The next day they brought me some toast and a plate of food, the first I had been offered in over 36 hours. I just looked at the food and motioned it away. It made me sick . . . . I was released on the sixth day and passed the dispensary as I came out. There were a group of my friends, Mrs. Brannan and Mrs. Morey and many others. They had on coarse striped dresses and big, grotesque, heavy shoes. I burst into tears as they led me away.
(Signed) MARY I. NOLAN.
November 21, 1917,
The day following their commitment to Occoquan Mr. O’Brien, of counsel, was directed to see the women, to ascertain their condition. Friends and relatives were alarmed, as not a line of news had been allowed to penetrate to the world. Mr. O’Brien was denied admission and forced to come back to Washington without any report whatsoever.
The next day Mr. O’Brien again attempted to see his clients, as did also the mother of Miss Matilda Young, the youngest prisoner in Mr. Whittaker’s care, and Miss Katherine Morey, who went asking to see her mother. Miss Morey was held under armed guard half a mile from the prison. Admission was denied to all of them.
The terrible anxiety at Headquarters was not relieved the third day by a report brought from the workhouse by one of the marines stationed at Quantico Station, Virginia, who had been summoned to the workhouse on the night the women arrived. He brought news that unknown tortures were going on. Mr. O’Brien immediately forced his way through by a court order, and brought back to Headquarters the astounding news of the campaign of terrorism which had started the moment the prisoners had arrived, and which was being continued at that moment. Miss Lucy Burns, who had assumed responsibility for the welfare of the women, had managed to secrete small scraps of paper and a tiny pencil, and jot down briefly the day by day events at the workhouse.
This week of brutality, which rivaled old Russia, if it did not outstrip it, was almost the blackest page in the Administration’s cruel fight against women.
Here are some of the scraps of Miss Burn’s day-by-day log, smuggled out of the workhouse. Miss Burns is so gifted a writer that I feel apologetic for using these scraps in their raw form, but I know she will forgive me.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14. Demanded to see Superintendent Whittaker. Request refused. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, said we would have to wait up all night. One of the men guards said he would “put us in sardine box and put mustard on us.” Superintendent Whittaker came at 9 p. m. He refused to hear our demand for political rights. Seized by guards from behind, flung off my feet, and shot out of the room. All of us were seized by men guards and dragged to cells in men’s part. Dorothy Day was roughly used-back twisted. Mrs. Mary A. Nolan (73-year-old picket from Jacksonville, Florida) flung into cell. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis shot past my cell. I slept with Dorothy Day in a single bed. I was handcuffed all night and manacled to the bars part of the time for asking the others how they were, and was threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle gag.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 . . . . Asked for Whittaker, who came. He seized Julia Emory by the back of her neck and threw her into the room very brutally. She is a little girl. I asked for counsel to learn the status of the case. I was told to “shut up,” and was again threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle gag. Later I was taken to put on prison clothes, refused and resisted strenuously. I was then put in a room where delirium tremens patients are kept.
On the seventh day, when Miss Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis were so weak that Mr. Whittaker feared their death, they were forcibly fed and taken immediately to the jail in Washington. Of the experience Mrs. Lewis wrote:—