Today in Herstory: The “Silent Sentinels” Go Back to Court – This Time, to Seek Justice

[niyad]

Today in Herstory: The “Silent Sentinels” Go Back to Court – This Time, to Seek Justice


Eunice Dana Brannan




November 24, 1917: Another day in court for some “Silent Sentinel” suffragists who have been imprisoned for picketing along the White House fence.
But unlike many previous occasions, they were not in a courtroom to face more charges, but to make their own accusations against Occoquan Workhouse authorities for the abuses they’ve suffered since being sent there 10 days ago.

Lucy Burns, Dora Lewis and Hattie Kruger were able to join their fellow suffragists today. The three were not in court for the first day of the hearing because prison officials claimed they were “too ill” to attend. But attorneys for the suffrage prisoners argued that this was a trick to keep the three – as well as their stories and visible injuries – hidden. U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Waddill agreed, and ordered that they be produced in court today.

Evidence that the transfer of the White House pickets to Occoquan from the Washington Asylum and Jail (commonly called the “District Jail”) had been illegal was presented yesterday, so today the testimony concerned the brutality of the “Night of Terror,” which began on the evening of November 14th, and the unusually harsh treatment and restrictions on these prisoners at the Workhouse since that time.

Attorney Matthew O’Brien was in charge of listing and detailing the illegal procedures and brutalities inflicted on the prisoners in Superintendent Whittaker’s care, but Dr. John Winters Brannan, President of the Board of Trustees of Bellevue Hospital in New York, gave testimony that seemed to have the greatest impact. His wife, Eunice Dana Brannan, is one of the imprisoned suffrage pickets, and he finally had the opportunity to speak with her at length earlier today.

He told the court:
I find Mrs. Brannan in a state of almost complete collapse from the shocking treatment to which she has been subjected in Occoquan Workhouse … Today is the first opportunity I have had to hear my wife’s full story, though I have been in Washington three times this week, attempting to find out the actual conditions of her imprisonment. She was not allowed to communicate with me from the workhouse, and when I saw her last Sunday, Superintendent Whittaker insisted upon being present at the interview, and would not allow me to ask her any questions concerning the institution. I find that she herself was twice warned by the Superintendent with threats that she must not tell me anything of the conditions in the workhouse.

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/11/24/today-in-herstory-the-silent-sentinels-go-back-to-court-this-time-to-seek-justice/