time to time several isolated women succeeded by strategy in getting quite close to the House of Commons and one even found her way into one of the underground passages used by Members of Parliament. In every case they were captured by the police and either placed under arrest or dragged away and pushed outside the guarding cordons into the crowd. At last so fearful did the authorities become that the women might be concealed at other strategic points that they proceeded to thoroughly search every corner of Westminster Abbey and with their lanterns were to be seen amongst the buttresses and pinnacles of St. Margaret's Church, searching for Suffragettes. Yet with all their vigilance they were circumvented, for one woman succeeded in outwitting everyone and entered the sacred chamber itself. The lady in question was Mrs. Margaret Travers Simons, Mr. Keir Hardie's Parliamentary Secretary, who, whilst a believer in the Votes for Women Movement, had never taken any active part in it. On her way to the House that evening she had been deeply moved by the violent scenes. As she sat thinking of them in the Lobby, and realising that the Suffragettes, struggle as they might, would never reach the House, the thought suddenly flashed across her mind that she herself had the power to make the appeal and protest which was impossible to them. Seized by an irresistible impulse, she sent in for Mr. T. H. W. Idris, the Liberal Member for Flint Boroughs, and asked him to take her to look through a little window, known as the "peep hole," which is situated on the left side of the glass doors leading into the House of Commons, and to which Members of Parliament had the privilege of taking their lady friends. He agreed, and, on reaching the window, she mounted a seat, which is in front of it in order that she might get a clear view of the chamber. After a moment or two she descended and Mr. Idris turned towards the outer Lobby thinking that she was about to accompany him. In that instant, she pushed open the double glass doors and, before anyone could prevent her, darted into the Chamber and rushed up the central aisle towards the Speaker's chair, calling upon the House to "attend to the women's question!" She was seized by one of the attendants at the Bar, a big, powerful man who carried her back into the lobby, and in a very short space of time she had been handed over to a police inspector, conducted out of the House of Commons, and allowed to go free. [Illustration: Mr. Curtis Bennett listening to Miss Pankhurst's speech from the Dock, October, 1908] Outside in the street the conflict still continued and went on until midnight when it was found that ten persons had been injured and treated at Westminster Hospital, and that twenty-one women and a number of men had been arrested. FOOTNOTES: [29] My authorities in these cases are the report in the _Times_ and the evidence given in the witness box at Bow Street. CHAPTER XV