“The doctor took the loose end of the sheet and began to bind me: he wrapped it round and round me, my arms tight to my sides, wrapped it up to my throat so that I could not move…..”
If, like me, you won’t have heard of Lilian Metge widow of a wealthy lawyer and MP, Dorothy Evans and Maud Wickham ladies unlikely to break windows in their prison cell and shout out No Surrender. Ladies unlikely to endure force feeding but they did.
“…Suddenly the dark broke into a blotch of light, as he trailed the electric bulb up and down and across my face, stopping to examine my throat to make sure I was fully capable of swallowing. He sprayed both nostrils with a mixture of cocaine and disinfectant.”
It must have been a terrifying time, what was so important that they, and many other women, took to breaking the law to make their point, safe working conditions, a decent wage, protecting their children – equality with men, votes for women.
Lilian reports seeing the medical staff hold the arms of a young girl on a plank bed.
One gripped her head and another her feet, while her mouth was forced open with a steel gag, fastening her jaw wide apart. Then a wide tube, four feet in length, was pushed down her throat making her body and legs double up. The horror of it was more than I can describe.
Disturbing Lunchtime
It was a horror shared by the audience in Linen Hall Library as local actors brought us the Irish Suffrage movement under the title Shrieking Sisters, a derogate term in the early 90s. There were those who sipped tea and politely called for the vote for women and those who went into action, militant women determined to succeed at any cost and the cost was great.
In a script scrupulously researched and written, Carol Moore and Maggie Cronin have succeeded in bringing those days to life; together with Laura Hughes and Libby Smyth they played out the characters between them with Carol talking the main reporting role of Lilian Metge.
“He had inserted the red tubing, with the funnel at the end, through my nose into the passages of the throat. It is utterly impossible to describe the anguish of it. …There arose the hideous thought of being gripped in the tentacles of some monster devil fish in the depths of a tropic sea, as the liquid slowly sensed its way along innumerable endless passages”
Determined Women,
They grouped together, laid their plans, assembled their weapons and set to work burning letter boxes, setting fire to unionist property, halls, churches, a race stand, Bangor station and the teahouse at Bellevue Gardens, Lilian added that golf clubs were a speciality. They carried firelighters in pretty cake boxes from the Carlton Cake Shop in Donegall Place. However, their most spectacular venture was trying to blow up Lisburn Cathedral by placing dynamite at the east end, lighting the fuse resulting in a hole in the wall and the smashing of windows.
Winifred Carney got her recognition recently with a statue at Belfast City Hall but most others have gone uncelebrated until Carol had the idea of making their story into a performed reading which they have taken to schools and theatres up and down the country. These women are modern day suffragettes making their protest with the pen, you can just see their reflection in the court rooms where Lilian and her comrades stood up to magistrates showing extreme bravery both verbal and physical, ‘with the force of a tigress.’
“You can kill us but you cannot kill our spirit” they proclaimed and thank goodness otherwise you and I dear female reader wouldn’t be enjoying free speech and a certain equality although we are still fighting.
We are no longer seen as ornaments rather women with a say in matters, decision makers in so many aspects of life. And yet, and yet. There is still terrible domestic violence, the glass ceiling, young women being taken advantage off and shocking abuse of women in many parts of the world. It’s up to the rest of us to remember our feminist predecessors and how they fought for a vote and a voice.
With the outbreak of The Great War, in 1914 the king ‘granted freedom for all persons undergoing terms of imprisonment connected with the suffrage agitation’.
In 1922 ‘women in the Irish Free State gained equal suffrage rights with men and can vote at 21. In 1928 women in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK win the right to vote at age 21’.
But they never forgot the struggle and neither should we. Be proud to say I am a woman who counts – I vote.
TRUMPETING HIS CONFUSION
So Donald, you are guilty of cooking the books. You’re good value as a conveyer of magical mischief and double speak. It’s quite amazing how you get away with it, raising millions without even lifting a finger, gaining support without even a mandate. If you were a good and true man you would be a world class president but you aren’t and if you get through to the White House you could well be a low class president putting us all in danger. We just have to wait and see.
And then there are our own two mega stars fighting for leadership. What a mess, glad I don’t have to decide between them, it’s hard enough at home!
I don’t wonder why people are falling away from the polls and that young people just don’t care or have the time to vote but everyone, please remember the fight women had for the vote and to stand for election, crusading women are as relevant today as they were in the 1900s in fact even more so, we need wise heads in government and there’s plenty of room for them at Stormont. Let’s get our own house in order and then take on the rest of the world.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Clint Eastwood is 94 today. Second only to James Stewart, Eastwood is my all time favourite film star, producer and director. I base this on one film – The Bridges of Madison County. If ever I do MasterMind that’s my subject; except for the over long and noisy kissing scene with Meryl Streep, this is a masterpiece. I know now why the kids call it sucking face!
A love story played out by many men and women who find themselves in the throws of a genuine relationship that has to end because one or other or both are married. The gentle twist at the end is heartbreaking. If you watch it once you’ll want to watch it again. Look out for the fly walking across the back of the chair in the kitchen!
Talking of Trump how about this portrait from the fantastic artist Billy Austin from the townland of Brackish near Tandragee. It shows all the arrogance of Trump, the cold eyes and the mean mouth and an addled mind.
