The Administration evidently hoped by lighter sentences to avoid a hunger strike by the prisoners.
The women were taken immediately to a building, formerly used as a man’s workhouse, situated in the swamps of the District prison grounds. This building, which had been declared unfit for human habitation by a committee appointed under President Roosevelt in 1909, and which had been uninhabited ever since, was now reopened, nine years later, to receive twenty-six women who had attempted to hold a meeting in a public park in Washington. The women protested in a body and demanded to be treated as political prisoners. This being refused, all save two very elderly women, too frail to do so, went on hunger strike at once.
This last lodgment was the worst. Hideous aspects which had not been encountered in the workhouse and jail proper were encountered here. The cells, damp and cold, were below the level of the upper door and entirely below the high windows. The doors of the cell were partly of solid steel with only a small section of grating, so that a very tiny amount of light penetrated the cells. The wash basins were small and unsightly; the toilet open, with no pretense of covering. The cots were of iron, without any spring, and with only a thin straw pallet to lie upon. The heating facilities were antiquated and the place was always cold. So frightful were the nauseating odors which permeated the place, and so terrible was the drinking water from the disused pipes, that one prisoner after another became violently ill.
“I can hardly describe that atmosphere,” said Mrs. W. D. Ascough, of Connecticut. “It was a deadly sort of smell, insidious and revolting. It oppressed and stifled us. There was no escape.”
As a kind of relief from these revolting odors, they took their straw pallets from the cells to the floor outside. They were ordered back to their cells but refused in a body to go. They preferred the stone floors to the vile odors within, which kept them nauseated.
Conditions were so shocking that Senators began to visit their constituents in this terrible hole. Many of them protested to the authorities. Protests came in from the country, too.
At the end of the fifth day the Administration succumbed to the hunger strike and released the prisoners, trembling with weakness, some of them with chills and some of them in a high fever, scarcely able even to walk to the ambulance or motor car.
We had won from the Administration, however, a concession to our protest. Prior to the release of the prisoners we had announced that in spite of the previous arrests a second protest meeting would be held on the same spot. A permit to hold this second protest meeting was granted us.
“I have been advised [Col. Ridley wrote to Miss Paul that you desire to hold a demonstration in Lafayette Square on Thursday, August 9.2d. By direction of the chief of engineers, U. S. Army, you are hereby granted permission to hold this demonstration. You are advised good order must prevail.”
“We received yesterday [Miss Paul replied] your permit for a suffrage demonstration in Lafayette Park this afternoon, and are very glad that our meetings are no longer to be interfered with. Because of the illness of so many of our members, due to their treatment in prison this last week, and with the necessity of caring for them at headquarters, we are planning to hold our neat meeting a little later. We have not determined on the exact date but we will inform you of the time as soon as it is decided upon.”