In 1906, 1907 and 1908 he made himself increasingly famous by his pleadings in court on behalf of women who with dauntless courage and at the cost of much bodily pain and even at the risk of death had forcibly called attention to this grave defect in the British polity, the withholding of the ordinary rights of tax-paying citizens from adult women.
Where the Suffragist was poor he asked no fee, or a small fee was paid by some Suffragist Association.

But he gained much renown over his advocacy; he became quite a well-known personality outside as well as inside the Law Courts and Police-stations by 1908.

His pleadings were sometimes so moving, so passionate that--_teste_ Mrs.Pankhurst--"burly policemen in court had tears trickling down their faces" as he described the courage, the flawless private lives, the selfless devotion to a noble cause of these women agitating for the rights of their sex--rich and poor, old and young.
Juries flinched from the verdict which some bitter-faced judge enjoined; magistrates swerved from executing the secret orders of the Home Office; policemen--again--for they are most of them decent fellows--resigned their positions in the Force, sooner than carry out the draconian policy of the Home Secretary.
But of course concurrently he lost many a friend and friendship in the Inns of Court.

There were even growls that he should be disbarred--after this espousal of the Suffrage cause had been made manifest for three years.

He might have been, but that he had other compeers, below and above his abilities and position; advocates like Lord Robert Brinsley, the famous son of the Marquis of Wiltshire.