Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences

by Lady Constance Lytton

After, I think, the sixth meal, I complained to the doctor that the processes of digestion were absolutely stagnant. I suggested to him that he should leave out one meal, with a view to allowing the natural forces of the body to readjust themselves, unhampered by the kind of paralysing cramp and arresting of the natural functions which resulted from fear. I also suggested that instead of brandy—he had given me another meal of bovril and brandy—fruit juice or the water in which a pear or apple had been stewed should be added to my food. He did not answer me, but turned to the head assistant, whom he had already assured me was a fully-trained nurse, and in a half-insolent, half-contemptuous tone of voice, said: “Do you understand her? I don’t. Does she mean that she is constipated? If so, you see about it.” Very likely I had spoken unintelligibly. I seldom had interviewed a doctor on my own behalf, and am not versed in their technical language. Whenever I spoke to this doctor it was either immediately before or after the feeding, so that my nerves were unstrung. Moreover, prisoners are made to feel in the presence of nearly every prison official that they are the scum of the earth, suspected of deceit, prejudged and found wanting; this has a paralysing effect on a prisoner’s powers of expression. The chief assistant was the woman who took me daily to the weighing machine. She was kind and refined in her ways. I explained to her what I wanted, I reminded her several times about this; once I spoke again to the doctor of it, but I was never given either a drug, or, so far as I know, the fruit juice in my food.

I asked the doctor if a smaller tube could not be used for the feeding. He answered, “If I fed you through the nose it would be with a smaller tube.” I suggested that the smaller tube should be used through the mouth, if he thought that process the easiest. He said, “Well, that might be,” but the tube was never changed to a smaller one. As to my suggestion about omitting a meal, he also seemed to think it plausible, but he promised nothing, and fed me in the evening, saying that I had again lost weight, so that he could not leave me without food. Of course, this quite ignored my argument that until I began to keep down the food I could not profit by it or gain in weight.

My limbs, hands and feet, were stiff with cold at all times. I was allowed flannel underclothes and an extra blanket. In spite of continued reproof from the wardresses I kept on my nightdress in the day time, the only under-garment with long sleeves, and I passed the night in all my day-clothes. At last I was able to do this without comment from the authorities. They also, as a great favour, allowed me yet another blanket when I asked for it after some days; I then had three. I was allowed to keep the cape, usually only for out-door use, in my cell. But it was like trying to warm a stone by clothing it. Hot water was allowed in a pail once a day after the evening feeding.

Most of my friends had been fed by the doctor standing at the back of the patient, whereas this doctor adjusted the tube and fed me from the front, a process which he carried out by sitting across my knees. By this time I could not feel my legs and arms, except just by the joints where I felt the pain of the cold. At night I used to get up and walk from time to time to prevent them from becoming useless. But on Thursday night, my sixth in prison, I fell really asleep and when I awoke I had an unexpected feeling of ease and freedom from pain or fear. I was unconscious of my nearly rigid limbs, the beat of my heart was scarcely perceptible; I supposed I had only a little while to live. The prospect of release was inexpressibly welcome. Presently I heard, as distinctly as if the wall of my cell had a mouth and had spoken, the words which Mrs. Leigh has made glorious in connection with our cause: “No surrender.” They beat upon my brain with a new meaning; not only to a repressive Government, not only to heedless laws and their attendant punishments, but to the temptations of our inabilities, no surrender. What was I about, to abdicate my job in this ease-loving way? I rubbed the painful life back into my feet, hands and limbs, and forced myself to walk up and down my cell. Pictures succeeded each other rapidly in my mind of our fellow-prisoners in the “Black Maria,” of all undefended women, of children’s blighted lives, of down-trodden men and women, undeveloped or ill of body or mind, whose fate women, through their abject surrender of the woman’s part in the world’s jurisdiction, must to a certain extent have laid at their door. How misplaced, unrighteous and unwomanly did non-resistance appear to me then. With every throb of my returning pulses I seemed to feel the rhythm of the world’s soul calling to us women to uncramp our powers from the thraldom of long disuse. My whole being responded and I yearned to hand on the message as I myself had in spirit received it—“Women, you are wanted. Women, as women, because you are women, come out in all your womanliness, and whether or not victory is for your day, at least each one of you make sure that the one course impossible to you is surrender of your share in the struggle.” To you, dear, faithful Suffragettes at heart, whatever the handcuffs of circumstance which may limit your powers of visible service, I pass on this message.

I had been told that the Visiting Magistrates were due to come to the prison on Friday (January 21), and that my offences would be judged by them. On Wednesday morning I asked if I could be allowed to go to chapel, as on Thursday, probably, I should move with difficulty and after that I would not have a chance, as they would have me put in irons for breaking the glass of my gas-jet—they had put my friends in irons for less than that. The wardress seemed to think this improbable, but she gave her consent to my going to chapel. That morning at 10 o’clock, I was taken downstairs and put in a long row of waiting prisoners, we were close enough to be touching each other, all perfectly silent. They changed me about, putting me in a different place each time, for no apparent reason. We had waited about a quarter of an hour, when the order came to move along, and we went through several buildings to the chapel. The men, who were much the most numerous, were seated below, the women in a gallery above with a screen of wood jutting out, so that nothing could be seen by one of the other. I was shunted several times from my place, and at last was put in a row by myself. I looked in vain for any of my companions, they were not there. The service was short and with several hymns, in which, as in Holloway, the prisoners joined heartily. Then the Chaplain got up into the pulpit and preached a sermon with a great deal of energy. He told of a wreck, evidently a quite recent one, in which the lifeboat men had behaved splendidly. Many were saved, and they gave thanks to God and to the lifeboat men. Then he went on to describe how we were born, helpless and ignorant, in the world. As we thought of it, we must give thanks to God. I listened with interest, but nothing further was said. There was apparently no mother to thank, who through nine months had tended the little one in her body, and through pain, sometimes excruciating, brought it to birth. These were entirely forgotten. Was it because the women were “as bad as bad can be”?

The next day, Thursday, January 20, I asked if I could go out. The longing for more air than I could get in the cell was intense, though the window of this one opened just enough to let in some air. I found that I could walk all right, although it seemed as if my legs were painful things attached to my body. The wardress told me I might go that afternoon. As I was taken out of my cell that morning to be weighed, I passed a little girl prisoner. She was not more than a child. For aught I knew she may have been taken straight from the life of the streets the night before, but she had at that moment the face of an angel, and she looked down on me from the steps that she was cleaning above with a smile which you can never see out of prison. Her whole face seemed lit up with it and it touched my very soul. I never saw her again, but I felt that all my resentment and anger were gone. In a way my physical courage was no greater than before, but at least I should go on; I knew that I should last out.

In the afternoon the wardress came to let me go out. I saw none of my companions on the way, and I was put in an exercise yard quite alone. A pain in my side had by this time grown acutely. I rested against the wall, but nothing did it any good. The sight of the grey, frosty sky and the feel of air were a delight, but I could not bear the cold nor hold myself up, and after a little while I asked to come in.

The next day, Friday, January 21, as I was being fed—the wardresses had given up holding me—the pain of the tube in my body was more than I could bear; I seized hold of it and pulled it up. The wardresses reproved me for interfering, but they did not put the tube in again; the doctor said nothing. I was overwhelmed with the horror of the process, and for the first time I was convulsed with sobs. The doctor was kind to me. I said that I only cried from having no strength to resist, but that I meant to live out my sentence if I could.

This was the day the Visiting Magistrates were due. Later in the morning they came to my cell with the Governor, who said, “Have you any complaint? If only about the forcible feeding, you will have the opportunity later on in my room; don’t talk of that now.” I answered, “I have complaints to make not only about being fed by force, but as to the manner in which it was done.” He said, “Your opportunity for that also will come later on.” I think it was now, in the presence of the Visiting Magistrates, that I said to the Governor, “I shall be saying several things when I am out of prison, and it seems to me more fair and square to tell you of them now while I am still in your hands, and you can refute them if you like.” He allowed me to proceed, so I went on: “About the Governor, I shall say that while he was shocked at the great wickedness of breaking glass as a protest against forcible feeding, he sanctioned and approved of the violence and brutality of the forcible feeding itself.” He almost smiled, and replied hastily that he had never said anything of the kind. I began to ask which part of my statement he denied—his condemnation of glass-breaking or approval of the forced feeding, but he stopped me and would not allow any further remarks on that point.

Soon afterwards, when summoned before the Magistrates in the Governor’s room, I was allowed, in replying to the charge of glass-breaking, to which I pleaded guilty, to make my protest against the forcible feeding. I said I had been unable to ascertain on whose authority it was done; if by the order of an individual it seemed to me cruel and abominable, but if by order of the departmental authority, and in the name of law, I thought it much worse; then it was sheer barbarism, for under cover of such an order, kindly and well-meaning subordinates were made to assist, for the sake of duty, in the performance of many things which they would never tolerate under different circumstances. As a protest, I owned a feeble one, against this barbarism I had actually been guilty of defacing the walls of my cell with inscriptions and of breaking a valuable piece of glass. The latter part of my remarks, I think, were scarcely heard, for the Magistrates had begun to interrupt me. My breath gave out; I looked round at the Magistrates, at the Governor, at the Matron. They had ordinary faces, neither kind nor unkind; they were displeased with what I said, they looked angry—that was all. Then I asked if I might now lodge my complaint against various points as to the manner in which I had been forcibly fed. The Governor replied, “No, not now. You will have another opportunity for that later on.” After a lengthy and severe reprimand for my prison offences and condemnatory remarks on the subject of the behaviour of Suffragettes outside, the Magistrates waived the matter of the wall inscriptions as having been already dealt with by the Governor, and with regard to the broken glass they deferred judgment sine die.