Jailed for Freedom Part 32

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I have a lame foot." But I was jerked down the steps and away into the dark. I didn't have my feet on the ground. I guess that saved me. I heard Mrs. Cosu, who was being dragged along with me, call, "Be careful of your foot."

Out of doors it was very dark. The building to which they took us was lighted up as we came to it. I only remember the American flag flying above it because it caught the light from a window in the wing. We were rushed into a large room that we found opened on a large hall with stone cells on each side. They were perfectly dark. Punishment cells is what they call them. Mine was filthy. It had no window save a slip at the top and no furniture but an iron bed covered with a thin straw pad, and an open toilet flushed from outside the cell . . . .

In the hall outside was a man called Captain Reems. He had on a uniform and was brandis.h.i.+ng a thick stick and shouting as we were shoved into the corridor, "d.a.m.n you, get in here."

I saw Dorothy Day brought in. She is a frail girl. The two men handling her were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly they lifted her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron bench-twice. As they ran me past, she was lying there with her arms out, and we heard one of the men yell, "The suffrager! My mother ain't no suffrager. I'll put you through ."

At the end of the corridor they pushed me through a door. Then I lost my balance and fell against the iron bed. Mrs. Cosu struck the wall. Then they threw in two mats and two dirty blankets.

There was no light but from the corridor. The door was barred from top to bottom. The walls and floors were brick or stone cemented over. Mrs. Cosu would not let me lie on the floor. She put me on the couch and stretched out on the floor on one of the two pads they threw in. We had only lain there a few minutes, trying to get our breath, when Mrs. Lewis, doubled over and handled like a sack of something, was literally thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed. We thought she was dead. She didn't move. We were crying over her as we lifted her to the pad on my bed, when we heard Miss Burns call:

"Where is Mrs. Nolan?"

I replied, "I am here."

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Mrs. Cosu called out, "They have just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here, too."

At this Mr. Whittaker came to the door and told us not to dare to speak, or he would put the brace and bit in our mouths and the straitjacket on our bodies. We were so terrified we kept very still. Mrs. Lewis was not unconscious; she was only stunned. But Mrs. Cosu was desperately ill as the night wore on. She had a bad heart attack and was then vomiting. We called and called. We asked them1to send our own doctor, because we thought she was dying . . . . They [the guards paid no attention. A cold wind blew in on us from the outside, and we three lay there s.h.i.+vering and only half conscious until morning.

"One at a time, come out," we heard some one call at the barred door early in the morning. I went first. I bade them both good- by. I didn't know where I was going or whether I would ever see them again. They took me to Mr. Whittaker's office, where he called my name.

"You're Mrs. Mary Nolan," said Whittaker.

"You're posted," said I.

"Are you willing to put on prison dress and go to the workroom?"

said he.

I said, "No."

"Don't you know now that I am Mr. Whittaker, the superintendent?"

he asked.

"Is there any age limit to your workhouse?" I said. "Would a woman of seventy-three or a child of two be sent here?"

I think I made him think. He motioned to the guard.

"Get a doctor to examine her," he said.

In the hospital cottage I was met by Mrs. Herndon and taken to a little room with two white beds and a hospital table.

"You can lie down if you want to," she said.

I took off my coat and hat. I just lay down on the bed and fell into a kind of stupor. It was nearly noon and I had had no food offered me since the sandwiches our friends brought us in the courtroom at noon the day before.

The doctor came and examined my heart. Then he examined my lame foot. It had a long blue bruise above the ankle, where they had knocked me as they took me across the night

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before. He asked me what caused' the bruise. I said, "Those fiends when they dragged me to the cell last night." It was paining me. He asked if I wanted liniment and I said only hot water. They brought that, and I noticed they did not lock the door. A negro trusty was there. I fell back again into the same stupor.

The next day they brought me some toast and a plate of food, the first I had been offered in over 36 hours. I just looked at the food and motioned it away. It made me sick . . . . I was released on the sixth day and pa.s.sed the dispensary as I came out. There were a group of my friends, Mrs. Brannan and Mrs. Morey and many others. They had on coa.r.s.e striped dresses and big, grotesque, heavy shoes. I burst into tears as they led me away.

(Signed) MARY I. NOLAN.

November 21, 1917,

The day following their commitment to Occoquan Mr. O'Brien, of counsel, was directed to see the women, to ascertain their condition. Friends and relatives were alarmed, as not a line of news had been allowed to penetrate to the world. Mr. O'Brien was denied admission and forced to come back to Was.h.i.+ngton without any report whatsoever.

The next day Mr. O'Brien again attempted to see his clients, as did also the mother of Miss Matilda Young, the youngest prisoner in Mr. Whittaker's care, and Miss Katherine Morey, who went asking to see her mother. Miss Morey was held under armed guard half a mile from the prison. Admission was denied to all of them.

The terrible anxiety at Headquarters was not relieved the third day by a report brought from the workhouse by one of the marines stationed at Quantico Station, Virginia, who had been summoned to the workhouse on the night the women arrived. He brought news that unknown tortures were going on. Mr. O'Brien immediately forced his way through by a court order, and brought back to Headquarters the astounding news

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of the campaign of terrorism which had started the moment the prisoners had arrived, and which was being continued at that moment. Miss Lucy Burns, who had a.s.sumed responsibility for the welfare of the women, had managed to secrete small sc.r.a.ps of paper and a tiny pencil, and jot down briefly the day by day events at the workhouse.

This week of brutality, which rivaled old Russia, if it did not outstrip it, was almost the blackest page in the Administration's cruel fight against women.

Here are some of the sc.r.a.ps of Miss Burn's day-by-day log, smuggled out of the workhouse. Miss Burns is so gifted a writer that I feel apologetic for using these sc.r.a.ps in their raw form, but I know she will forgive me.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14. Demanded to see Superintendent Whittaker.

Request refused. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, said we would have to wait up all night. One of the men guards said he would "put us in sardine box and put mustard on us." Superintendent Whittaker came at 9 p. m. He refused to hear our demand for political rights.

Seized by guards from behind, flung off my feet, and shot out of the room. All of us were seized by men guards and dragged to cells in men's part. Dorothy Day was roughly used-back twisted.

Mrs. Mary A. Nolan ('73-year-old picket from Jacksonville, Florida) flung into cell. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis shot past my cell.

I slept with Dorothy Day in a single bed. I was handcuffed all night and manacled to the bars part of the time for asking the others how they were, and was threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle gag.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 . . . . Asked for Whittaker, who came. He seized Julia Emory by the back of her neck and threw her into the room very brutally. She is a little girl. I asked for counsel to learn the status of the case. I was told to "shut up," and was again threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle gag. Later I was taken to put on prison clothes, refused and resisted strenuously. I was then put in a room where delirium tremens patients are kept.

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On the seventh day, when Miss Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis were so weak that Mr. Whittaker feared their death, they were forcibly fed and taken immediately to the jail in Was.h.i.+ngton. Of the experience Mrs. Lewis wrote:-

I was seized and laid on my back, where five people held me, a young colored woman leaping upon my knees, which seemed to break under the weight. Dr. Gannon then forced the tube through my lips and down my throat, I gasping and suffocating with the agony of it. I didn't know where to breathe from and everything turned black when the fluid began pouring in. I was moaning and making the most awful sounds quite against my will, for I did not wish to disturb my friends in the next room. Finally the tube was withdrawn. I lay motionless. After a while I was dressed and carried in a chair to a waiting automobile, laid on the back seat and driven into Was.h.i.+ngton to the jail hospital. Previous to the feeding I had been forcibly examined by Dr. Gannon, I protesting that I wished a woman physician.

Of this experience, Miss Burns wrote on tiny sc.r.a.ps of paper:

WEDNESDAY, 12 m. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five, Mrs.

Lewis and I were asked to go to the operating room. Went there and found our clothes. Told we were to go to Was.h.i.+ngton. No reason as usual. When we were dressed, Dr. Gannon appeared, and said he wished to examine us. Both refused. Were dragged through halls by force, our clothing partly removed by force, and we were examined, heart tested, blood pressure and pulse taken. Of course such data was of no value after such a struggle. Dr. Gannon told me then I must be fed. Was stretched on bed, two doctors, matron, four colored prisoners present, Whittaker in hall. I was held down by five people at legs, arms, and head. I refused to open mouth. Gannon pushed tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood. Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped directly into stomach feels like a ball

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of lead. Left nostril, throat and muscles of neck very sore all night. After this I was brought into the hospital in an ambulance. Mrs. Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at all. This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis and I said we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would call in men guards and force us to submit. Went away and we were not fed at all this morning. We hear them outside now cracking eggs.

With Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewis, who were regarded as leaders in the hunger strike protest, removed to the district jail, Mr.

Whittaker and his staff at Occoquan began a systematic attempt to break down the morale of the hunger strikers. Each one was called to the mat and interrogated.