaining what she and her friends had come for. Before beginning, she chained herself to the railings beside the Prime Minister's front door, both symbolically to express the political bondage of womanhood, and for the very practical reason that this device would prevent her being dragged speedily away. Her example was followed by Nurse Olivia Smith and, whilst the police were struggling to break the double set of chains, a taxicab drove up and stopped on the opposite side of the street. Suspecting more Suffragettes, some of the constables rushed to the door of the cab which opened on to the pavement. At the same moment, Mrs. Drummond (for it was she who had devised this stratagem), opened the cab door on the road side and bounded across to the sacred Residence, where, as there was no one to bar her progress and as she now possessed the secret of the little knob in the centre of the door, she was inside and very near to the Council Chamber itself, before a number of men, some of whom she believed to be Cabinet Ministers, though owing to the violent and hurried nature of her ejection it was impossible to make quite sure, rushed upon her, and she was flung out and hurled down the steps. She was then arrested, and shortly afterwards she and four of her comrades found themselves before Sir Albert de Rutzen at Bow Street Police Court, charged with disorderly conduct. They were found guilty and on refusing to be bound, were sent to prison for three weeks. Instead of placing them in the first division, as had been done in the case of all the Suffragettes since the transfer of Mrs. Cobden Sanderson and the rest of us had taken place in October, 1906, the authorities reverted to the old plan of putting them in the second class.