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
It was black outside, and all Mrs. Nolan remembers was the approach to a
low, dark building from which, made brilliantly luminous by a window
light, flew the American flag.
As Mrs. Nolan entered the hall, a man in the Occoquan uniform,
brandishing a stick, called, “Damn you! Get in there!” Before she was
shot through this hall, two men brought in Dorothy Day,—a very slight,
delicate girl; her captors were twisting her arms above her head.
Suddenly they lifted her, brought her body down twice over the back of
an iron bench. One of the men called: “The damned Suffrager! My mother
ain’t no Suffrager! I will put you through hell!” Then Mrs. Nolan’s
captors pulled her down a corridor which opened out of this room, and
pushed her through the door.
Back of Mrs. Nolan, dragged along in the same way, came Mrs. Cosu, who,
with that extraordinary thoughtfulness and tenderness which the pickets
all developed for each other, called to Mrs. Nolan: “Be careful of your
foot!”
The bed broke Mrs. Nolan’s fall, but Mrs. Cosu hit the wall. They had
been there but a few minutes when Mrs. Lewis, all doubled over like a
sack of flour, was thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed, and she fell
to the floor senseless.
The other women thought she was dead. They wept over her.
Ultimately, they revived Mrs. Lewis, but Mrs. Cosu was desperately ill
all night, with a heart attack and vomiting. They were afraid that she
was dying, and they called at intervals for a doctor, but although there
was a woman and a man guard in the corridor, they paid no attention.
There were two mattresses and two blankets for the three, but that was
not enough, and they shivered all night long.
In the meantime, I now quote from Paula Jakobi’s account. We go back to
that moment in the detention room when they seized Mrs. Lewis.
“And seize her!” rang in my ears, and Whittaker had me by the arm.
“And her!” he said, indicating Dorothy Day. Miss Day resisted. Her
arm was through the handle of my bag. Two men pulled her in one
direction, while two men pulled me in the opposite direction. There
was a horrible mix-up. Finally, the string of the bag broke. Two men
dragged her from the room. I saw it was useless to resist. The man
at the right of me left me, and tightly grasped in the clutches of
the man at my left, I was led to a distant building.
When Julia Emory, who was rushed along just after Mrs. Jakobi, entered
the building, the two guards were smashing Dorothy Day’s back over the
back of a chair; she was crying to Paula Jakobi for help; and Mrs.
Jakobi, struggling with the other two guards, was trying to get to her.
They placed Julia Emory in a cell opposite Lucy Burns.
Of the scene in the reception room of the Workhouse, Mrs. John Winters
Brannan, who saw all this from a coign of vantage which apparently
surveyed the whole room, says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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