Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913 was viewed as violating basic human rights, not only of the suffragettes but of other prisoners. The Act's nickname of "Cat and Mouse Act", referring to the way the government seemed to play with prisoners as a cat may with a captured mouse, underlined how the cruelty of repeated releases and re-imprisonments turned the suffragettes from targets of scorn to objects of sympathy. The Asquith government's implementation of the Act caused the militant WSPU and the suffragettes to perceive Asquith as the enemy — an enemy to be vanquished in what the organisation saw as an all-out war. A related
Evelyn Sharp (suffragist) ladders to enable politicians to climb down from untenable positions. Sharp was an active member of the Women Writers' Suffrage League. In August 1913, in response to the government tactic of keeping prisoners that would hunger strike until they were too weak to be active by means of the Cat and Mouse Act (Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913), permitting their re-arrest as soon as they were active, Sharp was chosen to represent the WWSL in a delegation to meet with the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna and discuss the Cat and Mouse Act. McKenna was unwilling to talk