Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
“You shut up. I have men here to handle you.” Then he shouted, “Seize
her!” I turned and saw men spring toward her, and then some one
screamed, “They have taken Mrs. Lewis.”
A man sprang at me and caught me by the shoulder. I am used to
remembering a bad foot, which I have had for years, and I remember
saying, “I’ll come with you; don’t drag me; 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 brandishing a thick stick and shouting as we were shoved into
the corridor, “Damn 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.”
Mrs. Cosu called out, “They have just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here, too.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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