Imprisoned and Force-Fed Suffragists, 1910

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1037 

{This is part of our History of Women series)

In January 1910 the Illustrated London News (perhaps sympathetically) reviewed the case of the forced feeding of a leading female suffragist--very forced, very forcible, feeding-tube-up-the-nose-and-into-the-stomach forcible, the work of a grappling prison doctor and assistants.  The full-page illustration was entitled:

"Forcible Feeding Through the Nose of Women Suffragist Prisoners"

and then pointing out:

 "Pronounced as dangerous by many Leading Members of the Medical Profession..."

It is the story of medical indulgence and state insistence of not recognizing any displays of independence while imprisoned--feeding a woman against her will, a  woman prisoner at the hands of what sounds to be cruel warders and an insistent doctor. The woman in question was Lady Contance Lytton (b. 1869, imprisoned in disguise as "Jane Warton") in Walton Goal, 

 

  

Liverpool. She was arrested and placed there for minor offenses to the civil code while protesting for the rights of women to vote in England. She carried her struggle further in jail, doing about the only thing she had left to do while she was put away--make herself into a political statement by refusing to eat or ingest  liquids.  Walton Goal would have none of it, and resisting the entreaties of professionals, decided to feed the woman themselves at whatever cost.  The doctor who administered the fluid evidently sat on her knees and slapped her until the Lytton's resistance failed. My guess is that the white cloth covering her in the photo is not for drips and drops, but was used to cover restraints--I hardly think that the two female attendants would've been able to hold down Lady Lytton's arms by themselves, especially in that posed posture. There are three other accounts of women being bound, restrained, held by wardresses, and in general being badly treated.  (There is a continuation of the story of Lytton, below.)

The vote did not come until 1918 with the Representation of the People Act, which in June 1917 passed the House of Commons and which went through the House of Lords in February of the next year, granting full enfranchisement to all women (over the age of thirty. This is about two years before American women were given the right to vote--on August 26, 1920--and 25  years after women won the vote in New Zealand, which again was first on the scene like it has been so many times). Lady Lytton would do badly in prison after this, suffering a heart attack and then a stoke by 1911, and never really recovered--she was half-paralyzed , was hardly robust, and wound up in her grave in 1923, aged 54.

The Story of Lady Constance Lytton:

"I was visited by the Senior Medical Officer, who asked me how long I had been without food.  I said I had eaten a buttered scone and a banana on Friday about midnight.  He said, "Oh, then, this is the fourth day; that is too long, I must feed you at once."

"He urged me to take food voluntarily.  I told him that was absolutely out of the question, that when our legislators ceased to resist letting women vote then I should cease to resist taking food in prison.

"Two of the guards took hold of my arms, one held my head and one my feet.  The doctor leaned on my knees as he stooped over my chest to get at my mouth.   I shut my mouth and clenched my teeth.  He seemed annoyed at my resistance and he broke into a temper as he plied my teeth with the steel implement.  He dug his instrument down and it pressed fearfully on the gums.  The pain of it was intense and at last I must have given way for he got the gag between my teeth, when he proceeded to turn it much more than necessary until my jaws were fastened wide apart, far more than they would go naturally.

"Then he put down my throat a tube which seemed to me much too wide and was something like four feet in length.  The irritation of the tube was excessive.  I choked the moment it touched my throat until it had got down.   Then the food was poured in quickly; it made me vomit a few seconds after it was down and the action of my sickness made my body and legs double up, but the guards instantly pressed back my head and the doctor leaned on my knees.  The horror of it was more than I can describe.  I was sick over the doctor and the guards ...

"When the doctor had gone out of the cell, I lay quite helpless.   The guards were kind and knelt round to comfort me, but there was nothing to be done.  I had been sick over my hair, all over the wall near my bed, and my clothes seemed saturated with it, but the guards told me they could not give me a change that night as the office was shut.

"Before long I heard the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell to mine.  It was almost more than I could bear, it was Elsie Howey.  When the ghastly process was over and all quiet, I tapped on the wall and called out at the top of my voice, which wasn't much just then, "No surrender," and there came her reply, "No surrender."

-- above taken from "Eyewitness to History" by John Carey, 1987, Avon Books, page 423