Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
One by one little points were conceded to quiet resistance. There was
the practice of sweeping the corridors in such a way that the dust
filled the cells. The prisoners would be choking to the gasping point,
as they sat, helpless, locked in the cells, while a great cloud of dust
enveloped them from tiers above and below. As soon as our tin drinking
cups, which were sacrificed in our attack upon the windows, were
restored to us, we instituted a campaign against the dust. Tin cup
after tin cup was filled and its contents thrown out into the corridor
from every cell, so that the water began to trickle down from tier to
tier. The District Commissioners, the Board of Charities, and other
officials were summoned by the prison authorities. Hurried
consultations were held. Nameless officials passed by in review and
looked upon the dampened floor. Thereafter the corridors were dampened
and the sweeping into the cells ceased. And so another reform was won.
There is absolutely no privacy allowed a prisoner in a cell. You are
suddenly peered at by curious strangers, who look in at you all hours
of the day and night, by officials, by attendants, by interested
philanthropic visitors, and by prison reformers, until one’s sense of
privacy is so outraged that one rises in rebellion. We set out to
secure privacy, but we did not succeed, for, to allow privacy in
prison, is against all institutional thought and habit. Our only
available weapon was our blanket, which was no sooner put in front of
our bars than it was forcibly taken down by Warden Zinkhan.
Our meals had consisted of a little almost raw salt pork, some sort of
liquid—I am not sure whether it was coffee or soup—bread and
occasionally molasses. How we cherished the bread and molasses! We
saved it from meal to meal so as to try to distribute the nourishment
over a longer period, as almost every one was unable to eat the raw
pork. Lucy Branham, who was more valiant than the rest of us, called
out from her cell, one day, “Shut your eyes tight, close your mouth
over the pork and swallow it without chewing it. Then you can do it.”
This heroic practice kept Miss Branham in fairly good health, but to
the rest it seemed impossible, even with our eyes closed, to crunch our
teeth into the raw pork.
However gaily you start out in prison to keep up a rebellious protest,
it is nevertheless a terribly difficult thing to do in the face of the
constant cold and hunger of undernourishment. Bread and water, and
occasional molasses, is not a diet destined to sustain rebellion long.
And soon weakness overtook us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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