I THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION (continued 3)

I went into Occoquan Prison as a prisoner on September 13, 1917.

I went in with the idea of obeying the regulations and of being a reasonable prisoner.

While there I saw such injustice, neglect, and cruelty on the part of the officials that I was forced into rebellion.

During my thirty days’ imprisonment I saw that commissioners and other officials made occasional visits but that the people in charge were usually warned and used much deception on the occasion of these visits. Specially prepared food replaced the wormy, fermenting, and meager fare of ordinary days. Girls too frail to work were hurried off the scrubbing and laundry gangs, and were found apparently resting. Sick women were hidden. Girls were hurried out of punishment cells as the visitors proceeded through the buildings, and were hidden in linen rooms or rooms of matrons already inspected.

288While there I was treated with indignities. I was insulted by loud-mouthed officials at every turn, was stripped before other women, stripped of all toilet necessities, warm underwear, and ordinary decencies, was deprived of soap, tooth-brush, writing materials, and sufficient clothing and bed coverings. I was dressed first in clean garments, but the officials later punished me by putting me in unclean clothing and into a filthy bed in which a diseased negress had slept. In the hospital I was obliged to use the toilet which diseased negro women used, although there was a clean unused toilet in the building.

With the four other women who were sentenced with me I was fed food filled with worms and vile with saltpeter; food consisting of cast-off and rotting tomatoes, rotten horse meat and insect-ridden starches. There were no fats: no milk, butter, nor decent food of any kind. Upon this fare I was put at hard labor from seven a.m. until five p.m., with a short luncheon out. We were not allowed to use the paper cups we had brought, but were forced to drink from an open pail, from common cups.

After several days of driven labor this group was ordered to wash the floors and clean the toilets in the dormitory for the colored inmates. I protested for the whole group: said we would not do this dangerous work. For this I was put in solitary confinement which lasted for nearly seven days. Water was brought three times in the twenty-four hours, in a small paper cup. Three thin slices of bread were brought in twenty-four hours. Several times matrons with attendants came in and threatened me and threw me about. They searched me for notes or any writing, and threw me about and tore my clothes. I was allowed no water for toilet, and the only toilet convenience was an open bucket. No reading nor writing materials were allowed. Mail was cut off, as it was nearly all of the time while I was in prison. I was not allowed to see an attorney during this period. The bed had been slept in and was filthy, and there was no other furniture. After six days, influential friends were able to reach my case from outside the prison, and I was taken out of solitary confinement.

While in prison I heard men and women crying for help, and heard the sound of brutal lashes for long periods,—usually in the evening, after visitors were not expected.

I saw a woman have a hemorrhage from the lungs at nine in the morning—saw her lie neglected, heard the matrons refuse to call a doctor; and at eleven saw the woman carry a tobacco pail filled with water to scrub a floor; saw her bleeding while she was scrubbing, and when she cried a matron scolded her.

289Saw a young dope fiend who was insane run out of a door, and heard a matron at the telephone order men to loose the bloodhounds upon this girl in the dark. Soon heard the dogs howling and running about.

Saw men with fetters on legs being driven to and from work.

Saw matrons choke and shake girls.

Was continually disgusted with lack of fair play in the institution.

Inmates were set to spy upon the others, and were rewarded or punished, as they played the game of the matrons.

Saw sick girls working in laundry. Saw diseased women sleeping, bathing, and eating with other inmates.

Saw armed men driving prisoners to work.

Saw milk and vegetables shipped to Washington, and rotting vegetables brought up from city market.

Saw unconscious women being brought from punishment cells.

Saw sick women refused medical help, and locked in the hospital without attendance to suffer. Saw them refused milk or proper food. Saw them refused rest, and once I saw the only medical attendant kick at a complaining inmate and slam the office door in her face.

Found that while the institution was supposed to build and improve inmates, they were ordinarily not allowed any recreation nor proper cleanliness. No classes were held, and no teaching of any sort was attempted. They were deprived of all parcels, and mail was usually withheld both coming and going. Visitors and attorneys were held up, and the prisoners usually absolutely shut away from help.

Found that no rules governing the rights of the prisoners had been codified by the Congressional Committee responsible for the institution, and was told by the superintendent that the prisoners had no rights and that the superintendent could treat the inmates as he liked.

Under that management, the matrons, while apparently ordinarily decent and often making a good first impression, were found to be brutal and unreasonable in their care of inmates.

The inmates were driven, abused, insulted. They were not allowed to speak in the dining-room or workrooms or dormitories. It was a place of chicanery, sinister horror, brutality, and dread.

No one could go there for a stay who would not be permanently injured. No one could come out without just resentment against any government which could maintain such an institution.

290As has been told before Judge Waddill decided that the pickets had been illegally transferred from the Jail to Occoquan and they were sent back to the Jail. But between Occoquan and Jail occurred one night, in which the pickets were released in the custody of Dudley Field Malone, their counsel. They went immediately to Cameron House and broke their hunger-strike—spent the evening before the fire, talking and sipping hot milk. The next day they were committed to jail again and immediately started a new hunger-strike.

The government, however, undoubtedly appalled by the protests that came from all over the country, and perhaps, in addition, staggered at the prospect of forcibly feeding so many women, released them all three days later.

A mass-meeting was held at the Belasco Theatre early in December to welcome them. The auditorium was crowded and there was an overflow meeting of four thousand outside on the sidewalk. The police reserves, who had so often, in previous months, come out to arrest pickets, now came out to protect them from the thousands of people who gathered in their honor. Elsie Hill addressed this overflow meeting, which shivered in the bitter cold for over an hour, yet stayed to hear her story.

Inside, eighty-one women in white, all of whom had served in the Jail or the Workhouse, carrying lettered banners and purple, white, and gold banners, marched down the two center aisles of the theatre and onto the stage. There were speeches by Mrs. Thomas Hepburn, Dudley Field Malone, Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, and Maud Younger. Then came an interval in which money was raised. Two touching details were sums of fifty cents and thirty cents pledged from Occoquan “because the Suffragettes helped us so much down there.” And Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., on behalf of the pickets gave “tenderest thanks for this help from our comrades in the Workhouse.”

Eighty-six thousand, three hundred and eighty-six dollars was raised in honor of the pickets.

291On that occasion, prison pins which were tiny replicas in silver of the cell doors, were presented to each “prisoner of freedom.”

As Alice Paul appeared to receive her pin, Dudley Field Malone called, “Alice Paul,” and the audience leaped to its feet; the cheers and applause lasted until she disappeared at the back of the platform.

It is a poignant regret to the present author that she cannot go further into conditions at the District Jail and at Occoquan in regard to the other prisoners there. But that is another story and must be told by those whose work is penal investigation. The Suffragists uncovered conditions destructive to body and soul; incredibly inhumane! One of the heart-breaking handicaps of the swift, intensive warfare of the pickets was that, although they did much to ameliorate conditions for their fellow prisoners, they could not make them ideal. Piteous appeal after piteous appeal came to them from their “comrades in the Workhouse.”

“If we go on a hunger-strike, will they make things better for us?” the other prisoners asked again and again.

“No,” the Suffragists answered sadly. “You have no organization back of you.”

However, in whatever ways were open to them the Suffragists offered counsel and assistance of all kinds.

I asked one of the pickets once how the other prisoners regarded them. She answered: “They called us ‘the strange ladies.’”

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