Vivie took the blow without flinching and merely bowed to the judge.  There was the usual “sensation in Court.”  Women’s voices were heard saying “Shame!” “Shame!” “Three cheers for Vivie Warren,” and a slightly ironical “Three cheers for David Whatyoumay-callem Williams.”  The judge uttered the usual unavailing threats of prison for those who profaned the majesty of the Court; Honoria, Rossiter, Praed (in tears), Bertie Adams, looking white and ill, all the noted Suffragists who were out of prison for the time being and could obtain admittance to the Court, crowded round Vivie before the wardresses led her away from the dock, assuring her they would move Heaven and Earth, first to get the sentence mitigated, and secondly to have her removed to the First Division.

But on both points the Government proved adamant.  An interview between Rossiter and the Home Secretary nearly ended in a personal assault.  All the officials concerned refused to see Honoria, who almost had a serious quarrel with her husband, the latter averring that Vivien Warren had only got what she asked for.  Vivien was therefore taken to Holloway to serve her sentence as a common felon.

“Didn’t she hunger-strike to force the Authorities to accord her better prison treatment?” She did.  But she was very soon, and with extra business-like brutality, forcibly fed; and that and the previous starvation made her so ill that she spent weeks in hospital.  Here it was very plainly hinted to her that between hunger-striking and forcible feeding she might very soon die; and that in her case the Government were prepared to stand the racket.  Moreover she heard by some intended channel about this time that scores of imprisoned suffragists were hunger-striking to secure her better treatment and were endangering if not their lives at any rate their future health and validity.  So she conveyed them an earnest message—­and was granted facilities to do so—­imploring them to do nothing more on her account; adding that she was resolved to go through with her imprisonment; it might teach her valuable lessons.

The Governor of the prison fortunately was a humane and reasonable man—­unlike some of the Home Office or Scotland Yard officials.  He read the newspapers and reviews of the day and was aware who Vivie Warren was.  He probably made no unfair difference in her case from any other, but so far as he could mould and bend the prison discipline and rules it was his practice not to use a razor for stone-chipping or a cold-chisel for shaving.  He therefore put Vivie to tasks co-ordinated with her ability and the deftness of her hands—­such as book-binding.  She had of course to wear prison dress—­a thing of no importance in her eyes—­and her cell was like all the cells in that and other British prisons previous to the newest reforms—­dark, rather damp, cruelly cold in winter, and disagreeable in smell; badly ventilated and oppressively ugly.  But it was at any rate clean.  She had not the cockroaches, bugs, fleas and lice that the earliest Suffragists of 1908 had to complain of.  Five years of outspoken protests on the part of educated, delicate-minded women had wrought great reforms in our prisons—­the need for which till then was not apparent to the perceptions of Visiting Magistrates.