There was no chapel for us on Sunday and it seemed an unusually long day. My thoughts yearned towards my home people, and I rehearsed the joy of my sister’s visit over and over again. The excitement of seeing her had now given way to a wholesome and relaxed fatigue and I looked forward to another night with a sure expectation of sleep. In the evening at about six o’clock, our bed time, a new patient was brought into the ward. She was carried in by 3rd Division prisoners, helped by a head officer, sitting upright in an ordinary armchair with carrying poles attached to the arms. She looked extremely ill and ashy pale. She was evidently in great pain, though she did not groan or call out. There was nothing in the way she was treated to suggest a surgical case, and I concluded that she had been brought in for some fever or acute internal complaint; from the look on her face I thought it not unlikely that she might die in the night. She was a stranger to me and after the first few minutes my instinct was to turn away and not look at her, remembering the distressing sense of publicity which I myself had felt so acutely on first coming to hospital. The news quickly spread in the ward that she was a member of the Freedom League, by name Mrs. Meredith Macdonald. She had several friends in the ward, but they scarcely recognised her when she was first brought in. They told me that she had fallen down that morning in the exercise yard, which was slippery from frost, and had injured her leg at the hip joint. I soon got to know her myself and talked much with her. No nurse was in attendance on her during the night, only the ordinary night officer (wardress). The anguish of acute suffering in this newcomer and her harrowingly unassisted condition, drove all thoughts of my own people from my mind and all question of sleep from my eyes. The accident had taken place at about 9.30 a.m. She had slipped over a small gutter and fallen with great suddenness to the ground. She lay for several minutes stunned in the snow. The wardress in charge ordered her to “go into the middle,” where those who cannot walk fast drag round in a smaller circle, but she did not attempt to move. Some of her fellow prisoners came to her assistance, they were immediately ordered away by the officers. She looked across the yard to the wardress of her own corridor who then came to help her. “I have hurt my thigh,” she said; “I think I had better go in.” The wardress answered, “Very well.” As soon as she began to walk she felt pain in the hip bone and put her hand on the wardress’s shoulder for support. It was a very short distance to her block (D X) of the building and on reaching it she was handed over to another wardress who suggested she should sit down and rest before going up to her cell. She was about to do this when her right leg collapsed completely under her and she would have fallen, but that a wardress held her up and put her into a chair. She was then told to go upstairs “before you get any stiffer.” The leg was useless, but by help of the double banisters she hopped up two flights to her cell, an older wardress from the upper corridor lending her assistance. She had no control over her foot and said to the elder wardress that there must be something wrong. The wardress answered, “I am afraid you have injured the muscles and that is a very painful thing,” and offered to put her to bed. She could not face the additional pain of being undressed. About half an hour later a doctor and the hospital superintendent visited her, and she was subjected to extreme pain by a reckless testing. She herself suspected a fracture and suggested having recourse to X-rays as the only means of satisfactorily testing this. She pleaded the special need in her case of, if possible, retaining her walking power on account of her young children. The doctor sent her a draught to ease the pain, but this was quite ineffective. She lay in her cell all day unable to keep still for long on account of the pressure of the injured part on the mattress, and yet every move was exquisitely painful. In the evening the doctor came again and renewed his agonising overhauling. She was then removed to hospital, the chair in which they carried her, having no foot rest, the injured leg came in frequent contact with the porters, causing her the intensest pain. It is not surprising that she looked more dead than alive on reaching the ward.
The injury and the rough methods of investigation combined produced a feverish and most painful condition in the patient. The case was taken over by another doctor (Dr. Sullivan) who at least handled the injury much less brutally, but no attempt was made to treat it surgically. A slight wound in the lower part of the leg was occasionally dressed and bandaged by the hospital wardress, who visited us twice a day when temperatures were taken and drugs distributed. There was no other nursing whatever. The doctor’s examinations consisted only of measurements to compare the length of the injured leg with the healthy one. Nothing was done, in recognition of fracture, to reset the bones or keep the limb in one position, no weight was applied to stretch the shorter injured leg; there seemed to be no aim in the doctor’s recommendations beyond that of helping to restore a bruised bone by as nearly a natural use of it as the patient could be urged to make. A circular air-cushion was supplied and extra pillows; also a night table by the side of the patient’s bed, and a bed pan was kept in the ward which could be used for bed-patients with the voluntary assistance either of the wardress in charge or of the fellow-prisoners. Mrs. Macdonald was kept in bed for the first few days, but the extremely painful pressure from lying on the injured bone with the legs in flat position caused her incessant restlessness, and before long she begged leave to get up and sit in an armchair. This was allowed and soon she was urged to move about, walk and use the leg as much as possible. In spite of the most heroic efforts, the last recommendation was impossible. She moved about leaning on a chair by way of crutch and getting up or sitting down with the help of her fellow-prisoners. The complete loss of control over the injured leg pointed, in my estimation, to much more serious harm than mere bruising. I felt the greatest indignation from that first evening of her entrance among us at the way this prisoner was treated. Her suggestion about the X-rays was ignored, her request to the Governor, and eventually her petition to the Home Secretary, that she might be visited by her own doctor was refused. When the doctors talked with her about her case they seemed to pay no attention to her own views, but rather accentuated the official prison manner of ignoring individuals as though she had been a child or an irresponsible person. Yet there was no trace of exaggeration or a tendency to work up grievances over her own case. Through all her acute and continuous physical suffering she showed keen powers of observation and a sense of humour that constantly relieved the nightmare of horror with which I watched her pain. Her heroism under physical suffering surpassed anything I have ever come across or imagined possible. During the nights I was with her in the ward, about four or five, I slept very little myself and whenever I looked at her she was awake. I did not once see her asleep by day or night while I was with her in prison. It is only since seeing her in free life that I have been able to compare her face under normal conditions and realised the intensity of distress which must have caused the continually strained expression she had in Holloway, varied at times by contortions due to acute pain. Yet she spoke little of her sufferings, seldom complained of anything, never once was irritable under her trials or indignant at the treatment of them, never once groaned or cried. She was uniformly patient, gentle, self-contained, considerate of others.
I still was unable to get any sleep at night, but when a few days had gone by I ventured to make up my bed so that I faced the wall instead of the ward. This gave a greater sense of privacy and sheltered my eyes from the blinding light of the naked gas jet. I very much missed a habit I have of doing various physical exercises before going to bed. About halfway through the night I made amends for this by going to the little ante-room near the sink and lavatory, the door of which communicating with the ward was left unlocked at night. Here, taking it corner ways, there was just room for me to stretch my arms full length. I consider it was thanks to this midnight practice that I was able to keep my digestion in better order than is usual among prisoners.
Hospital patients are not allowed to go to the daily service in chapel, but occasionally we were taken down to a morning service, in the nature of family prayers, which was held in the ward below ours. This was given over mostly to feeble-minded patients, several of whom were in bed. My place was always the same, close to the bed of a woman whose face will haunt me, I think, as long as I live. I never saw her move, she lay quite flat, her head alone appearing above the bed clothes. She took no part in the service and seemed to be unconscious of it. She was young, her skin was remarkably smooth and devoid of expressive lines, but yellow as if she had jaundice. Her appearance illustrated to me the meaning of despair more clearly than I have seen it hitherto in any living being. She was entirely passive and unresentful, but if hope had tried to enter into her mind it would find no lodging there. It seemed to me that neither life nor death had anything to offer her, nor was there anything she possessed of which they could rob her. While I stood or sat through the service my back was turned on her, but when I knelt down I was facing her. One could not feel pity for her—there was a rigid dignity and detachedness about her as of someone living in an atmosphere different from our own. All my thoughts and prayers were bent towards her, but I never had the sensation of in any way communicating with her.
I noticed regretfully that there were no hymns, hardly any passages from the Bible were read, the prayers selected were of a dolorous order, and the greater part of the time was taken up by an address from the chaplain. He spoke to us of the temptation in the wilderness, how that Christ was tempted in the same way that we are, but that He was good and we were bad. He instanced how wrong it would be if, when we were hungry, we yielded to the temptation of stealing bread. At this remark an old woman stood up. She was tall and gaunt, her face seamed with life, her hands gnarled and worn with work. One saw that whatever her crimes might have been she had evidently toiled incessantly. At this moment her face wore an expression of strained intensity as though some irresistible tide of inward emotion had forced her to act. The tears streamed down her furrowed cheeks as she said in a pleading, reverent voice, “Oh, sir, don’t be so hard on us.” The wardresses immediately came up to her, took her by the shoulders and hustled her out of the ward; we never saw her again. The Chaplain did not answer nor even look at her, and continued his address as if nothing had happened. A feeling of passionate indignation took hold of me, succeeded by the feeling of helplessness and irresponsibility which stifles vitality and above all every good impulse in prison. Sympathy for the ejected prisoner, disagreement with the man who officially represented the teaching of Christianity, neither of these thoughts could find vent in words or actions; they become stored up in a brooding, malignant attitude of resentment towards the whole prison system, its infamous aim, its profound unreason, and the cruelly devitalising distortion of its results.
When we were back in our ward the Chaplain came to visit us. This time, he knew who I was. I asked him about the prison library which was under his charge. I wished to send some books when I was free, amongst others George Moore’s story of “Esther Waters.” I thought that novel ought to be in every woman’s prison because of the heroic and triumphant struggle depicted in it of the mother of an illegitimate child. I asked the Chaplain if he knew it and would allow me to send it. He answered that he did not know the book, and added, “But your ladyship is such a good judge of literature, I should leave the choice of books entirely to you.” Whenever officials visited the ward we were supposed each to stand at the foot of the bed allotted to us. Complete silence was the rule. This remark of the Chaplain’s was, therefore, overheard by many of my fellow-prisoners. From that moment I was nick-named “your ladyship.” As soon as the official round was over several of us came together and, as was inevitable, compared the attitude of the Chaplain towards the prisoner who had appealed to him during his address and towards myself. It was on this occasion I first noticed that the dress-jacket I wore was different from those of my companions; mine was evidently quite new and without the broad arrow markings. A fellow-prisoner, Miss Povey, member of the Freedom League, to whom I had brought a glass of water during the first night, came to my rescue. She was now sufficiently recovered to be out of bed during part of the day. She had a great sense of humour and immediately responded to my need. We seized a brief moment when the wardress was standing in the doorway, we took shelter behind the open door and swopped each other’s serge shirts. She was small made and for once this portion of the clothing had been more or less well adapted to our respective sizes. The sleeves of my shirt were half a length longer than she required, and though she put a large tuck in them they retained their superfluity of size. The sleeves of her shirt did not reach my wrists and as the solitary button at the neck did not secure the closing of the jacket down the front, I had continually to be pulling it together again in the course of the day. It was marked in many places with the broad arrow, but had been so well worn, as the lining of the neck and cuffs attested, that the white paint of the markings had almost chipped off in several places. From this time onward it became a sort of game to watch for the privileges that were accorded to me. Prisoners who had been in before explained that until I came there were never knives and forks supplied as we now enjoyed, the fare, too, had been made more luxurious.
After three or four days I had practically recovered from the effects of the treatment meted out to the Deputation, and, but for the want of sleep and its results, had regained my normal health. I was very anxious to leave the hospital, partly because I wanted to share the lot of the bulk of my Suffragette companions and to ensure that they should benefit by whatever unusual privileges were accorded to me. Secondly, I wished to know from my own experience the routine life of ordinary prisoners and to see more of them, which I supposed would be possible away from the ward. Finally, my appetite for solitude grew from hour to hour. I feared that continued lack of sleep (I am a slave to sleep) might tell on me in a way to seriously handicap my health and cause my friends and belongings anxiety after my release, which could easily be avoided. Consequently, every morning when the Governor and doctor came on their round I asked leave to go to “the other side,” as the ordinary cell buildings were called. My monotonous request was as monotonously refused from day to day. The Governor replied that I must first obtain consent from the doctors, the doctors insisted that my heart was in a condition to make the routine of floor-washing, plank bed, etc., injurious to me. One of the doctors did not trouble to continue feeling my pulse, he simply dismissed my request to be moved with the statement, “As for you, you are suffering from serious heart disease, you can’t be let out of hospital.”
To harden myself for the cell routine I shared more and more in the cleaning processes of the ward. Besides the emptying of basins and dusting the walls as high as my arms could reach, the big table had to be moved for floor polishing, and I helped the little 3rd Division ward-cleaner with this. She was very small and worked unremittingly all day. She used to flush very much over the floor-polishing, although she was most dexterous with the heavy, long-handled polisher, and did all her duties with admirable labour-saving skill and sequence. I wondered how much her heart condition was considered. I felt a great interest in her. Her face, expression, and manners were those of an essentially good woman, she was intelligent, had a sense of humour, was loyal to both the officials and her fellow-prisoners; she seemed in every way above the average of mortals. I wondered what offence against the law could have brought her to prison, she had several bars on her sleeve, implying a long sentence. I found she had committed one of the most grievous crimes which it is possible to commit, the most unnatural, and opposed to all that lies at the root well-being of a race or nation. She had killed her own child. Yet when I came to know the facts, it seemed to me that her actions were fully accounted for, and even had her child-killing been more deliberate than it actually was, it was impossible to condemn this action in a human being who had been squeezed by such opposing forces. Her story was told me in snatches partly by the other prisoners, partly by one of the wardresses, and partly by herself as I used to kneel by her side to put floor refuse into the fire at the rare moments when the enormous padlock of the fender door had been released. Her story was this. She was a servant, and had been seduced by her master. She, of course, was dismissed from his service. When the child was born, he had at first contributed to its support, but after a while had ceased to do so and disappeared, leaving no address. She had taken the greatest pride in bringing up her child, a boy, to whom she was devoted. Her cell was one of those just outside the general ward. It was sometimes used for the reception of visitors to hospital patients who were too ill to go across the way. When this happened she always asked the prisoners eagerly on their return, “Did you see the photo of my boy?” Having been in prison many months she was allowed to receive and keep this photograph. To return to her story, as time went on the struggle to maintain herself and her child was considerable. She made a friend, a man of her own class, who knew her history, respected her for her good motherhood and promised to marry her as soon as a sufficiently good job came his way. Before long the job was said to have been offered him, marriage was in sight, and they plighted their troth with the seal which knows no undoing. The work failed, marriage prospects paled, her friend deserted her and she found herself faced with the prospect which she now understood only too well, of disabled health, unemployment, disgrace, and a second child to maintain unaided. She kept on at her employment—in a laundry—until the very hour of her premature confinement. Then worn out in body and spirit, and quite alone at the moment of her trouble, she had in her distraction and misery strangled her baby. She went on with her work at the laundry. It was the father of her child who gave her up to the police; according to one rendering, he did so because she was so ill he thought it the only way to secure for her “a rest.” She had an uncle, a citizen of London, a publican, who used his influence on her behalf at her trial so that she was condemned on the charge of “concealment of birth,” not of child-murder. Prisoners are allowed visitors once a month, but no one had been to see her for several months. I determined I should be one of her visitors as soon as I was again free, so that we might hold a sustained conversation of a kind impossible to fellow-prisoners.
I often tell the story of this girl as an example of the neglect of women’s interests and the consequent need for the recognition of their citizenship so that legislation and administrators of the law should be responsible to both sexes. My listeners have sometimes commented: “But what difference could the vote make? and how could legislation alter these admittedly tragic situations?” At this very time (March, 1909) the women of Norway who had recently been enfranchised, but had not yet exercised the vote, were drafting a bill for the protection of illegitimate children. I think there could not be a better example of how a fundamental change could be made in both the educative and protective side of legislation as between men and women, pre-eminently just and without any reactionary vindictiveness on the part of women. The essence of this law is simply recognition of the fact that every child has two parents and that the burden and responsibility of producing children should, therefore, be shared by both in so far as law can secure equality. According to this Norwegian law, the mother is given the right during pregnancy to inform the local authorities of the name of the father. The man whose name is given may deny responsibility within fourteen days. If he does not, he is registered as the father; if he denies it the burden of proof rests with the mother. The father can be compelled to support the mother for three months before (in England the law gives her no claim upon the father until after the birth of the child), and, in certain instances, for nine months after confinement, and he is bound to support the child until it is sixteen years old. A man at the time of intimacy is comparatively willing to undertake his share of these situations; after the lapse of many months he is more inclined to try and shirk them. In the case of denial on the part of the man, how much easier it would be for the woman to prove her case when the friendship had been recent and witnesses could be brought forward in support of corroborating evidence. Ten or twelve months later such witnesses have often dispersed or their memories grown hazy. Owing to the undefended, economically unsupported position of these mothers, certain results inevitably follow—loss of respectable situations and consequent necessity for the women to have recourse to more precarious, more laborious, and worse paid employment, with their lowered social status pressing heavily upon them in every direction. These conditions, reacting on the exceptional physical state of the mother, claim their inevitable toll from the life-blood of the child. It is not surprising that the deaths of illegitimate children are nearly double those of children born in wedlock; for 1911, the statistics, the latest issued, show deaths of infants under one year in England and Wales, in wedlock 249.37 per thousand births, illegitimate 489.99. With the mother’s maintenance secured, something tangible is being done to save the health as well as the life of future generations. The woman can draw the amount of her claim through the local authorities who recover it from the father. This is an immense safeguard. Constantly under the legal conditions here, when the mother’s claim has been proved, admitted by the father and paid by him for a few weeks, he moves away before long, leaving no address and the woman, even if she knows of his whereabouts, cannot enforce her claim without irksome and difficult legal procedure. It is far easier for the public authority to pursue him, but even if this proves in some cases impossible, it is better for the State to lose its money than the life or health of its citizens. The State always pays in the end. The child has the right to bear the father’s name and, in the event of his intestacy, has the same rights of succession as his legitimate children. Just imagine how this clause would alter the outlook of parents when educating their sons, more especially in those spheres of society where such unions on the part of men are almost invariably with women of a lower class than their own, and it is these unions which produce tragic and evil results far more socially and racially injurious than illegitimate unions among men and women of the same class.[6]