Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
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.
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 Washington. 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 Finally the tube was withdrawn.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 Washington 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 scraps 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 Washington. 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 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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