Some read books, others did needlework, others tended the bed patients.
I am a little deaf, and found it a tiring business after no sleep at night to hold intercourse by means of whispers, the only form of conversation allowed, but nevertheless this was far the most interesting occupation available. People are inclined to be communicative, although total strangers to each other, when cut off from their homes and friends and all sharing the same fate. I heard life stories in Holloway hospital that would fill many novels. I wondered, as I have always done, how it is that people can trouble to read books when romance, adventure, comedy, tragedy and pathos are to hand at all times in more living form and with far greater variety of event and character.
At about five the supper was brought in, the food being the same as at breakfast. I sometimes kept back a potato from the midday meal to eat cold with the bread and butter. As soon as this was cleared away we were let out in turns to the bath-room, where a hot foot bath was provided, and privacy. This was a most welcome luxury. Two mornings after we had been in, a screen was put round the washing table so that the morning ablutions became more effective. From this time forward I experienced nothing to complain of in the washing line.
These first days of prison, although immensely interesting, were, nevertheless, longer in point of time than anything I remember in life, not excluding early childhood. The novelty of every detail and the fact that observation was sharpened to a pitch only known at moments of great emotion, no doubt partly accounted for this.
I knew that my eldest sister had intended to come and visit me as soon as she could get a permit; I supposed she would have no difficulty. The first and second day went by and she did not come. I became a prey to a morbid depression of spirits. Being completely cut off from previous existence, one rapidly fell into the belief that all friends and belongings had discarded and forgotten one. This state of mind was one of the most melancholy experiences of prison. It seems childish and absurdly unreasonable when remembered after release. It nevertheless was bitterly real at the time, and a few hours within prison walls were sufficient to develop the illusion. As with so many other prisoner sensations, it is akin to child life, engendered from complete helplessness, subjection to others, ignorance and uninformedness as to what is happening outside the cramped horizon of the life to which one is subject. The sense of continuous expectancy and comfort for present distressful monotony in the belief that undreamed of good might happen at any moment is also very similar to the mental outlook of children.
The next day, February 26, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence was summoned out of the ward. She came back radiant, having had a visit from her husband. Her happiness and the news she brought back of the outer world shed joy upon us all, but, nevertheless, I had the feeling all the more strongly that my own people had forgotten me, since they, I argued, could have obtained the same privileges as Mr. Lawrence. The ordinary prisoner is usually allowed a visitor only after the first month of the sentence has expired.
The members of the Freedom League were in great excitement, expecting that their leader would be coming to prison that day and very likely be sent to hospital. She had been arrested at the head of a deputation when the other members of the Freedom League had been imprisoned, but her case had been remanded. In the afternoon the prayer card at the head of one of the spare beds was altered to one of Roman Catholic prayers. This was taken to indicate beyond doubt the coming of Mrs. Despard. I read the Roman Catholic card and thought it compared favourably, in point of suitability to prisoners, with the selection made by the Church of England. The hymns, biblical passages and prayers were more tender and personal and less concerned with misdoing. They were rather childish, but, as I have pointed out, prisoners resemble children.
In the evening, when the curfew hour of our bedtime was already past, a stranger prisoner, a very remarkable looking woman with white hair, a fine face, and stately carriage came into the ward, and was immediately recognised by her followers as their deservedly beloved leader. She came up to greet Mrs. Lawrence, and they were about to shake hands with cordiality when the wardress interfered, angrily forbidding them to touch one another.
When the poison basket came round that night, I noticed with admiration and envy Mrs. Despard’s dignified but effectively determined refusal of the proffered tonic. She discarded the hospital whisper and said out loud to the drug dispenser: “I have never taken medicine in my life and I am not going to begin now; I will explain to the doctor to-morrow.” She was a most vigorous lady. I have never heard of a prisoner before or since who slept soundly through the first night of sentence. She walked round the exercise yard, too, at a pace beyond my powers. I was fortunate in achieving one very interesting conversation with her, when she told me of how the women’s workrooms instituted under the recent Local Government Board’s Central Unemployment Fund had been closed down, on the ground that they were not self-supporting, although they were worked at less loss and at far less cost per head than some of the workshops for unemployed male workers. £28,000 was said to have been spent on one farm colony for men which had produced only £1,000 return. Yet there was no complaint, no talk of closing down because of its unremunerative character. £750 had been allotted for widows’ and single women’s workrooms. These, too, were worked at a loss as there was not sufficient sale for the clothes they made, and because of this loss, small in total and far smaller in proportion than in the men’s work, the room was closed. To our great surprise Mrs. Despard was released “on medical grounds,” after serving only a week of her sentence, although she was in robust health. The weekly paper The Christian Commonwealth had taken up her case and the House of Commons was circularised by the editor, Mr. Dawson. This is supposed to have moved the Home Office to clemency.
One of the patients who slept in a separate cell, but came to the ward for meals, had a particularly attractive face and personality. She was exceptionally gentle and courteous in her manner, but her outward calm nevertheless suggested a reserve of inward force; her eyes had a way of lighting up suddenly with sympathy, pathos, or fun. I longed to have a free talk with her. Her name was Mrs. Clarke; she was one of three Suffragettes, the others being Miss Irene Dallas and Miss Douglas Smith, who had been arrested on a deputation to Downing Street on January 24. I had sent in my name for the larger deputation to the House of Commons. I had been invited to go instead on this smaller one to Downing Street, but I had refused. When I saw the women afterwards who had undertaken this much more disagreeable job than mine, I felt again thoroughly ashamed of myself. I should say they were all three unusually sensitive to the odiousness of the errand which had appalled me to the point of shirking it. I did not realise until after she had left the prison that Mrs. Clarke was a sister of Mrs. Pankhurst.[5] These three were released on the morning of February 27. We could just hear the sounds of their welcome and the band playing the Marseillaise outside the prison, but, of course, could see nothing through the high, grained-glass windows. One was filled with a great longing to join them. This was after only thirty-six hours of prison, I imagined what it must be to those under long sentences when a fellow prisoner is released.