Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Later we established daily communication with Miss Paul through one of
the charwomen who scrubbed the hospital floors. She carried paper and
pencil carefully concealed upon her. On entering Miss Paul’s room she
would, with very comical stealth, first elaborately push Miss Paul’s
bed against the door, then crawl practically under it, and pass from
this point of concealment the coveted paper and pencil. Then she would
linger over the floor to the last second, imploring Miss Paul to hasten
her writing. Faithfully every evening this silent, dusky messenger made
her long journey after her day’s work, and patiently waited while I
wrote an answering note to be delivered to Miss Paul the following
morning. Thus it was that while in the hospital Miss Paul directed our
campaign, in spite of the Administration’s most painstaking plans to
the contrary.
Miss Paul’s story continues here from the point where I interrupted it.
From the moment we undertook the hunger strike, a policy of unremitting
intimidation began. One authority after another, high and low, in and
out of prison, came to attempt to force me to break the hunger strike.
“You will be taken to a very unpleasant place if you don’t stop this,”
was a favorite threat of the prison officials, as they would hint
vaguely of the psychopathic ward, and St. Elizabeth’s, the Government
insane asylum. They alternately bullied and hinted. Another threat was
“You will be forcibly fed immediately if you don’t stop”—this from Dr.
Gannon. There was nothing to do in the midst of these continuous
threats, with always the “very unpleasant place” hanging over me, and
so I lay perfectly silent on my bed.
After about three days of the hunger strike a man entered my room in
the hospital and announced himself as Dr. White, the head of St.
Elizabeth’s. He said that he had been asked by District Commissioner
Gardner to make an investigation. I later learned that he was Dr.
William A. White, the eminent alienist.
Coming close to my bedside and addressing the attendant, who stood at a
few respectful paces from him, Dr. White said: “Does this case talk?”
“Why wouldn’t I talk?” I answered quickly.
“Oh, these cases frequently will not talk, you know,” he continued in
explanation.
“Indeed I’ll talk,” I said gaily, not having the faintest idea that
this was an investigation of my sanity.
“Talking is our business,” I continued, “we talk to any one on earth
who is willing to listen to our suffrage speeches.”
“Please talk,” said Dr. White. “Tell me about suffrage; why you have
opposed the President; the whole history of your campaign, why you
picket, what you hope to accomplish by it. Just talk freely.”
I drew myself together, sat upright in bed, propped myself up for a
discourse of some length, and began to talk. The stenographer whom Dr.
White brought with him took down in shorthand everything that was said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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