Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
“I will show you who rules this place. You think you do. But I will
show you that you are wrong.” Some such friendly greeting as this was
frequent from Dr. Gannon on his daily round. “Anything you desire, you
shall not have. I will show you who is on top in this institution,” was
his attitude.
After nearly a week had passed, Dudley Field Malone finally succeeded
in forcing an entrance by an appeal to court officials and made a
vigorous protest against confining me in the psychopathic ward. He
demanded also that the boards covering the window be taken down. This
was promptly done and again the friendly face of the old man became
visible, as the first board disappeared.
“I thought when I put this up America would not stand for this long,”
he said, and began to assure me that nothing dreadful would happen. I
cherish the memory of that sweet old man.
The day after Mr. Malone’s threat of court proceedings, the seventh day
of my stay in the psychopathic ward, the attendants suddenly appeared
with a stretcher. I did not know whither I was being taken, to the
insane asylum, as threatened, or back to the hospital—one never knows
in prison where one is being taken, no reason is ever given for
anything. It turned out to be the hospital.
After another week spent by Miss Paul on hunger strike in the hospital,
the Administration was forced to capitulate. The doors of the jail were
suddenly opened, and all suffrage prisoners were released.
With extraordinary swiftness the Administration’s almost incredible
policy of intimidation had collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the
maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the
Administration was forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most
unenviable position. If she and her comrades had offended in such
degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence, (with such base stupidity on
their part in administering it) she most certainly deserved to be
detained for the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of theirs had
been subordinated to the one desire of stopping the picketing
agitation. To this end they had exhausted all their weapons of force.
From my conversation and correspondence with Dr. White, it is clear
that as an alienist he did not make the slightest allegation to warrant
removing Miss Paul to the psychopathic ward. On the contrary he wrote,
“I felt myself in the presence of an unusually gifted personality” and
. . . “she was wonderfully alert and keen . . . possessed of an
absolute conviction of her cause . . . with industry and courage
sufficient to avail herself of them [all diplomatic possibilities. He
praised the “most admirable, coherent, logical and forceful way” in
which she discussed with him the purpose of our campaign.
And yet the Administration put her in the psychopathic ward and
threatened her with the insane asylum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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