OPEN AIR MEETINGS No matter what the weather, crowds gathered whenever suffragists and suffragettes held meetings in the open air. Standing on boxes or makeshift stages, they exhorted crowds to support their fight for votes for women. It took a great deal of courage for women to speak out in public at a time when most people believed a woman’s place was in the home, not in the public world of politics. Sometimes crowds were sympathetic but speakers often found themselves on the receiving end of rotten fruit, eggs and stones thrown by people in the crowd who disagreed with them. Hastings seafront was a popular place for speakers, as was Wellington Square. In 1908 Christabel Pankhurst and two other suffragettes held an open-air evening meeting in Wellington Square. An angry crowd met them with “derisive laughter and cat calls” and pelted them with orange peel and eggs. Police arrived and dragged the suffragettes away, which angered the suffragettes.
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