Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Other locked wagons with tiny windows up near the driver now take us,
side by side with drunks and disorderlies, prostitutes and thieves, to
the Pennsylvania Station. Here we embark for the unknown terrors of the
workhouse, filing through crowds at the station, driven on by our
“keeper,” who resembles Simon Legree, with his long stick and his
pushing and shoving to hurry us along. The crowd is quick to realize
that we are prisoners, because of our associates. Friends try to bid us
a last farewell and slip us a sweet or fruit, as we are rushed through
the iron station gates to the train.
Warden Whittaker is our keeper, thin and old, with a cruel mouth,
brutal eyes and a sinister birthmark on his temple. He guards very
anxiously his “dangerous criminals” lest they try to leap out of the
train to freedom! We chat a little and attempt to relax from the strain
that we have endured since Saturday. It is now late in the afternoon of
Tuesday.
The dusk is gathering. It is almost totally dark when we alight at a
tiny station in what seems to us a wilderness. It is a deserted
country. Even the gayest member of the party, I am sure, was struck
with a little terror here.
More locked wagons, blacker than the dusk, awaited us. The prison van
jolted and bumped along the rocky and hilly road. A cluster of lights
twinkled beyond the last hill, and we knew that we were coming to our
temporary summer residence. I can still see the long thin line of black
poplars against the smoldering afterglow. I did not know then what
tragic things they concealed.
We entered a well-lighted office. A few guards of ugly demeanor stood
about. Warden Whittaker consulted with the hard-faced matron, Mrs.
Herndon, who began the prison routine. Names were called, and each
prisoner stepped to the desk to get her number, to give up all jewelry,
money, handbags, letters, eye-glasses, traveling bags containing toilet
necessities, in fact everything except the clothes on her body.
From there we were herded into the long bare dining room where we sat
dumbly down to a bowl of dirty sour soup. I say dumbly—for now began
the rule of silence. Prisoners are punished for speaking to one another
at table. They cannot even whisper, much less smile or laugh. They must
be conscious always of their “guilt.” Every possible thing is done to
make the inmates feel that they are and must continue to be antisocial
creatures.
We taste our soup and crust of bread. We try so hard to eat it for we
are tired and hungry, but no one of us is able to get it down. We leave
the table hungry and slightly nauseated.
Another long march in silence through various channels into a large
dormitory and through a double line of cots! Then we stand, weary to
the point of fainting, waiting the next ordeal. This seemed to be the
juncture at which we lost all that is left us of contact with the
outside world,—our clothes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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