Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences

by Lady Constance Lytton

CHAPTER XIV
THE HOME OFFICE

We got into the train for London and I had a long sleep. During the last part of the journey my sister, Emily Lutyens, told how she had heard of me in Walton Gaol. She had a telephone message forwarded to her on Saturday night, January 15, from the Press Association. It was addressed to my eldest brother, who was abroad, saying it was rumoured that I was imprisoned in Liverpool—was it true? She rang up our friend, Mr. Arthur Chapman, who after an infinity of trouble got into communication with Mr. Thompson, one of the Prison Commissioners from the Home Office. In answering the telephone, he welcomed Mr. Chapman gleefully, as having news they had wanted much. “There is a prisoner at Walton Gaol, Liverpool,” he said, “whom they have for some days suspected of being other than her declaration. We have wanted to release her, but have not been able to find out who her people were.” This was a most extraordinary thing for a Home Office official to say. Why had they not released me to the W.S.P.U. organiser in Liverpool, or asked me with whom they should communicate? And why were they more anxious to set me free than the other Suffragettes? They had signed an order for my release. The reason given was loss of weight; they did not mention my heart, since they knew nothing about it! Mr. Thompson recommended that my sister should telephone to the doctor at Walton and he would arrange with the Governor to release me. With this news Mr. Chapman went to my sister Emily, who was dining out. They rang up Dr. Price, of Walton, and after communicating with him my sister felt almost sure the prisoner was myself. Without a moment’s hesitation, and dressed just as she was, she caught the midnight train to Liverpool, where she arrived at about six in the morning. She reached the doctor’s house at about seven and still was uncertain whether she would find me in the prison. Dr. Price, after some talk, took her to the Governor’s house. The Governor’s wife was very kind at that early hour and gave her breakfast. She said she thought it was inhuman to dress the prisoners in such frightfully ugly clothes, she felt only horror when she looked at them; she would have different clothing for them if she had anything to do with it.

Dr. Price told my sister that he had written the report of me to the Home Office. “I said she was spare, very spare, and that she had a nose—I did not say aquiline, but of a somewhat Wellingtonian bend.” We roared with laughter at this description of me.

The following is my sister’s statement of a conversation which she had with the doctor on arriving at Walton: “After a preliminary conversation with Dr. Price in regard to what had taken place in connection with our telephonic communication with him the previous night, I asked him whether he could tell me anything with regard to my sister’s behaviour in gaol and the treatment she had been obliged to undergo. In reply, he stated that she had fasted for four days, that he had begged her to take her food, and explained that if she refused he would be obliged to forcibly feed her. As she had persisted in her refusal, he had been obliged to feed her through the mouth up to the date of her release, with the exception of one meal, which she took of her own accord on Saturday morning. He further stated that, unlike some other Suffragettes, she had shown no violence beyond refusing to take her food, but that, in all his experience, he had never seen such a bad case of forcible feeding. I asked him what he meant by a ‘bad case,’ and he said ‘She was practically asphyxiated every time.’ I then told him that the medical officers at Holloway and Newcastle reported to us that my sister was suffering from serious valvular disease of the heart, and I asked him if his examination had led him to the same conclusion. He replied ‘Certainly not. My subordinate’ (or some such word), ‘who is a very clever doctor, thoroughly examined her heart and found no trace of disease whatever,’ and I need hardly say that this was a great relief to my mind, as the reports of the other prison doctors had caused us so much anxiety. He further stated that, in spite of the forcible feeding, my sister had lost weight at the rate of 2 lbs. a day, and that, consequently, he had been obliged to advise her being released.

“Dr. Price several times repeated how much my sister had suffered from the treatment, and, after I had told him about her heart, said that it might possibly have been due to her heart condition, though he had not been able to detect it.”

My sister took me to their house in Bloomsbury Square, which we reached at about 8.30 p.m. There was our friend, Mr. Chapman, to whom I gave a brief account of my imprisonment. He went off with it the next day to the Home Office Prison Department, and returned with the news that the officials would be grateful to me if I would make a statement on paper, whereupon they would have it investigated. There were reasons why they would be very glad to have an open inquiry at Walton Gaol.

All that night I woke off and on with cold, and also with terror at the forcible feeding. My sister was most kind to me; she reheated my hot-bottles and at last came and slept with me. I stayed in bed the next morning (Monday, January 24). In the afternoon I saw some of my friends—Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Christabel Pankhurst. Some days after, when she returned to London, I saw Mrs. Pankhurst. They were all of them content with what I had done and the way I had done it. This was a most tremendous joy and relief to me.

I managed to write a letter to the Times and an article for Votes for Women. I could only do everything so slowly that I had not finished these until eight o’clock the next morning, after writing all night. I stayed in bed the whole of that day, Tuesday. On Wednesday and Thursday (26th and 27th) I stayed in bed in the morning, but led a more or less normal life after. These days I could hardly sit in a chair, because my emaciated condition rendered it very painful; I ate my meals, very often, kneeling down at the table on a cushion.

On Tuesday, January 25, I wrote to Mr. Gladstone, the Home Secretary, to explain that it was not as the newspapers said, to play a practical joke upon him, that I had gone to prison in disguise. It was because of the totally different category of treatment meted out to one set of people from another, and the object of my disguise was to expose this for the sake of bringing such a state of things to an end.