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I had always known that Alice Paul had been sent to prison in 1917 for her activities agitating for women's suffrage on flimsy grounds. Today I read just how flimsy.
Alice Paul and Caroline Spencer were sentenced to seven months in prison for obstructing the sidewalk. Other women were convicted of the same offense but given lesser sentences.
Alice Paul was kept in solitary confinement from the time she entered the prison and fed only bread and water, until she became weak and they moved her to a psychiatric ward -- where they boarded up all the windows. She was also subject to sleep deprivation. Prison officials threatened to move her to an insane asylum -- no small threat in the early decades of the last century. When Paul and other women at the prison started a hunger strike to protest their treatment, they were force fed. Other women at the prison were beaten. One was beaten enough so that she passed out; her cellmate, believing her dead, had a heart attack.
Five weeks after their incarceration, with no explanation or apology, the women were released. Several months later, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that they had been illegally arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.
You may want to mention this little factoid the next time someone tells you that it's not worth it to vote. Especially if they're female.
Alice Paul and Caroline Spencer were sentenced to seven months in prison for obstructing the sidewalk. Other women were convicted of the same offense but given lesser sentences.
Alice Paul was kept in solitary confinement from the time she entered the prison and fed only bread and water, until she became weak and they moved her to a psychiatric ward -- where they boarded up all the windows. She was also subject to sleep deprivation. Prison officials threatened to move her to an insane asylum -- no small threat in the early decades of the last century. When Paul and other women at the prison started a hunger strike to protest their treatment, they were force fed. Other women at the prison were beaten. One was beaten enough so that she passed out; her cellmate, believing her dead, had a heart attack.
Five weeks after their incarceration, with no explanation or apology, the women were released. Several months later, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that they had been illegally arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.
You may want to mention this little factoid the next time someone tells you that it's not worth it to vote. Especially if they're female.