Had the Cabinet been prepared to act honourably and to stand by the statement of their spokesman, Mr. Gladstone, the position would now have been that, if the women who wanted votes could organise a series of demonstrations which could compare with those held by men in support of the various extensions of the franchise that had already taken place, the Government would concede their demands and would either provide time for the passage into law of Mr. Stanger's Bill or introduce and put through its various stages a measure of their own framing. The Women's Social and Political Union were prepared to accept Mr. Gladstone's challenge. When Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women had gone to prison, their comrades of the W. S. P. U., at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's suggestion, had entered upon a week of self-denial in order to raise funds for the campaign. The thought of those who were in prison spurred on every member of the Union to renewed zeal. Some went canvassing from house to house for money. Others stood with collecting boxes at regular pitches in the street. At the Kensington High Street District Railway Station, for instance, four well known women writers, Miss Evelyn Sharpe, Miss May Sinclair, Miss Violet Hunt, and Miss Clemence Housman, were gathering in pennies all through those wintry days. Some women sold flowers, swept crossings, became pavement artists and played barrel organs. Poorer members obliged to work continuously for a living, denied themselves sugar and milk in their tea, butter on their bread, and walked to and from their work, in order to be able to give something to the funds. The result of this week of earnest effort was to be announced at a great meeting at the Albert Hall on March 19th, to advertise which a great box kite, with a flag attached, was hanging over the Houses of Parliament for a fortnight, whilst a similar flag floated over Holloway Gaol to cheer the prisoners within. Every seat in the great Albert Hall was sold long before the day of the meeting, and hundreds of people were turned away at the doors. The vast audience was composed almost entirely of women, and there were 200 women stewards in white dresses. The platform was decorated with flowers and thronged with ex-prisoners and the officials of the Union, but as the sentences of Mrs. Pankhurst and eight of her comrades were not to expire until the following morning, the Chairman's seat which the founder of the Union should have occupied, was left vacant and in it was placed a large white card bearing the inscription "Mrs. Pankhurst's chair."