The women refused to rise when charged. They refused to plead Guilty or Not Guilty. They sat and read, or knitted, or, as the proceedings bored them, fell asleep. The Park Police were, of course, the only witnesses. At last all the women whom they could identify were found Guilty. They were sentenced to pay fines of five or ten dollars or to serve in prison ten or fifteen days. They all refused to pay the fine. Mary Winsor said: “It is quite enough to pay taxes when you are not represented, let alone pay a fine if you object to this arrangement.” The prisoners were then bundled in the Black Maria and taken off to prison.
Before the pickets were released from prison at the end of the previous year, Superintendent Zinkham said to them:
Now don’t come back, for, if you do, I will have a far worse place than the jail fixed up for you. I will have the old workhouse fixed up for you, and you will have cells without sunlight, with windows high up from the ground. You won’t be as comfortable as you are here.
Everything happened as Superintendent Zinkham prophesied, and a great deal more that was worse. The old workhouse which he had promised them had been condemned in Roosevelt’s Administration, and had not been used for years. The lower tier of cells was below the level of the ground. The doors of the cells were partly of solid steel and only partly of grating, so that little light penetrated. The wash basin was small and inadequate. The toilet was open, the cots were of iron and without springs, and with a thin straw mattress on them. Outside, they left behind a day so hot as to be almost insupportable, but in the Workhouse, it was so cold that their teeth chattered. It was damp all the time. When the present writer visited this old Workhouse in October, 1919, beads of water hung on everything. The walls were like the outside of an ice water pitcher in summer. Several of the pickets developed rheumatism. But the unendurable thing about it was the stench which came in great gusts; component of all that its past history had left behind and of the closeness of the unaired atmosphere. Apparently something was wrong with the water, or perhaps it was that the pipes had not been used for years. Most of the women believe they suffered with lead poisoning. They ached all over; endured a violent nausea; chills.
However, all the twenty-six, with the exception of two elderly women, went on hunger-strikes. Lucy Burns presented a demand on behalf of the entire company to Superintendent Zinkham. She said: “We must have twenty-three more blankets and twenty-three hot-water bottles. This place is cold and unfit for human habitation.”
“I know it is cold and damp,” he replied, “but you can all get out of here by paying your fines.”
The Woman’s Party showed their usual ingenuity in bringing these conditions before the public. As fast as women were arrested, their State Senators and Representatives were besieged by letters and telegrams from home urging them to go to see these imprisoned constituents. The Press of their district made editorial question or comment. As long as this imprisoning of the pickets continued, there was a file of Representatives and Senators visiting the victims. Senator Jones of Washington was the first outside visitor to see them.
In the meantime, another meeting of protest, held at the Lafayette Monument on August 12, with the same speakers and many of the same banner bearers, was broken up by the police.