A memorial signed by 116 doctors, headed by Sir Victor Horsley, F.R.C.S., W. Hugh Fenton, M.D. M.A., C. Mansell-Moullin, M.D., F.R.C.S., Forbes Winslow, M.D., and Alexander Haig, M.D., F.R.C.P., was organised by Dr. Flora Murray and addressed to Mr. Asquith, protesting against the artificial feeding of the Suffragette prisoners, on the ground that it was attended by the gravest risks and was both unwise and inhuman. To this memorial many of the doctors added descriptive notes of their own. Mr. W. A. Davidson, M.D., F.R.C.S., wrote: "A most cruel and brutal procedure. Were the tubes clean? Were they new? If not they have probably been used for people suffering from some disease. The inside of the tube cannot well be cleaned; very often the trouble is not taken to clean them."[40]
In spite of every form of discouragement and ridicule, Mr. Keir Hardie continued constantly to raise the question of forcible feeding in the House of Commons only to be met by evasive, and sometimes grossly, inaccurate replies from the Home Office. Mr. Gladstone tried to shelter himself behind the officials who were his subordinates, and to place the responsibility on the medical officers. For this he was strongly condemned by the British Medical Journal which characterised his conduct as contemptible.[41]
In reply to the protests of medical men and the memorial from doctors, which had been addressed to him, Mr. Gladstone succeeded in drawing a statement from Sir Richard Douglas Powell, the President of the Royal College of Physicians, who said that he thought the memorial exaggerated, though he admitted that forcible feeding was not "wholly free from possibilities of accident with those who resist." He added that, in dissenting from the view expressed by the memorialists, he was assuming that the feeding of the prison patients was "entirely carried out by skilled nursing attendants under careful medical observation and control." We, of course, know that this was not the case.
A large number of doctors, including Dr. R. G. Layton, physician to the Walsall hospital, replied to Sir Douglas Powell by again recapitulating the dangers of forcible feeding. But indeed the opinions of medical men were unnecessary to those who afterwards came in contact with the women who had been forcibly fed. Their exhausted condition was a form of evidence that no argument could upset. It is important to note also that during the year 1910 two ordinary criminals, a man and a woman, were subjected to forcible feeding. The man died during the first operation; the woman committed suicide after the second.
Meanwhile the bulk of the Liberal Press were defending the action of their Government. The Daily News had acclaimed Vera Figner for assaulting one of the Russian prison officials in order to secure better conditions for her fellow captives. It had characterised as the "one healthy symptom in Spain" the revolt of the Spanish people against their Government in regard to the Riffian War though this revolt had entailed the burning down of convents full of women and children who were in no way responsible for the trouble, and other dread acts of violence. At the same time in regard to events at home this paper was declaring that, if the House of Lords were to tamper with the Irish Land Bill, there would be "no wonder if all the old methods of cattle-driving and other violence were revived in Ireland." Yet the Daily News had had nothing but chiding and dispraise for the hunger strikers, and, in regard to forcible feeding, it now said, "it is the only alternative to allowing the women to starve themselves." Thus the two most obvious ways out of the difficulty, firstly, that of treating the women as political prisoners, and, secondly, the more reasonable one of extending the franchise to women and thus ending the strife, were entirely ignored.
Revolted by the hypocritical and inconsistent attitude of this paper, two of its foremost leader writers and of the ablest journalists in this country, Mr. Henry Nevinson and Mr. H. N. Brailsford, resigned their posts upon its staff, writing publicly to explain their reasons for so doing. Many sincere Liberals resigned their memberships and official posts under the Liberal Association including the Rev. J. M. Lloyd Thomas, Minister of the High Pavement Chapel, Nottingham, resigned from the Liberal Association, and there were many other resignations, amongst them the following: Mrs. Catherine C. Osier, the President, Miss Gertrude E. Sothall, the Hon. Sec., and Mrs. Alice Yoxall, the Treasurer of the Birmingham Women's Liberal Association; Mrs. S. Reid, the chairman of the Egbaston Women's Liberal Association; Lady Blake, the President of the Berwick Women's Liberal Association; and Mrs. Branch, one of the most prominent members of the Northampton Women's Liberal Association. At the same time prominent men and women of all shades of opinion, including Mrs. Ayrton, Flora Annie Steel, Lady Betty Balfour, the Rev. J. R. Campbell and the Hon. H. B. T. Strangeways, ex-premier of South Australia appealed to the Government to give votes to women and bring this useless warfare to an end.
Meanwhile, except for the admissions of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Masterman in the House of Commons, nothing definite was known as to the condition of the outraged prisoners. No direct communication had been held with them and even a petition from their parents and relatives to be allowed to send their own medical attendant into the prison, had been refused. The fearful anxiety and suspense endured by all concerned may well be imagined. Again and again Messrs. Hatchett, Jones, Bisgood and Marschall, the solicitors engaged to act on the prisoners' behalf, applied for permission to interview their clients, but Mr. Gladstone obstinately refused until he was informed that legal proceedings were being taken for assault against him and the Governor and Doctor of the Birmingham Prison, and that writs were being issued, and that Miss Laura Ainsworth would shortly be released so that the full details would be known in any case. Thus at last he grudgingly consented to the interview, and sworn statements were made by all the women. Mrs. Leigh explained that on arriving at Winson Green Gaol on Wednesday, September 22nd, she had broken her cell windows as a protest against the prison treatment. As a punishment she was thrust that evening into a cold dimly lit punishment cell. A plank bed was brought in and she was forcibly stripped and handcuffed with the hands behind during the day, except at meal times when the palms were placed together in front. At night the hands were fastened in front with the palms out. Potatoes, bread and gruel were brought into her cell on Thursday but she did not touch them and in the afternoon she was taken, still handcuffed, before the magistrates who sentenced her to a further nine days in the punishment cell. At midnight on Thursday, her wrists being terribly swollen and painful, the handcuffs were removed.
She still refused food and on Saturday she was taken to the doctor's room. Here is her account of the affair:
The doctor said: "You must listen carefully to what I have to say. I have my orders from my superior officers" (he had a blue official paper in his hand to which he referred) "that you are not to be released even on medical grounds. If you still refrain from food I must take other measures to compel you to take it." I then said: "I refuse, and if you force food on me, I want to know how you are going to do it." He said: "That is a matter for me to decide." I said that he must prove that I was insane; that the Lunacy Commissioners would have to be summoned to prove that I was insane. I declared that forcible feeding was an operation, and therefore could not be performed without a sane patient's consent. He merely bowed and said: "Those are my orders."