For the first batch of Suffragettes to be released from prison in January, a Christmas dinner was provided by Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence at the Holborn Restaurant, and for Mrs. Drummond and those of the Suffragettes who were set free later, the first of the public welcome breakfasts, which have since become an institution, was held at Anderton's Hotel. The released prisoners were able to tell us that Christmas day in Holloway is, except that one goes twice to Chapel, exactly like all the other days of the year and that the Christmas dinner, of which so very much is thought outside, is just the usual one that would naturally fall at any other season to that particular day of the week. But as Mrs. Hillier on their release, said, they went to prison for "a cause that they held dear," and so, as Mrs. Martha Jones added, they regarded having gone there, "not as a sacrifice, but as an honour." What they had seen in Holloway had more than ever convinced them of the pressing need that women should be enfranchised. "The stories that I have heard in the Prison hospital," said Mrs. Baines, "have reached to the bottom of my heart. I have come out with the firm resolve to work on." So the year 1906, the first year of the Union's work in London came to an end. In October, the step of opening a permanent central office had been decided upon and a large general office having a small private room opening out of it was taken in Clement's Inn, Strand. It seemed a big undertaking at first, but the offices were indispensable. The small room was considered chiefly as Christabel's office, but all private business was transacted there, whilst the large room was used for general clerical work and as a meeting place. Weekly Monday afternoon and Thursday evening At Homes, were held there and all those who had joined the Union in those early days can remember Mrs. Sparborough making tea and handing round bread and butter and biscuits, and Christabel, with a sheaf of newspaper cuttings in her hand, standing up on one of the chairs to furnish the latest news of the militant campaign and to explain the next move in the plan of action.