A Historical Perspective -- Sacrifice & the Right to Vote
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Date: Thu Nov 09 2000 - 12:10:59 EST
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Good People,
The text below is from a new page at our web site, you can find
it at: http://www.AKidsRight.Org/civil_back.htm
Suffragette Lady Constance Lytton is Forcibly Fed in an English
Jail (18 Jan 1910)
The following is a historical quote about the effort and
sacrifice involved in winning a right that many now take for
granted: the right of a woman to vote.
We DO NOT want this read as an example of NonViolent Action, we
DO NOT recommend hunger strikes. But PLEASE LOOK at what this
woman was willing to sacrifice (she could have suffered serious
injury, even death, from the force feeding). As we watch
parents and children unjustly separated, today, what are we
willing to sacrifice? Not as a demonstration of our anger, but
to show our love.
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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
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