“For the doctor.” I sat still. She repeated, “Do you hear me? Go in and get your examination!”
I resented this attitude with every fiber of my being and replied, “I’m not being examined.”
“Ho, you’re not? You’re one of the fighting kind, are you? Well, we’ll soon fix you, young lady!”
She swung her heavy, massive frame out the door, leaving me wondering, but quivering with excited determination. I was not sure what would happen to me. Within five minutes, however, she came back with an entirely different manner and tone. “Oh, you’re Mrs. Sanger. It’s all right. Come this way, please.”
The next morning I was given a cup of bitter, turbid, lukewarm coffee, and then placed inside the van, which set off for the Workhouse. There all my possessions were taken from me. A long wait. The men were sent somewhere and the women somewhere else, I did not know where. I just sat. After what seemed hours my belongings were returned and a woman in coat and hat told me to follow her. I did. A man added himself to our party, and the three of us climbed into another van. We were driven some distance down the Island, then put into a boat and ferried over to New York. I had no idea where we were going. I asked but could elicit no answer.
We took a street car and after various transfers I caught sight of a Loose-Wiles biscuit sign. But it did not help me because I had not seen it before; the section was unfamiliar to me. In early afternoon we reached the Queens County Penitentiary, Long Island City. Evidently the Workhouse authorities had had enough of the Higgins family and wanted no more responsibility of this nature.
Warden Joseph McCann, who met me, was a jovial young Irishman who had risen from the police ranks. “Have you had any lunch?” he asked. The cause of his solicitude emerged when he inquired anxiously whether I intended to go on a hunger strike. Remembering my morning cup of coffee, I replied, “Not unless your food is too bad.” He introduced Mrs. Sullivan, the motherly matron.
I answered the usual interrogatory about where I was born, how old I was, etc., etc. When the clerk came to “What religion?” I replied, “Humanity.” He had never heard of this form of belief, and rephrased the question. “Well, what church do you go to?”
“None.”
He looked at me in sharp surprise. All inmates of the penitentiary went to church; ninety-eight percent in my corridor had been reared as Catholics.