Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
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 Washington 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 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 assumed responsibility for the welfare of the women, had
managed to secrete small scraps 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 scraps 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 scraps 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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