In December I went to speak at Glasgow, and Dr. Marion Gilchrist listened to my heart. This was her verdict: “I have examined Lady Constance Lytton’s heart and find she has a chronic valvular lesion, but it is acting well in spite of the fact that she has just undergone great exertion.” She said it was easily understood why I had been let out of Newcastle Prison.
Jane Warton
CHAPTER XII
JANE WARTON
“Under a Government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man (or woman) is also a prison.”
I was sent to Liverpool and Manchester to join in working an Anti-Government campaign during a General Election in January, 1910. Just before I went, there came the news of the barbarous ill-treatment of Miss Selina Martin and Miss Leslie Hall, while on remand in Walton Gaol. They had been refused bail, and, while awaiting their trial, their friends were not allowed to communicate with them. This is contrary to law and precedent for prisoners on remand. As a protest they had started a hunger-strike. They were fed by force, in answer to which they broke the windows of their cells. They were put in irons for days and nights together, and one of them was frog-marched in the most brutal fashion to and from the room where the forcible feeding was performed. These facts they made known to their friends at the police court on the day of their trial.
I heard, too, of another prisoner in Liverpool, Miss Bertha Brewster, who had been re-arrested after her release from prison, and charged with breaking the windows of her prison cell, which she had done as a protest against being fed by force. She had been punished for this offence while in prison. She did not respond to the summons, and when arrested on a warrant, three and a half months later, she was sentenced to six weeks’ hard labour for this offence.
I felt a great wish to be in Liverpool, if possible, to get public opinion in that town to protest against such treatment of women political prisoners. If I failed in this, I determined myself to share the fate of these women.