It appeared clear that it was their intention either to discredit me, as the leader of the agitation, by casting doubt upon my sanity, or else to intimidate us into retreating from the hunger strike.
After the examination by the alienists, Commissioner Gardner, with whom I had previously discussed our demand for treatment as political prisoners, made another visit. “All these things you say about the prison conditions may be true,” said Mr. Gardner, “I am a new Commissioner, and I do not know. You give an account of a very serious situation in the jail. The jail authorities give exactly the opposite. Now I promise you we will start an investigation at once to see who is right, you or they. If it is found you are right, we shall correct the conditions at once. If you will give up the hunger strike, we will start the investigation at once.”
“Will you consent to treat the suffragists as political prisoners, in accordance with the demands laid before you?” I replied.
Commissioner Gardner refused, and I told him that the hunger strike would not be abandoned. But they had by no means exhausted every possible facility for breaking down our resistance. I overheard the Commissioner say to Dr. Gannon on leaving, “Go ahead, take her and feed her.”
I was thereupon put upon a stretcher and carried into the psychopathic ward.
There were two windows in the room. Dr. Gannon immediately ordered one window nailed from top to bottom. He then ordered the door leading into the hallway taken down and an iron-barred cell door put in its place. He departed with the command to a nurse to “observe her.”
Following this direction, all through the day once every hour, the nurse came to “observe” me. All through the night, once every hour she came in, turned on an electric light sharp in my face, and “observed” me. This ordeal was the most terrible torture, as it prevented my sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time. And if I did finally get to sleep it was only to be shocked immediately into wide-awakeness with the pitiless light.
Dr. Hickling, the jail alienist, also came often to “observe” me. Commissioner Gardner and others—doubtless officials—came to peer through my barred door.
One day a young interne came to take a blood test. I protested mildly, saying that it was unnecessary and that I objected. “Oh, well,” said the young doctor with a sneer and a supercilious shrug, “you know you’re not mentally competent to decide such things.” And the test was taken over my protest.