Excerpt from Iron-Jawed Angels

From Chapter Seven, "Jailbirds"

In the summer of 1917, the government of President Woodrow Wilson began to arrest members of the National Woman’s Party for demonstrating for the right to vote. In all, 168 women were arrested and jailed between 1917 and 1919.

The extraordinary experience of American women reformers, many from sheltered, prosperous backgrounds, suffering imprisonment for picketing the White House, disillusioned and radicalized them. Many of them saw life in prison as a microcosm, in extreme form, of women’s status in society. They experienced utter powerlessness in prison, and sometimes were violently attacked by male authorities. In jail, the militant suffragists became painfully aware of their common vulnerability as women, through the reactions of not just those authorities, but friends, family and employers. They also saw even more clearly the injustice of that powerlessness and vulnerability, amplified by a new knowledge of the condition of their fellow women, particularly black women, prisoners. It was at the height of militancy, when demonstrators were being beaten and jailed, that barriers between women of different classes and backgrounds, who may have had conflict between 1913 and 1916, were broken down. A sort of sisterhood of struggle developed. United against a common male enemy, other sorts of divisions seemed unimportant, at least for the duration, and for some, for much longer. Suffrage "jailbirds" left prison with radical, egalitarian feminist beliefs enhanced, certain that militancy and civil disobedience remained women’s only avenues to winning the vote.

It was a great shock for Woman’s Party suffragists to be found guilty of criminal conduct. Their sojourns in the filthy District of Columbia jail, the infamous Occuquan Workhouse, and the condemned prison workhouse (also in Washington) built over a sewer, were brutal and devastating. Sixty day sentences were meted out in 1917, but in 1918 and 1919 the NWP protesters would receive short sentences of up to 15 days, first for holding public meetings without a permit and climbing on a public statue, and then for building fires. In February 1919, the last group of 16 prisoners would be sentenced to eight days at Boston’s Charles Street jail. It is true that fellow dissenters were treated very harshly and given long sentences under the Espionage Act, but the District of Columbia Court of appeals (in March of 1918) decided that the women arrested in 1917, who had served several months, had been tried and imprisoned completely illegally, under no law at all. The NWP demonstrators had been imprisoned in a wave of war hysteria, and their treatment was exacerbated by the sexist hostility the "iron-jawed angels" provoked by being militant and aggressive.

The 168 suffrage militants who served jail sentences in 1917, 1918 and 1919 . . .included a large number of NWP leaders and organizers; and they would be joined by a group of women from richly varied backgrounds, recruited to demonstrate for women’s rights. The notion that the NWP, during suffrage militancy, was just an "elite," conservative, upper to middle class organization is simply untrue. The jailed "recruits" were the largest group of prisoners—88 women—but also represent the smallest proportion of their total number, since probably close to 2,000 women picketed [the White House]. They are a true cross-section, showing the wide variety of women involved, women . . . willing to be jailed. Recruited pickets were drawn from every region of the United States, often asked to specifically represent their state, their college or profession, or called upon to increase numbers on certain symbolic holidays. Headquarters sent form letters out to all the NWP districts to encourage members to picket, but Washington would also be flooded with volunteers, from women tourist bystanders to union women journeying to the capitol to stand "in sisterhood" with the NWP . . . .

Recruited pickets of 1917 to 1919 represented militant feminists of all stripes. Political leftists like Anna Gwinter, Ernestine Hara or Louise Bryant, were representative of recruits who picketed for women’s rights as a radical, civil liberties, cause. The socialist recruits believed that class differences should be overcome, at least temporarily, because of the importance of this militant feminist struggle. Anna Gwinter of the Women’s Waistmaker’s Union, had been with the woman’s movement for eight years. She said she went to prison in 1917 to ‘help women get their rights." While there, she refused to scrub toilets when ordered to by the matrons, because she said she had to work when she got out and could not afford to "get any of the awful diseases." . . . .

The militants shared jail’s drudgery, oppression and humiliation; as well as the problems jail caused for families, jobs and reputation. The women were constantly made aware they were indeed prisoners. The longest prison sentences were given in 1917 and spent in the Occuquan Workhouse [in Virginia, near Washington DC], the fiefdom of Superintendent Raymond Whittaker. According to [Woman’s Party] organizer Kathryn Lincoln, Whittaker was exceedingly unpleasant: "We all know instinctively who he is. He has stiff white hair, blazing little eyes, and a dull purple birthmark on the side of his face. A wave of animosity sweeps the group when we discover his attitude, which is that of the bully." . . . Mary Nolan, in her 70s, testified that Whittaker, angered she would not give her name or do prison work, would not let her go to the bathroom when she was hospitalized. Whittaker threatened Minnie Quay with the "whipping post," and Lucy Burns with a strait jacket. . . The man in charge of the prison took the lead in trying to terrorize the women into submission. . . .

Dorothy Bartlett testified that "diseased women" shared water with the suffragists. Bartlett was from Putnam, Connecticut, the leader of the State Grange; and on the State "work committee" for the war [WWI] effort, involved in food production, Liberty Loans and the Red Cross. Bartlett said they had no fresh air and no heat (in November), were given only bread and water as punishment, and could have no counsel or mail. She finally got milk and toast through her doctor’s orders. Scientist Agnes Meara Chase’s doctor tried to visit her after she was jailed, since she had just been very ill, but the authorities would not let him in. Ada Davenport Kendall testified that she was put on bread and water in solitary for protesting being given floors to scrub after days with no food. Whittaker called her protests "impudent." In her isolation cell she was given an open pail for a toilet, with no new water for four days. She did have some company: large rats were the women’s constant companions. Gladys Greiner testified she was never allowed to change clothing in a month, her bed was black with bedbugs, and the rat fights kept her awake. . . .

The militant women became more aware of their lack of power and liberty under male governance in prison, but the suffragists also came to realize their common lack of freedom through constraints and demands imposed by their families. Agnes Morey once bemoaned the fact that she was not free to act without consulting her husband; women had "to consider other people who think they can’t get along without us, which is absurd." . . . Florence Whitehouse wrote [Woman’s Party leader] Alice Paul, "I want to go and help so much but Mr. Whitehouse is very much opposed to it and I could not go without deeply hurting him, so I must give it up." Family reactions were very difficult for the prisoners. Perhaps the worst problem area was that of reputation. According to Ernestine Hara Kettler, "Jails had a very bad reputation for anyone, especially for women. If you were a jailbird, you were a fallen woman." . . . [Amelia] Walker, a Quaker NWP officer from Baltimore, wanted "damages" [from the government], saying she lost many friends because of her status as "jailbird." . . . .

Sarah Colvin’s husband, afraid her activities would hurt his career (as a surgeon), very much disapproved of her protesting for her "principles." She said they discussed it once and never again. Dr. John Rogers, a "delicate husband," got "ulcers of the stomach" over "this prison business"; prompting Elizabeth Selden Rogers to consider being arrested as "Eliza White" to protect his reputation. A very high price was paid by Effie Boutwell Main, Topeka reformer turned antiwar and suffrage activist. Her husband "filed suit for a divorce on account of the ‘disgrace’ I had brought upon his name on account of former demonstrations." Hazel Hunkins had a half-brother who felt similarly. He put an ad in the Billings (Montana) Gazette that said his sister "had been deluded by people in Washington" and "was not that kind of girl. ". . . It was difficult enough to suffer prison’s indignities, but to then suffer the stigma of having been there was doubly cruel. . . .

All families did not oppose or interfere with the militants’ activities. According to Rebecca Hourwich Reyher, husbands and families were really very supportive considering that the problem of a wife in jail, a cause of considerable anguish, was "a first" for them. Reyher herself had recently married, and some of the other prisoners were also newlyweds: [Woman’s Party] organizers husbands, "in every instance suffragists," were already used to rarely seeing their wives. One of them said," It’s got to be love at first sight, for you’re not likely to get a second." Rebecca Winsor Evans’ husband, Edmond C. Evans, became, according to his wife, a "red-hot" suffragist after cooking his own meals while she was in jail. When asked if he paid his wife’s fine [to get her out], Gilson Gardner said his wife was "an absolutely free woman. I won’t interfere with her. This is her job, and she is going through with it with a great deal of courage." . . . .

Amid hostility from much of the public, the NWP continued to draw staunch support from "laboring women." Sometimes those laboring women sacrificed a great deal in joining with the NWP to make a feminist protest. In January 1919, led by Elsie Vervane. . . the Woman Machinists Union of Bridgeport . . . came to Washington to protest as women and as workers. Three of them would lose their jobs for coming. . . . In February Elsie Vervane was unable to find factory work, writing [NWP leader] Lucy Burns that she had been speaking for suffrage, but with no work "felt quite hard up." As for the government, she said, "I hope they will get theirs for it sometime." . . . Ruth Scott also lost her job for going to the [Washington] protests, but said, "It didn’t worry me at all" because there was no work at home anyway. She wrote Burns that her mother, "some scrapper," would have come, too, if strong enough, and she "talks suffrage to death" with everyone. When Scott went to Washington her landlady "was wild" and put her things out on the street. She said her friends there tried "to get her goat," but she only laughed at them and said she was "doing their bit" while they stayed home. They "got wild" over her daughter’s "Votes for Women" button, but Scott shurgged it off, saying her girl was "mama’s little suff." She wrote Burns to say what a wonderful time she had had there, including jail, and that she missed them all. She particularly enjoyed going for "a delightful drive" in Mrs. [Elizabeth] Kent’s automobile. . . . Working women were jailed alongside the "prominent"; all were joined in a woman’s fight for rights. . . . .

Jail created a sisterhood. The women were united in anger and disbelief at the government; but also in exhilaration that they were fighting an important feminist battle. . . . Lucy Burns suffered beatings for insisting on calling out the names of other prisoners to see how they were. . . . Avaiator "Mrs. L.H." Hornsby tried mightily to get a guard off Dorothy Day. Anna Kelton Wiley could have been pardoned but chose to go to jail so Elizabeth McShane would not have to go alone. . . . Although the New York Times had reported that the suffragists resented being housed with "colored women," the NWP always denied that, saying they were placed with black women "as an insult" but that the black women were kind and sympathetic to them. . . . Beulah Amidon . . .remember[ed] "the dear funny, sickening little kindnesses prisoners showed me—for it was penalty of solitary for them if they were seen talking to me. . . Especially the Negroes are good to us." . . . Mary Winsor wrote to NWP lawyer Dudley Field Malone to help a black girl who was whipped by Whittaker. . . . . A black prostitute told Doris Stevens she was helpless, constantly picked up by the police. She hoped they got the vote "and fix SOMETHINGS for women." Stevens said she came out of prison "hot with indignation." . . . Prison served to point to the need for feminist agitation, to help all women, as it underscored the helplessness of women without power in society.

One of the. . . effects of the experience of imprisonment was bitterness and desolation, emotions all the jailed women shared. . . . Kathryn Lincoln described days in jail as "an eternity." She said she felt she was "gradually losing my hold upon life.". . . Thoroughly disillusioned, singer Lillian Ascough asked herself in jail, "What have I done that I am going to be shut away from the rest of the world?" Many women paid for the physical ordeal of prison long after their release—Mrs. Henry Butterworth had one serious illness after another after Occuquan. Nellie Barnes. . . said she "came home from Washington sick and have been in bed ever since: am now only able to sit up part of the day." She missed her comrades through, and ". . . would be please to hear from any of the ladies.". .

. . . Some women were exhilarated even in the face of adversity, because they were fighting for their rights with other women, involved in an important and worthwhile cause. . . . [NWP President] Alice Paul, upon the day of her release from jail, called her time there "the most thrilling, absorbing life I have ever experienced." NWP advisor Anna Kelton Wiley once said that the "jailing was the highlight of my life." . . . Student Rhoda Kellogg called her trip to Washington "the leading inspiration for all my life. . . how glorious it was to meet so many splendid people." . . . Katharine Rolston Fisher wrote that the "comradeship and the ‘soul-shock’. . . were compensations for hunger and other trials. . . The joyous moments of the long days when we daringly waved a greeting to our eleven friends across the dining room, or pressed our faces against our window screens and exchanged hurried words." The sort of commitment necessary to be willing to be a militant, to defy the laws of men and go to jail, required sacrifice; but it also had its rewards. The camaderie of the cause made the suffering almost worth it.

In spite of privations, in spite of deeply felt injustice, physical injury and illnesses, the majority of the suffrage prisoners were not daunted by their jail experience. On the contrary, the effect was the opposite. Jail emphasized for the NWP their lack of liberty and status in society, the hypocrisy of their governemnt, their vulnerabilty through their family ties, and the problems they shared with their sister prisoners—all those realizations making them more radically feminist. . . . Overcoming their social and political differences, the women forged a strong sisterhood of militancy and of feminist radicalism in prison, persuaded that America’s male-run government was thoroughly unjust. As known "jailbirds" and established radicals, the NWP faced the [next,] final stage of militancy. . . determined to carry their struggle to success without turning back.