In effect the decision declared that every one of the 218 suffragists arrested up to that time was illegally arrested, illegally convicted, and illegally imprisoned. The whole policy of the Administration in arresting women was by this decision held up to the world as lawless. The women could, if they had chosen, have filed suits for damages for false arrest and imprisonment at once.
The appeal cases of the other pickets were ordered dismissed and stricken from the records. Dudley Field Malone was chief counsel in the appeal.
Another example of ethical, if not legal lawlessness, was shown by the Administration in the following incident. Throughout the summer and early autumn we had continued to press for an investigation of conditions at Occoquan, promised almost four months earlier.
October 2nd was the date finally set for an investigation to be held in the District Building before the District Board of Charities. Armed with 18 affidavits and a score of witnesses as to the actual conditions at Occoquan, Attorney Samuel C. Brent and Judge J. K. N. Norton, both of Alexandria, Virginia, acting as counsel with Mr. Malone, appeared before the Board on the opening day and asked to be allowed to present their evidence. They were told by the Board conducting the investigation that this was merely “an inquiry into the workhouse conditions and therefore would be held in secret without reporters or outsiders present.” The attorneys demanded a public hearing, and insisted that the question was of such momentous importance that the public was entitled to hear both sides of it. They were told they might submit in writing any evidence they wished to bring before the Board. They refused to produce testimony for a “star chamber proceeding,” and refused to allow their witnesses to be heard unless they could be heard in public.
Unable to get a public hearing, counsel left the following letter with the President of the Board:
Hon. John Joy Edson,
President Board of Charities,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir:—We are counsel for a large group of citizens, men and women, who have in the past been associated with Occoquan work house as officials or inmates and who are ready to testify to unspeakable conditions of mismanagement, graft, sanitary depravity, indignity and brutality at the institution.
We are glad you are to conduct this long-needed inquiry and shall cooperate in every way to get at the truth of conditions in Occoquan through your investigation, provided you make the hearings public, subpoena all available witnesses, including men and women now prisoners at Occoquan, first granting them immunity, and provided you give counsel an opportunity to examine and cross examine all witnesses so called.
We are confident your honorable board will see the justice and wisdom of a public inquiry. If charges so publicly made are untrue the management of Occoquan work house is entitled to public vindication, and if these charges are true, the people of Washington and Virginia should publicly know what kind of a prison they have in their midst, and the people of the country should publicly know the frightful conditions in this institution which is supported by Congress and the government of the United States.
We are ready with our witnesses and affidavits to aid your honorable board in every way, provided you meet the conditions above named. But if you insist on a hearing behind closed doors we cannot submit our witnesses to a star chamber proceeding and shall readily find another forum in which to tell the American public the vivid story of the Occoquan work house.