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
In the files at Headquarters, there are dozens of affidavits made by the
women who went to jail for picketing. It is a great pity that they
cannot all be brought to the attention of a newly enfranchised sex. More
burningly than anything else, these affidavits would show that sex what
work lies before them, as far as penal institutions are concerned. I
quote but one of them—that of Ada Davenport Kendall—because it sums up
so succinctly and specifically the things that the prison pickets saw.
I went into Occoquan Prison as a prisoner on September 13, 1917.
I went in with the idea of obeying the regulations and of being a
reasonable prisoner.
While there I saw such injustice, neglect, and cruelty on the part
of the officials that I was forced into rebellion.
During my thirty days’ imprisonment I saw that commissioners and
other officials made occasional visits but that the people in charge
were usually warned and used much deception on the occasion of these
visits. Specially prepared food replaced the wormy, fermenting, and
meager fare of ordinary days. Girls too frail to work were hurried
off the scrubbing and laundry gangs, and were found apparently
resting. Sick women were hidden. Girls were hurried out of
punishment cells as the visitors proceeded through the buildings,
and were hidden in linen rooms or rooms of matrons already
inspected.
While there I was treated with indignities. I was insulted by
loud-mouthed officials at every turn, was stripped before other
women, stripped of all toilet necessities, warm underwear, and
ordinary decencies, was deprived of soap, tooth-brush, writing
materials, and sufficient clothing and bed coverings. I was dressed
first in clean garments, but the officials later punished me by
putting me in unclean clothing and into a filthy bed in which a
diseased negress had slept. In the hospital I was obliged to use the
toilet which diseased negro women used, although there was a clean
unused toilet in the building.
With the four other women who were sentenced with me I was fed food
filled with worms and vile with saltpeter; food consisting of
cast-off and rotting tomatoes, rotten horse meat and insect-ridden
starches. There were no fats: no milk, butter, nor decent food of
any kind. Upon this fare I was put at hard labor from seven a.m.
until five p.m., with a short luncheon out. We were not allowed to
use the paper cups we had brought, but were forced to drink from an
open pail, from common cups.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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