The Story of the Woman's PartyGillmore, Inez Haynes
History
The Story of the Woman's Party
Gillmore, Inez Haynes
National Woman's Party; Paul, Alice, 1885-1977; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Mrs. Kendall, who was the most emphatic in her refusal, was promptly
locked up on bread and water. The punishment makes a story to be
told by itself. It clouded our days constantly while it lasted and
while we knew not half of what she suffered....
All this time—five days—Mrs. Kendall was locked up, her pallid face
visible through the windows to those few Suffragists who had
opportunity and ventured to go to her window for a moment at the
risk of sharing her fate.
Ada Davenport Kendall’s story runs as follows:
For stating that she was too weak from lack of food to scrub a floor
and that the matron’s reply that there was no other work was
“hypocritical,” Mrs. Kendall was confined in a separate room for
four days for _profanity_. She was refused the clean clothing she
should have on the day of her confinement, and was therefore forced
to wear the same clothing for eleven days. She was refused a
nightdress, or clean linen for the bed in the room. The linen on her
bed was soiled from the last occupant and Mrs. Kendall lay on top of
it all. The only toilet accommodation consisted of an open pail.
Mrs. Kendall was allowed no water for toilet purposes during the
four days, and was given three thin slices of bread and three cups
of water a day. The water was contained in a small paper cup, and on
several occasions it seeped through.
Friends of Mrs. Kendall’s obtained permission to see her. She was then
given clean clothing, and taken from the room in which she was in
solitary confinement. When the door opened upon her visitors, she
fainted.
Aroused by an inspection of samples of food smuggled out to him by
Suffrage prisoners, Dr. Harvey Wiley, the food expert, requested the
Board of Charities to permit him to make an investigation of the food.
“A Diet of Worms won one revolution, and I expect it will win another,”
promulgated Dr. Wiley.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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