Now, your eye lights on your fellow prisoners. You are brought back to the dreary truth of prison life. With measured tread, and dull listless step, they shuffle on. Their heads are bent, their eyes cast down. They do not see the sun and the brightness, the precious sky or the hovering birds. They do not even see the ground at their feet, for they pass over sunk stones, through wet and mud, though there be dry ground on either side. The prison system has eaten into their hearts. They have lost hope, and the sight of nature has no power to make them glad. It may be that when next you walk with them you will feel as they do. These gloomy overshadowing walls and the remembrance of your narrow cell, with its endless twilight and dreary, useless tasks may have filled your mind and driven away all other thoughts.
Once inside, the last break in the day will be supper at five o'clock (like breakfast, six ounces of bread and a pint of gruel), except that just before the light goes out at night, comes a noisy knocking at every door, and the cry, "Are you all right?" Then darkness, a long, sleepless night, and the awakening to another day like yesterday and like to-morrow.
Footnotes:
[13] The Secretarial duties had now increased so greatly that no one person could cope with them without giving the whole of her time to the work. As I was unable to do this, I had been obliged to resign.
[14] Some days afterwards it was condemned and I had a somewhat better one given to me.
[15] We afterwards learnt that one clean handkerchief was supplied each week. We had no pockets to keep them in.
[16] Each prisoner, on the day of entering is according to prison rules to be given a supper consisting of six ounces of meat and one pint of cocoa.
[17] Since this time night dresses have been introduced into Holloway, and are given to Suffragettes, and, let us hope, to other prisoners.