The Washington herald., 1913-05-11
By LILLIAN SCOTT TROY.
.cial Cable to The washington Herald.

Special Cable to The Washington Herald
London. May 10-Although / am not
a militant / am firmly of the opinion
that neither the Irish nor the women
will get what they want from any English
party without fighting for 1T.
My attention was first drawn to the
case of Miss Zelie Emerson. the Michi-
gan suffragette. imprisoned in Holloway
Jail for understanding. by the state
ment Of Miss Sylvia Pankhurst. just
after her release from Holloway Jail.
Miss Pankhurst wrote that the American
woman was in desperate state.
I saw young girl who had been con-
fined in the cell adjoining Miss Emer-
sons and questioned her very closely re-
garding her fellow prisoner. She not
only confirmed Miss Pankhurst's allega-
tons, but added other details which
cernented my determination to exert every
effort personal and otherwise to have
Miss Emerson released.
Horrors of the Treatment.
Women who had been forcibly fed in
Holloway Jail told me Of the horrors of
the cruel process. They told me of a
man driven mad by the unbearable agony
of the torture; they told me of a woman
whose nose had been broken by prison
attendants in trying to force the rubber
tube up her nostril and the continued
feeding of this woman through her brok-
en- nose for days; they told me of a
cripple whose tooth had been deliberate
~ broken to make an aperture into
which they could insert the steel screw
who died from the effects of this
medieval prison treatment
The woman, whose vivid description of
prison torture turned me sick and faint,
has lasting memory of her terrible or
deal. a strange defect in her voice and
permanently disfgured nose.
ITO begin with" she said, you must
understand that suffragette prisoners
often abstain from taking food for from
fourteen to twenty days before the pris-
on doctors know of it. 1 can always tell
when a woman is fasting by the peculiar
expression in her eyes after the third
day.
''Stumng the Turkey"
THE doctors know IL is matter of
principle with us to resist forcible feed
ing, and to save themselves trouble they
let us starve until We reach the point
where we are so weak that it is a fairly
easy matter for half dozen attendants
to overpower us. They first force us
down into a chair. then they tie our feet
and hands. and strap us down with
sheets wound around our bodies. Then.
to quote a member of Parliament, the
'stuffing of the turkey begins
Feeding through the nose by tube
is much more painful than feeding
through the mouth, although neither
can be described as less than parparous,
therefore, we are fed through the nose in
the first instance until liberation and
probably necrosis has set in. A larger
rubber tube than is necessary is forced
up the nostril, down the nasal aperture,
and into the stomach. The pain accom-
panying this process is maddening.
When the tube is forced into the
nasal cavity, the pain is so excruciating
that, Notwithstanding the fact that we
are tied hand ond foot ana held down
by attendants. women unconsciously rise
up, tearing their bonds in their mad
struggle for relief. The stomach. which
has partially collapsed from days Of
fasting, is then flooded with a quart OF
milk or liquid food. The tube is none
too gently drawn up from the stomach
and out through the nose before a wild
vomiting and retching commences
This is frequently accompanied by the
bursting of blood vessels in the eyes
and hemorrhage of the nose.
In the case of one young girl, the
tube pierced her lung. The mucous