Category: Herstory

Even though there were no official announcements or outward signs of activity today at Washington, D.C.’s District Jail, where the suffragist prisoners are being held, there appears to be some serious negotiating going on behind the scenes.

The struggle of the imprisoned suffragists continues today in D.C.’s Washington Asylum and Jail, which most people around here simply call the “District Jail.”

Another day in court for some “Silent Sentinel” suffragists who have been imprisoned for picketing along the White House fence. However, unlike many previous occasions, they were not in a courtroom to face more charges, but to make their own accusations against Occoquan Workhouse authorities for the abuses they’ve suffered since being sent there 10 days ago.

Everyone in Judge Edmund Waddill’s packed courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, this morning was shocked by the weak and emaciated condition of the hunger-strikers among the suffrage prisoners brought out of Occoquan Workhouse for a hearing they had requested in U.S. District Court.

Two major developments today regarding the suffragists imprisoned in Occoquan Workhouse.

The number of imprisoned suffragists being subjected to the ordeal of force-feeding has suddenly increased from two to five. Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis, leaders of the hunger strike at Occoquan Workhouse, were transferred out yesterday and sent to join Alice Paul and Rose Winslow in the hospital ward of Washington, D.C.’s District Jail, where Alice and Rose are in their fourteenth day of force-feedings.

No word from – or about – the suffragists being held in Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse and D.C.’s District Jail today, but plenty of action by both the National Woman’s Party and the New York State Woman Suffrage Party.

Sixteen of the suffragists imprisoned in Occoquan Workhouse are continuing the hunger strike they began after arrival on the evening of the 14th. But their condition has now become so serious that according to Mary Short, who was just released today, Superintendent Whittaker has asked for permission to grant their demand to be treated as political prisoners.

National Woman’s Party leader Alice Paul has finally been transferred out of the psychopathic ward of Washington, D.C.’s District Jail, and today succeeded in smuggling a note out of the hospital ward where she is now being kept during her hunger strike and force-feedings.

Public support for the imprisoned “Silent Sentinel” suffragists is increasing now that newspapers have begun to print excerpts from a note written by Lucy Burns, which was smuggled out of Occoquan Workhouse.