Imprisoned suffragettes
The women who endured torture and squalor for the right to vote.
Amanda Uren
1908-1917
I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears. - Emmeline Pankhurst
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, suffragettes on both sides of the Atlantic endured many hardships during their campaign for women's right to vote.In Britain the campaign involved direct action, including breaking windows and other acts of vandalism. Most suffragettes refused to pay any fines levied, and were sentenced to prison terms. From 1900 to the beginning of World War I, approximately 1,000 were imprisoned.Imprisoned suffragettes went on hunger strikes for their cause. The government responded first by releasing strikers to avoid liability for any deaths, then by brutally force-feeding them.
We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half. - Emmeline Pankhurst
In the United States, police were more restrained. But in 1917 women called the Silent Sentinels began picketing the White House, using banners to make their point. Over 200 were arrested, with many sent to the notorious Occoquan workhouse. Conditions were squalid, prison dress uncomfortable, and the food inedible. Some went on hunger strike and were force fed with raw eggs in milk, which they swiftly vomited up.In one "Night of Terror,” guards beat and tortured 33 suffragette prisoners. One was beaten and left chained to the prison bars overnight with her arms above her head. When the story reached the newspapers, it served to increase support for the suffragette movement. In 1918, a federal judge overturned the convictions of the Silent Sentinels, ruling that their peaceful picketing outside the White House was political speech protected under the First Amendment.
In all my years of criminal practice...I have never seen prisoners so badly treated, either before or after conviction. - Sen. J. Hamilton Lewis
