The jail in which the women were first imprisoned was the conventional big white-washed octagonal building with wings at both sides. This was as filthy then as any place could be. The bathroom, with its shower was a damp, dank, dark place. The jail was filled with vermin and rats. Julia Emory said that, in the night, prisoners could actually hear the light cell chairs being moved, so big and strong were the rats. The prisoners complained so constantly that finally the prison officials put poison about; but this did not decrease them. Then they brought a dog, but the dog was apparently afraid of the rats. The girls used to hear the matrons telling visitors that they had got rid of the rats by means of this dog. One night, Julia Emory beat three rats in succession off her bed. Alice Paul says that among her group of jailed pickets was one whose shrieks nightly filled the jail as the rats entered her cell. On July 17, however, when the sixteen women charged with obstructing traffic went to Occoquan Workhouse, things got much worse. Occoquan is charmingly situated, and, judged superficially, seems a model institution. It consists of a group of white buildings placed in a picturesque combination of cultivated fields with distant hills. All about lie the pleasant indications of rural life—crops; cows grazing; agricultural implements; even flower gardens. The District Jail cannot compare with it for charm of situation. It has not even a pretense of the meretricious effect of cleanliness which Occoquan shows. Nevertheless, no picket who went to Occoquan emerged without a sinister sense of the horror of the place. Lucy Burns, of whom it may almost be said that she knows no fear, confesses that at Occoquan she suffered with nameless and inexplicable terrors. This evidence is all the more strange because, I reiterate, Occoquan has an effect of cleanliness, of open air, of comfort; almost of charm. One reason for this sinister atmosphere was that no question the pickets put was ever answered directly. If they asked to see Superintendent Whittaker, he was always out—they could see him tomorrow. If they made a request, it would be granted to them in two days, or next week. The women’s ward was a long, clean, sunny, airy room with two rows of beds—like a hospital ward. Here they put colored prisoners to sleep in the same room with the Suffragists. Moreover, they set the Suffragists to paint the lavatories used by the colored women. The matron who handled the bedclothes was compelled to wear rubber gloves, but the Suffragists were permitted no such luxury—even in painting the lavatories. Indeed, often they slept in beds in which the blankets had not been changed or cleaned since the last occupant. It seemed a part of their premeditated system in the treatment of the Suffragists that they made them all undress in the same bathroom, and, without any privacy, take shower baths one after another.