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Updated: June 9, 2025
For eight months I acted as night officer, with no complaint as to my performance of my duties. Yesterday Superintendent Whittaker told me I was discharged and gave me two hours in which to get out. I demanded the charges from the matron, Mrs. Herndon, and I was told that it was owing to something that Senator Lewis has said. I am well acquainted with the conditions at Occoquan.
A hundred yards from the house, overlooking on one side the willow-draped waters of Occoquan Inlet, and on the other the broad and placid river, a seat had been fashioned between two massive oaks, and here, of an evening, it was our wont to go.
Whittaker and his staff at Occoquan began a systematic attempt to break down the morale of the hunger strikers. Each one was called to the mat and interrogated. "Will you work?""Will you put on prison clothes?" "Will you eat?""Will you stop picketing?""Will you go without paying your fine and promise never to picket again?" How baffled he must have been! The answer was definite and final.
Instead of the painstaking and eloquent explanation which I was prepared to offer, I had only to join in their laughter. A few minutes later a telegram was brought to the platform announcing further arrests. I read: "Six more women sentenced to-day to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse." Instant cries of "Shame! Shame! It's an outrage!"
The diet furnished the prisoners at Occoquan especially is of a character to invit6 all kinds of infections that may prevail, and to lower the vitality so that the resistance to disease is diminished. I have fortunately come into possession of samples of the food actually given to these women. I have kept samples of the milk religiously for over two weeks to see if I could
By a failure like this we lose all the prestige gained by the capture of Fort Donelson." The prediction of the Secretary of War proved correct. That same night, McClellan revoked Hooker's authority to cross the lower Potomac and demolish the rebel batteries about the Occoquan River.
The food at the county jail at Washington is much better than the food at Occoquan, but still bad enough. This increased excellence of food is set off by the miserable ventilation of the cells, in which these noble women are kept in solitary confinement. Not only have they had a struggle to get the windows open slightly, but also at the time of their morning meal, the sweeping is done.
Throughout the summer and early autumn we had continued to press for an investigation of conditions at Occoquan, promised almost four months earlier. October 2nd was the date finally set for an investigation to be held in the District Building before the District Board of Charities.
The answer of Whittaker is the answer Wilson makes to women every time the Government, of which he is the head, enacts a law and at the same time continues to refuse to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment . . . . We seem to-day to stand before you free, but I have no sense of freedom because I have left comrades at Occoquan and because other comrades may at any moment join them there . . . .
The testimony of one of the prisoners, Miss Lavinia Dock, a trained nurse, is extremely valuable on the question of food supplied at Occoquan. Miss Dock is Secretary of the American Federation of Nurses. She has had a distinguished career in her profession. She assisted in the work after the Johnstown flood and during the yellow fever epidemic in Florida.
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