Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
The gentle judge was distressed when in answer to a question by the
government’s attorney as to what Mr. Zinkhan did when the prisoners
were given into his charge, the warden replied:
A. I heard early in the afternoon of the sentence, and I did not get
away from the Commissioners’ meeting until nearly 4 o’clock and I
jumped in my machine and went down to the jail, and I think at that
time six of them had been delivered there and were in the rotunda of
the jail, and a few minutes after that a van load came. The remaining
number of ten or twelve had not arrived, but inasmuch as the train had
to leave at 5 o’clock and there would not be time enough to receive
them in the jail and get them there in time for the train, I took the
van that was there right over to the east end of the Union Station, and
I think I took some of the others in my machine and another machine we
had there carried some of the others over, and we telephoned the other
van at Police Court to go direct to the east end of the Union Station
and to deliver them to me. I had of course the commitments of those
that were brought up to the jail—about 20 of them—and received from the
officer of the court the other commitments of the last van load, and
there I turned all of them except one that I kept back . . over to the
receiving and discharging officer representing the District Workhouse,
and they were taken down there that evening.
There followed some questioning of the uneasy warden as to how he used
this power to decide which prisoners should remain in jail and which
should be sent to Occoquan. Warden Zinkhan stuttered something about
sending “all the able bodied prisoners to Occoquan—women able to
perform useful work”—and that “humanitarian motives” usually guided him
in his selection. It was a difficult task for the warden for he had to
conceal just why the suffrage prisoners were sent to Occoquan, and in
so doing had to invent “motives” of his own.
Q. [By defense.] Mr. Zinkhan, were you or were you not actuated by
humanitarian motives when you sent this group of women to the Occoquan
Workhouse?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you actuated by humanitarian motives when you sent Mrs. Nolan,
a woman of 73 years, to the workhouse? Did you think that she could
perform some service at Occoquan that it was necessary to get her out
of district jail and go down there?
Warden Zinkhan gazed at the ceiling, shifted in his chair and hesitated
to answer. The question was repeated, and finally the warden admitted
uncomfortably that he believed he was inspired by “humanitarian
motives.”
“Mrs. Nolan, will you please stand up?” called out Mr. Malone.
All eyes turned toward the front row, where Mrs. Nolan slowly got to
her feet. The tiny figure of a woman with pale face and snowy hair,
standing out dramatically against her black bonnet and plain black
dress, was answer enough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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