In the meantime at Headquarters, the Suffragists, under the leadership of Doris Stevens, now that Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were both in prison, could not even find out where the prisoners were. They had received a jail sentence but were not in the District Jail. Katherine Morey, in great anxiety in regard to her mother, who was one of the prisoners, came from Boston to see her. She could not even locate her. Finally, she hit on the device of meeting the morning train, on which released prisoners always came from Occoquan, and one of them informed her that her mother was at the Workhouse. In the meantime, sixteen of the women had gone on a hunger-strike. They were committed to Occoquan on Wednesday, November 14. By the following Sunday, Superintendent Whittaker became alarmed. He declared he would not forcibly feed any of them unless they signed a paper saying that they themselves were responsible for any injury upon their health. Of course, they all refused to do this, whereupon Superintendent Whittaker said: “All right, you can starve.” However, by Sunday night, he was a little shaken in this noble resolution. He went to Mrs. Lewis, and asked her what could be done. Mrs. Lewis answered that all they asked was to be treated as political offenders, which provided for exercise, receiving of mail and visitors, buying food and reading matter. He asked her to write this statement out in his name, as though he demanded it. On Monday he brought the statement to the Commissioners of the District of Columbia. Commissioner Gardner gave out a statement that such demands would never be granted. In the meantime too, Matthew O’Brien, the counsel for the Woman’s Party, succeeded in getting an order from the Court which admitted him to Occoquan. He saw Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Brannan, and Miss Burns once; but afterwards in spite of his Court order, they refused him admission. It had been part of the system in attempting to lower Miss Burns’s morale to take her clothes away from her. When Mr. O’Brien visited Miss Burns she was lying on a cot in a dark cell, wrapped in blankets. He came back to Headquarters filled with admiration for her extraordinary spirit. He said that she was as much herself as if they were talking in the drawing-room of Cameron House. Mrs. Nolan, released at the end of her six day sentence, also brought the news of what happened back to Headquarters. These were the things that made the Suffragists determine on habeas corpus proceedings. Mr. O’Brien applied to the United States District Court at Richmond for this writ. It was granted returnable on November 27. Mr. O’Brien, however, afraid that, in combination with the indignities to which they were being submitted, the women would collapse from starvation, made another journey to Judge Waddill, who set the hearing forward to the 23rd.