When the full meaning of the disreputable General Election of
1918, with its promises and pretensions and all its silly and
false cries, was burnt into me at Paisley in this year of 1920 by
our Coalition opponent re-repeating them, I said to Henry:
"Oh, if I had only quietly dropped all my friends of German name
when the war broke out and never gone to say good-bye to those
poor Lichnowskys, these ridiculous lies propagated entirely for
political purposes would never have been told; and this criminal
pro-German stunt could not have been started."
To which he replied:
"God forbid! I would rather ten thousand times be out of public
life for ever."
CHAPTER VII
VISIT TO WOMAN'S PRISON--INTERVIEW THERE WITH MRS. MAYBRICK--SCENE
IN A LIFER'S CELL; THE HUSBAND WHO NEVER KNEW THOUGHT WIFE MADE
MONEY SEWING--MARGOT'S PLEA THAT FAILED
My husband was Home Secretary when we married, and took a serious
interest in our prison system, which he found far from
satisfactory. He thought that it would be a good thing, before we
were known by sight, to pay a surprise visit to the convict--
prisons and that, if I could see the women convicts and he could
see the men privately, he would be able to examine the conditions
under which they served their sentences better than if we were to
go officially.
I was expecting my baby in about three months when we made this
expedition.
Wormwood Scrubs was the promising, almost Dickens-like name of one
of our convict-prisons and, at that time, took in both men and
women.
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