I could remember no names, she wrote, and it was quite impossible to read. Many hallucinated and often fainted. To crush the strike, prison officials tried everything from dire threats to tempting the strikers with fried chicken, mashed potatoes and all the trimmings. Nothing worked. After seven days, the fasters were dangerously weak. There was no escaping it — forced feeding was next. And facing that took the last ounce of courage they had left. One prisoner reported, I was seized and laid on my back, where five people held me, [one] leaping upon my knees….Dr. Gannon then forced the tube through my lips and down my throat, I was gasping and suffocating from the agony of it. I didn't know where to breathe from, and everything turned black….

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A Washington prisoner later recalled:

Three times a day for fourteen days Alice Paul and Rose Winslow have been going through the torture of forcible feeding. I know what that torture is. The horrible griping and gagging of swallowing six inches of stiff rubber tubing-[it] is not to be imagined. That over, there is the ordeal of waiting while the liquids are poured through-then the withdrawal of that tube! With streaming eyes and parched, burning throat, one wonders how the people of this nation already tasting blood and pain can let this be done….

The prisoners endured their punishment with unwavering resolve, but they were near collapse. If they meant to win or die, it seemed increasingly likely that dying would be their fate. But far away, the tide of their desperate war was turning, thanks to the NWP lawyers working overtime for the prisoners. Dudley Malone concentrated on the Washington jail, while Matthew O'Brien took on Occoquan, and their labors were producing results. Forcing their way into the prisons with court orders, both were outraged at what they found. In Washington, Alice Paul languished in a hellhole on the psychiatric ward, despite a clean bill of mental health from the alienist. The irate Malone demanded, and got, her prompt removal to the main jail. At Occoquan, O'Brien obtained a writ of habeas corpus ordering Superintendent Whittaker to produce all his suffragist prisoners for a hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Alexandria, Va. Whittaker tried frantically to evade the writ-even hiding out in his own home in vain. The hearing was held November 23 and 24 before a packed house, including newspaper reporters from far and wide.

Both attorneys argued eloquently for justice for Americans who, as O'Brien declared, were railroaded to Occoquan, where unspeakable brutalities occurred, for the sole purpose of terrorizing them and compelling them to desist from doing what…they have every legal right to do.

The sympathetic judge called the testimony given on the prisoners' behalf blood-curdling. But more compelling than any evidence was the appearance of the prisoners themselves. Haggard, pale and disoriented, many with ugly bruises sustained during the Night of Terror, some barely able to walk or sit upright, their condition sent a wave of shocked disbelief throughout the courtroom. The sight of those mistreated women, vividly reported in newspapers, clinched their case. The judge ordered the prisoners' immediate transfer to the Washington jail pending further review — and the grim conflict took a startling turn.

For months the government had gone to extremes — even breaking the law — to suppress the picketing. But the movement only grew stronger as public opinion shifted toward the women. Clearly, the policy was not working. Perhaps in recognition of this, three days after the Alexandria hearing-and with no explanations-all suffragist prisoners were abruptly released.

On November 27, emerging from the jail to blink in the sunlight after five weeks of living death, Alice Paul could not stand without assistance. But her indomitable will was intact as she declared, We were put out of jail as we were put in — at the whim of the government. She hoped that no more demonstrations will be necessary, that the Federal Amendment is well on its way, but added, What we do depends on what the Government does.

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