This new electoral measure was to be designed for men only, but--the Government opined--it might be susceptible of amendment so as to admit women likewise.
[Probably the Government had satisfied itself beforehand that, acting on some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure, the Speaker would rule out such an amendment as unconstitutional.

At any rate, this is what he did in 1913.] The wrath of the oft-deluded women flamed out with immediate resentment when the purport of this trick was discerned.

Led by Mrs.
Pethick Lawrence a band of more than a thousand women and men (and some of the presumed men were, like Vivie, women in men's clothes, as it enabled them to move about with more agility and also to escape identification) entered Whitehall and Parliament Street armed with hammers and stones.

They broke all the windows they could in the fronts of the Government offices and at the residences of Ministers of State.

Vivie found herself shadowed everywhere by Bertie Adams though she had given him no orders to join the crowd, indeed had begged him to mind his own business and go home.