After Mr. Lloyd George's Albert Hall meeting, such outbreaks of violence against us became for a time exceedingly frequent. At a meeting which I addressed just then for a Women's Suffrage society in Ipswich there was abundant evidence to prove that well-known Liberals in the town had bought shilling tickets of admission for a number of men whom they paid a further shilling each to create a disturbance and, as soon as I rose to speak, I was assailed by shouts and yells, the singing of a song especially composed and printed with this object, which had been distributed broadcast throughout the town, the rattle of tin cans and the ringing of bells. During my speech several free fights took place in the hall. Walking sticks and other missiles were sent flying through the air and an offensive smell of sulphuretted hydrogen was let out. The women who had promoted the meeting, whilst anxious that I should stand my ground, were in despair at the damage which they saw was being done to the hall, but, when they sent for the police to quell the disturbance the Chief Constable of the town declared that he had no power to act. His statement sounded strangely to Suffragettes who had seen the police always massed around the meetings of Cabinet Ministers, and had also frequently seen them brought in to eject women interrupters. [Illustration: The Chelmsford By-Election] A few days after the Albert Hall meeting Helen Ogston herself spoke at Maidenhead, where a gang of men, some of them made up as guys and dressed in women's clothes, waved whips at her and finally drove the speakers from the platform. The only thing that the police could suggest was that the women should fly. At this time a by-election was in progress at Chelmsford and, in organising our campaign there, we had at first to contend with great disorder. On the opening night of the election the members of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies were entirely swept from their platform in the Market Square, whilst a mob of hooligans surrounded the lorry from which we were speaking and dragged it down a hill into the darkness away from the street lamps. Though, aided by steadier sections of the audience, we still succeeded in maintaining a semblance of order, as soon as we descended from the cart the rowdies crushed and jostled us so unmercifully that had it not been for some men who fought for us and who were seriously bruised in the struggle, we should have been trampled under foot. We were at last dragged for safety into the entrance hall of the Municipal buildings where a banquet was being held. The head waiter, who stood at the door, was exceedingly anxious to get rid both of us and the noisy crowd that remained clamouring outside, and we were therefore taken by an underground passage to the Police Court, and kept waiting there for an hour.