Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences

by Lady Constance Lytton

When evening came after the supper meal our little plot developed with unexpected smoothness. The kindly wardress was in charge, activity and “inspection” in the passage outside subsided altogether and we were left to our own devices. What chairs there were we set round the fire and the rest of the company sat on the floor. An unwonted expression of happiness beamed from the fire-lit faces of these prison-clad individuals, drawn together from many parts of the country and from widely-differing walks of life. Each one contributed her share to our spontaneous entertainment. Even the wardress, completely casting aside her official manner and addressing herself deferentially to Mrs. Lawrence, for whom she had a great admiration, told a pathetic little story with a surprising gift of narration and concentrated expression. I remember I had dreaded lest one or two of the company besides myself should not be “up” to an adequate contribution, and that our little entertainment would be marred by those uncomfortable moments of both conscious and unconscious failure such as are common to “social” gatherings, no matter where they take place. However, everyone played up. There was great variety in the different speakers, each in turn adding a new element to the programme, each was good of its kind and there was no need for pity anywhere. My friend with the injured leg contributed a remarkable political poem of her own making, but far the most artistic items were given by Mrs. Lawrence. She told us first an Arab story which she had heard from a Dragoman sitting round a real camp fire in Egypt. It was full of the detail dear to the East, which suited the associations of superfluous time in our then experience. It was intricate and humorous, lifting our minds completely out of our present surroundings. She was pressed for “more.” She then repeated Olive Schreiner’s “Three Dreams in a Desert.” I had read this allegory many years ago when it was first published. I remember that the painter Watts and my father had been enthusiastic over the poetical beauty of these “Dreams.” Their lyrical force, the imaginative woof and warp of their parables and the dignified cadence of their language had impressed me in my youth so that I read them many times for sheer emotional joy, but their meaning had evidently not penetrated to me. Olive Schreiner, more than any one other author, has rightly interpreted the woman’s movement and symbolised and immortalised it by her writings. Now after even so short an experience of the movement as I had known, this “Dream” seemed scarcely an allegory. The words hit out a bare literal description of the pilgrimage of women. It fell on our ears more like an A B C railway guide to our journey than a figurative parable, though its poetic strength was all the greater for that. The woman wanderer goes forth to seek the Land of Freedom.... “‘How am I to get there?’ The old man, Reason, answers, ‘There is one way and one only. Down the banks of Labour, through the water of suffering. There is no other.’ ... ‘Is there a track to show where the best fording is?’ ... ‘It has to be made....’ And she threw from her gladly the mantle of ancient-received opinions she wore, for it was worn full of holes. And she took the girdle from her waist that she had treasured so long, and the moths flew out of it in a cloud. And he said, ‘Take the shoes of dependence off your feet.’ And she stood there naked but for one white garment that clung close to her, the garment of Truth, which she is told to keep. She is given a staff, Reason, ‘a stick that curled.’ ‘Take this stick, hold it fast. In that day when it slips from your hand you are lost. Put it down before you, where it cannot find a bottom, do not set your foot.’ The woman having discarded all to which she had formerly clung cries out: ‘For what do I go to this far land which no one has ever reached? I am alone! I am utterly alone!’ But soon she hears the sound of feet, ‘a thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands and they beat this way.’ ... ‘They are the feet of those that shall follow you.’ ... ‘Have you seen the locusts how they cross a stream? First one comes down to the water’s edge, and it is swept away, and then another comes and then another, and at last with their bodies piled up a bridge is built and the rest pass over.’ ... And of those that come first some are swept away, and are heard of no more; their bodies do not even build the bridge? ... ‘What of that? They make a track to the water’s edge.’” And in the last dream she sees in that land of Freedom where Love is no longer a child but has grown to a man. “On the hills walked brave women and brave men, hand in hand. And they looked into each other’s eyes, and they were not afraid.”

We dispersed and went back to our hard beds, to the thought of our homes, to the depressing surroundings of fellow prisoners, to the groans and cries of agonised women—content. As I laid my head on the rattling pillow I surrendered my normal attitude towards literature, and thought “There is some point, some purpose in it after all.”

Since I had left the general ward there were more opportunities for the officers to show kindness without being detected in “favouritism,” and I had come to be on very good terms with several of them. Even the ward superintendent, who made a special hobby of outward severity, had relaxed on several occasions. For instance, she stood in the doorway one morning watching me make my bed. She remarked, with the same outward air of contempt that was habitual to her, but with a kindly look in her eyes: “You’re not much used to that, I expect?” I answered: “Do you think I do it so badly?” She smiled and seemed distressed that I had interpreted her that way. Her anxiety that I should put on flesh while under her charge made her almost motherly at times. I accounted for my small appetite by explaining that I did not spend myself in prison life. “Don’t know about spending yourself, but how about your sensitiveness? Doesn’t that ‘spend’ you?” This taunt was because when she renewed the plasters on my cut, which she did very skilfully, I winced a good deal. The sticky plaster adhered closely and the process of removing it generally made me feel faint. I didn’t know till she said this that she had even noticed it, but her contempt was softened by a kind smile. I had determined to begin my strike in real earnest the following week if I failed by reasonable pleadings to get sent to the cells. I was anxious that the responsibility of my bad behaviour should not fall on her, and I wished to make very clear that I had no malicious intentions towards her, or anyone else, beyond giving proof to the doctors that I should be better the “other side.” She was extremely busy and her visits to me never lasted more than a few seconds. I took the first opportunity to say unconcernedly and not looking at her, but with the hope of arousing her curiosity sufficiently for her consent: “If you should have a spare minute before Sunday, come in to me when I am in my cell, I want to ask you something.” She looked surprised, but said nothing and avoided me for the rest of the day. The following afternoon she looked in hurriedly, saying in her most official voice: “What is it you want?” I resented the scolding tone and answered without humility, as one would to a fellow-being outside, “Come near to me, I want to speak to you, but only if you can spare the time.” I was lying on my bed, a privilege I was allowed in the separate cell. She came in, pushed the door to, stood close to my bed-side and said again gruffly, “What is it?” I reached out my hand to take hers, but meeting with no response I drew it in again. I did not want to get angry with the rebuffs of her officialdom, so I kept my eyes down as I said: “I like you because you have always treated me the same as the others, yet you have never really been unkind to me. I want to ask you something now, because by Sunday either I shall have had leave to go to the other side or I shall have begun my strike in real earnest and you will be getting more and more angry with me.” She stooped down and said in a low voice of extreme tenderness as if I had been a child: “Why, I have never been angry with you yet.” I looked up into her eyes. They were lit with kindliness and her whole face beamed on me with genial goodwill. It was a surprising change. The personality was the same, but the mask was off and I realised something of the sacrifice it must be to this woman continually to conceal her good nature under so forbidding a manner. I felt more than ever how wasteful and unreasonable is a system which represses the natural powers of good influence in such a woman and exacts of her, in their stead, an attitude towards the prisoners of so much less worth. Her kindness made my determination to carry out my strike at all costs a much harder job than any amount of her official hardness and reproof would have done. If it had been for any less object than a matter of principle I could not have done it. “No,” I answered, “but I haven’t yet begun my strike seriously.” I added: “I don’t wish to discuss that now. I want you to tell me when you could come and see us after I am out. Mother will wish to thank you for being kind to me, and to hear about my wicked ways from you. You must come down to us in the country. We are on this line and quite near London.” Her face grew serious again, but remained without the official mask. She shook her head. “That’s impossible,” she said with decision, “it would be against the rules.” “There are no prison rules for me once I am free again, and you surely have some holidays when you can do as you like.” “No, that would be quite against the rules.” I pleaded afresh and with determination. She then tried another tack, said that she had friends of her own to visit in the little time at her disposal. I answered she must bring one of these with her and they would spend the day together with us. But she would have none of it. I said she, of course, felt obliged to rub in the rules and regulations while I was prisoner under her charge and that I respected her for that. It was obvious, however, that such rules would have nothing to do with me once I was free again, that I should write to her after my release, as an ordinary outsider, and make fresh suggestions. I had in mind several instances in which prisoners and warders had continued friendly after release. I asked her to give me her home address or, at least, to tell me her Christian name, for, as several of her sisters were also prison officers in Holloway, I did not want my letter to go to them. She, however, would not tell me any of these things. I asked why it would be against the rules. She answered, “We are not allowed to hold communication with ex-prisoners,” and vouchsafed no further explanation. I said I thought we Suffragettes might be looked upon as different from the ordinary ex-prisoners. She remained adamant. I felt fresh enmity for the system which continually admitted variation from its rules on the side of less kindness or for reasons of snobbish privilege, but which showed itself rigid and unelastic when it was a case of reasonable, unharmful good-will. But, of course, I immensely respected this woman’s loyalty to the system she served and her punctilious adherence to its rules. She had, nevertheless, let go her own voice and her own smile just once upon me. They remained among the joy experiences of Holloway. I wondered if she had ever shown them to the poor woman who screamed and groaned in the cell below mine, or to the yellow-faced patient in the lower ward.

I began my strike gently; I knocked off all diet extras, such as the maltine and its accompanying banana or the pudding at the mid-day meal, and kept to the food which would be mine the other side, viz., Breakfast: Brown bread, butter, milk. Mid-day: Brown bread, potatoes, one vegetable. Supper: Brown bread, butter, milk. Both doctors and wardresses talked of the plank bed as one of the hardships likely to be too much for me in the cells, so I took one of the two mattresses from my bed and slept with it on the floor. I clambered up on the furniture and cleaned the windows of my cell to show I could do some extra housemaiding without harm. The first night of my floor-bed I was left undisturbed. The second night, at the time of the “All right?” rounds, the hospital superintendent came in. To my surprise she was not angry, did not scold. She asked quite gently and interestedly why I was lying on the floor. “Because the doctors suggest that I would get ill or die if I laid on a wooden bed instead of an iron one, so I am just showing that I can manage it all right; I am very comfortable, thanks.” But she didn’t go away. The cell, of course, was small, the fixed bedstead down the centre of it taking up most of the floor-room, so I had laid the mattress cross-ways under the bed, my head sticking out on one side, my feet on the other. The wardress suggested that if I woke suddenly in the night I might hit and hurt myself against the bed. I assured her that sleep in Holloway was not of a kind heavy enough to wake from it unconsciously. It was true I had enjoyed such a sleep one night, the first in my private cell, but the ghastly sounds of human desperation and suffering by which it had been broken had driven away sound sleep for the remainder of my imprisonment. At last she went away. The following night she again came and argued about the bed. She said she would worry lest harm should happen while she was responsible for me and it would drive away her own rest. I respected her for at last using a sensible form of argument, but for the moment I did not relent. When she had gone, however, I managed by judicious shifting of the movable furniture to find room for the mattress along the wall with my head behind the door. I rang my bell, the night wardress appeared. Peremptory fashion, I sent her with an invitation to the superintendent to come again if she had not yet gone to bed. The wardress positively laughed at my effrontery, but evidently delivered my message, for in a few minutes my friend the superintendent returned. She tried to look severe, but a broad grin enveloped her face when she saw my new contrivance. “However much I jump about now, I can’t hurt myself. Will you be able to sleep all right?” I asked. She said she would try, and left me.

My continued appeals to the authorities to treat me as they did my fellow-prisoners and not keep me in hospital now that I was in normal health, having proved unavailing, I entered upon the last phase of my strike. I had decided to write the words “Votes for Women” on my body, scratching it in my skin with a needle, beginning over the heart and ending it on my face. I proposed to show the first half of the inscription to the doctors, telling them that as I knew how much appearances were respected by officials, I thought it well to warn them that the last letter and a full stop would come upon my cheek, and be still quite fresh and visible on the day of my release. My difficulty was to find suitable tools. My skin proved much tougher than I had expected and the small needle supplied to me for sewing purposes was quite inadequate. I procured another and stronger one for darning my stockings, but neither of them produced the required result. I thought of a hairpin but had only three left of these precious articles and could not make up my mind to spare one. I had the good luck, however, while exercising, to find one, the black enamel of which was already partially worn off. I cleaned and polished it with a stone under my cloak as I walked the round. The next morning before breakfast I set to work in real earnest and, using each of these implements in turn, I succeeded in producing a very fine V just over my heart. This was the work of fully twenty minutes, and in my zeal I made a deeper impression than I had intended. The scratch bled to a certain extent. I had no wish for a blood-poisoning sequel, and, fearing the contact with the coarse prison clothes, when the wardress came to fetch me for breakfast I asked her for a small piece of lint and plaster. On a previous occasion I had been allowed these without further inquiry, when the frosty weather, cold water, and lack of gloves had produced a sore on my hand. But this time the superintendent herself appeared and refused to produce the dressing without hearing for what purpose it was required. I was anxious to proceed further with my inscription before letting the authorities know of it, fearing that it was not yet sufficient to be imposing and that all tools might be taken from me. However, thanks to our previous conversations, my friend was suspicious. She ordered me to show the scratch. She looked very much startled on seeing it and asked how it had happened. I explained. She at first did not know how to take it, but evidently did not think it a laughing matter, to my great relief, for I hoped this meant the misdeed was grave enough to suggest to the authorities that I was becoming an awkward customer in hospital. She was restrained in manner, but looked rather angry as she solemnly applied a large piece of lint and many plasterings which, to my delight, gave the scratch a quite imposing look, as if half my chest had been hacked open. So that no blame should fall on her, I gave her all the information for which she asked and the incriminating tools were gathered together as if they had been witnesses in a detective case. After breakfast I was summoned into the presence of the Governor and given a scolding, but no sentence of punishment was passed and I remained in doubt as to whether my evil deed had been sufficiently impressive. Later on I was taken down to the Senior Medical Officer. Scolding was not in his line and the official requirements of the occasion were evidently effortful to him, but his laborious sermon of reproofs was all the more punitive on that account. As he had invariably been kind to me and civil to all other prisoners, I was sorry to have to vex him. I reminded him of the warning I had previously given and how often I had patiently renewed my request in a reasonable way before having recourse to these stronger measures. Of course he had to pretend that he saw not the remotest connection between his refusal to let me leave hospital and my “outrageous” conduct of the morning. He and the ward superintendent, who ushered me into his presence and exposed the scratched “V” for his inspection, were evidently much put out. I felt all a craftsman’s satisfaction in my job. The V was very clearly and evenly printed in spite of the varying material of its background, a rib bone forming an awkward bump. As I pointed out to the doctor, it had been placed exactly over the heart, and visibly recorded the pulsation of that organ as clearly as a watch hand, so that he no longer need be put to the trouble of the stethoscope. I also explained how useful the mark would be at the inquest, to which he had alluded, when they wanted quickly to extract the heart in proof that its “serious disease” was responsible for my demise and not the prison regimen. But he was not in a mood for chaff and became more and more distraught as to how to deal with the situation. At last he hit on a brilliant idea and said, “If you go on like this we shall have to dismiss you from the prison altogether.” I could have congratulated him with both hands for this really understanding remark. It was obvious that such a sentence wouldn’t at all meet with my aims, and would secure my return to good behaviour if anything could. He had effectively checkmated me, at any rate for the moment. I promptly capitulated and capped this suggestion by saying: “I think I had better be sent back to the general ward; I seem to give a lot of extra trouble in the separate cell.” The superintendent wardress exclaimed with gusto, “Yes, you do,” and the doctor jumped at the suggestion. As there were now only ten days before our release I had decided to push through my efforts to get to the cells regardless of all else, but I was exceedingly anxious about the patient with the injured leg. Her release was due, with other members of the Freedom League, the next day (Wednesday, March 17). I had a feeling that I could to a certain degree watch over her welfare and was to this extent glad of the opportunity to return to the hospital. While waiting for the hospital gate to be unlocked a small gang of ordinary prisoners had for some reason or another congregated in the passage and blocked the way. My friend, the superintendent, took the opportunity to give me a severe scolding in their presence. Now that the extent of my criminality had been duly notified and received, as it were, official recognition, her pent up indignation let fly and she gave me a regular dressing down. She did not, of course, allude to the nature of my crime; this was left to the imagination of the onlookers, but, as on all other occasions of the kind that I can recall, the sympathy of prisoners turns automatically to a fellow-prisoner, not to the officials. Intercourse by means of speech being forbidden, the language of the eyes becomes perfected. Inquiry, interest, fellow-feeling, loyalty, encouragement, sympathy of the best, all these emotions are expressed in prisoners’ eyes in a way that outbids the meaning of words and the intonations of the voice. I respected this superintendent as before, because of the impartiality with which she treated me, but this example of public reproof before other prisoners was typical of the way this sort of prison discipline defeats its own ends.

Mrs. Macdonald was still suffering acutely. She had been taken out of the ward for the injury to be photographed by X-rays. She was carried up and down the stairs, as before, in a chair with no rest for the feet. She had been told that the photographs had not been distinct and left them “none the wiser,” but “Depend upon it,” said the doctor, “you had better keep moving about as much as you can.” The prison authorities recognised that she was unfit to travel by rail. As she had no home in London and could not afford to rent rooms, they proposed sending her to a hospital. For various reasons, the thought of an ordinary public hospital was extremely repellent to her. The prison officials now discussed the matter with her and seemed to show a certain amount of interest and even kindness towards her.

My wound being the nominal ground on which I had been returned to hospital, it had to be treated with official respect. The ward superintendent told me she would come and inspect it the last thing before she went to bed herself. I looked forward to this opportunity of pacifying her displeasure with me, but when she came she was already in her most benignant mood. My chief concern was to inquire her view as to my chances of ever being sent to the other side. “They’ll never send you out of hospital, nothing you can do will make any difference, so what’s the use of going on trying?” In some mysterious way this despairing speech of hers put new mettle into me, and I determined I would renew my attempts. To reassure her with regard to my villainous intentions I told her that the doctor had hit on a really effective deterrent by threatening to turn me out of prison. “That’s what you deserve,” she said, severely, but with something of a wink. “So you think,” I retorted.

The hospital atmosphere soon drew my thoughts away from my strike and its object. Several of the patients were less restless than when I had last been amongst them. The night wardress with the hacking cough had been changed. The sick patients had agreed to make no complaints for fear they should get her into trouble or perhaps be given a more disagreeable wardress in her place. But when our numbers had been increased by a patient who was in fairly vigorous health but for the most painful neuritis in her arm, she found the continuous disturbance of her all too precious sleep intolerable and she reported the wardress’s cough to the doctor. We were then all questioned and had to admit the fact, whereupon we were given another night wardress. This one, as had been feared, was more rigid in her ways and interpreted the absurdly inhuman prison regulations literally. For instance, one night a patient who was quite incapable of moving out of bed had been given medicine which disturbed her during the night. The wardress at first refused to wait upon her, but after reluctantly consenting to do this, she then refused to empty the slops. A fellow-prisoner volunteered to do this, but was not allowed. At last, after putting the patient to much distress, the wardress did the work. On hearing of this the next morning I was indignant and reported the matter to the ward superintendent. She answered, “The officer was quite within her rights. She is not a nurse and it is no part of her duty to wait on the patients. She was quite right, too, not to allow the other patients to do it.” I expostulated as to the brutality of putting a patient who was really ill to such distress and on the unwholesomeness of having slops in the ward all night. “The only thing that can be done in such a case,” she replied, “would be to ring the night bell for me.” As this woman was on her feet for sixteen hours, from six in the morning to ten at night, the patients would be most reluctant to disturb her, apart from the fact that they would never dream of this being the right thing to do unless they had been specially informed of the regulation.

I found that my poor friend of the injured leg was suffering more than ever. I did my best to ease her pain by rubbing and trying to lift the cruel pressure from the disturbed bones. The wardress did not interfere with me as I had rather expected she would, but the next morning she said, “I must report you for being out of bed half the night.” When the doctor came on his rounds he had, I suppose, received the “report,” for he shook his head at me reprovingly but with a kind look as if he at least understood the motive of my most recent crime. I felt very despondent all day. The members of the Freedom League were released that morning, all except Mrs. Duval, who had to serve a longer sentence, and Mrs. Macdonald, as the authorities had not yet decided what was to happen to her on release.