An hour later, twenty-seven of the women who had just been tried—with, in addition, Mrs. William L. Colt, Elizabeth Smith, Matilda Young, Hilda Blumberg—emerged from Headquarters. They walked twice up and down in front of the White House before they took their places at the gates.
The police were dumbfounded by their unexpected onslaught. There were no patrols waiting. But they pulled themselves together, arrested the pickets, and commandeered cars in which to take them to the police headquarters.
The thirty-one women were ordered to appear in court on November 14. There, after waiting all the morning, Judge Mullowny told them to come back Friday.
At Headquarters, it was believed that this was not only a challenge to the quality of their spirit, but to the degree of their patience.
Many women had come from a long distance to make this protest. Not all could spare the time, money, and vitality. Their answer to that challenge was instant and convincing. On the afternoon of November 13, the picket line went out again—thirty-one of them.
The pickets blazed their way through dense, black throngs. The crowd was distinctly friendly.
Suddenly one of the banners disappeared; another and another until six of them were destroyed; the bare poles proceeded on their way however. The same person accomplished all this—the uniformed yeoman who dragged Alice Paul across thirty feet of pavement on August 15. But this time, the crowd—friendly—manifested its disapproval, and the police arrested him. The pickets stood for a long time, their line stretching from gate to gate, until they began to think that the Administration had changed its tactics. Then suddenly the patrol wagon gong sounded in the distance. Presently they were all arrested.
Many of the pickets had been tried the day before. As their bail had not been refunded, they refused to give more. They were kept that night in the house of detention. As this institution had but two rooms with eight beds each, some of the women slept on the floor. They were tried and sentenced the next day. One of them—the aged Mrs. Nolan—got six days, three fifteen days, twenty-four thirty days, two—Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Mrs. John Winters Brannan—sixty days, and one—Lucy Burns—six months.
It was this group of women who went through the Night of Terror, subsequently to be described.