Cleanliness is an Attitude

Attitude Floor and Wood cleaner.

I just found a product I’ve been looking for. Something to polish wood that isn’t toxic. Lately, I inherited some antique furniture but I am loathe to clean it, as I do not like furniture polishes.

Now, admittedly, my job as a child was to polish the furniture, using Pledge (oil and aerosol) and also to clean the bathtub, using Old Dutch Powder. All this crap going into my young lungs,mixing with the ubiquitous clouds of second hand smoke.

But parents didn’t worry about such things back then. They didn’t worry much. It was good times, stable times for the middle class, give or take a Cuban Missile Crisis or two.

I guess the threat of nuclear war looming over the planet made every other worry pale in comparison.

Well, the prosperity helped, too.

Pledge, Old Dutch, DDT and all the sweet smelling lead emanating fromm the tail pipes of those bright pink TBirds with the big fancy tailfins.

And the 60′s air pollution in the city. Legend. Any person who lived in the suburbs or country knew that  visit to the city meant smelly hair and even smokey underwear.

OK. All that and I’ve had only one serious lung disease, pneumonia, when my own kids were about 10, caused by being run down and by being prescribed too many anti-biotics for little things like sore throat and then this mighty bug swept through our household and I didn’t have the resistance to fight it.

Anyway, if the 60′s were bad, the crap in our food has only gotten worse. So I do buy organic veggies when I can and ‘artisanal’ meats like chicken, which, our course actually have texture and taste.

But the other day I had to laugh or cry. I was visiting my sister in law, in her beautiful home with the cathedral windows and she found ants in the kitchen and began spraying all over with Raid.

I turned to my husband and said, “There go all the benefits from eating organic for the past 10 years.”

The woman, a product of the 50′s, is intrepid when it comes to dirt and bugs and such. The stronger the cleaner the better.

And I only use these Attitude Products. Which are fine. For cleanliness. For that 50′s pristine look, well go elsewhere.

Now, my story Threshold Girl at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf is about the 1910 era, the era of Pure Soap, Pure Water and Pure Women.

The Soap-Industrial Complex got a toehold in that era. In large part because dirty homes (and the mostly immigrant women who kept them) were being blamed for all the problems of industrialization. All the bodily illnesses and all the ‘moral’ ones too.

The adage “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” was not a mere metaphor,back then, it was to be taken LITERALLY. And it gave the moral high ground automatically to the elite and upper middle class who could afford servants. And it kept other middle class women from getting ‘restless woman syndrome’ and picking up a placard to protest their second class status.

And this ideology filtered down through the century, reaching a kind of apex in the 1950′s, for it was used to drive women back into the home after the war.

And these cleaning product companies, that promoted PURITY above all, because GIANTS over the century and now many of them make anti-cancer and asthma drugs too. And pesticides too. Kind of weird, I’d say. Kind of weird, but good for business and as well all now know WHATEVER IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS IS “GOOD.”

Edith in the Sky with Diamonds

Yesterday I read that the Province of Alberta has four times the amount of prescriptions drug abuse as Quebec. They don’t know why.

I can hazard a guess…:)

When I was in my 20′s I had a close friend who was hooked on some prescription pain killer. She had an important job and few noticed she was in la la land most of the time.

Can’t recall which drug it was. A powerful one. She had multiple prescriptions and one day she overdosed and I had to bring her to emergency where they let her writhe in pain on her gurney for hours.

I had an inkling they were doing this on purpose, but maybe not. I vividly recall that day I spent in ER because I wasn’t sick, so I got to watch all the human drama unfolding around, and that day ER I recall was like an episode of ER the TV show, I tell you.

A man died and his two kids (youths) were reacting in opposite ways:the daughter wailing and the son with his head in a textbook.

I heard a doctor tell another that the same man had presented the day before with a paralyzed finger and they had sent him home… and then he presented again…. anyway, it sounded like the doctor was describing how his case had been mismanaged, like Mrs. Haufnagel on St. Elsewhere.

Anyway, I took a Tylenol blue pill yesterday, just one, to see if it helped my blocked ears, which are acting up. I’m using a homeopathic remedy.. I don’t like taking drugs of any kind. (Except the one that pours from a bottle and comes from grapes.)

I am clearly a rarity today. And the modern doctor loves to give pills. (A recent Salon.com article claimed that in the old days doctors did everything they could not to give a pill, now they do the opposite. No time. Easier. They really are “pill pushers.”)

When my husband goes for a checkup, his doctor now always offers him Viagra, just out of the blue. My husband is totally healthy, but he is asked if he wants this ‘recreational’ drug, so the doctor must ask all the older guys. (Last time I told my husband to say that he didn’t need Viagra, but he could sure use Angelina Jolie. Viagra is not an aphrodesiac, as far as I know, but it is treated as one. Ps. and the ads say that 40 percent of men over a certain age have this condition on occasion. Then it isn’t a condition, is it? It’s normal.

The same goes for Prozac. If a huge proportion of the population is depressed (and the prescribing statistics for these anti-depression drugs seem to suggest it is.. One fifth of the population of Glasgow is on some sort of anti-depressant apparently) then depression is normal – especially in Scots.. So these drugs are merely mood enhancers. The same Salon article says that depression in now something to be ‘managed’ and not be ‘cured’. Managing makes more money than curing, you see. Almost 9 percent of Americans are on the drugs,and the figure is ever rising, but not African Americans, oddly, who have something to be sad about if the recent NYT article, saying that MLK is weeping in his grave is true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/opinion/martin-luther-king-jr-would-want-a-revolution-not-a-memorial.htm

(But managing your mood with marijuana is bad, very bad. Well, were it legal, it couldn’t make money for Big Pharma, so better that it make money for Big Crime, and provide an excuse to abritrarily incarcerate certain racial groups. That’s the logic anyway.)

They don’t talk about this on the News, because were it not for advertising from Big Pharma, the mainstream media would be dead as nail in door. An awful lot has changed since they allowed Pharmaceutical Companies to sell directly to civilians and not just to doctors. And the way the announcers race through the list of possible side effects at the end of these drug ads, makes it sound funny, like a joke. Indeed, the side effect of Viagra have reached iconic joke status in TV sitcoms and movies.

The prescription drugs Alberta’s citizens are abusing are opiods. Probably akin to the drugs found in ‘tonics’ in 1900.

I am writing Edith’s Story, the follow up to Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

 

and I have her stoned on some tonic as she goes to the Art Show.

I know for a fact her principal, who was also medical doctor, gave her tonics for ‘heart’ conditions. So he probably really dosed her here after the death of her fiance. And there were always those medicines for La Grippe.

So has it really changed that much? People in those days, women mostly, were going out stoned too. (It’s only coincidental that she was a Canadian Scot.) They were just outlawing opiates in every day products.. In the US, especially, which is why the Patent Medicine People all moved to Brockville, Ontario.

I read an ad for a baby medicine that proudly claimed Contains no Opiates. Imagine.

Of course they famously sedated housewives in the 50′s with Valium.

Pageants and Webpages.

 

My wix website at www.wix.com/dottynixon/frontpage

leading to Threshold Girl at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

and to my Flo in the City blog at

http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.com/

and I hope to put a page on Red Room the author’s site.

 

All very complicated.

As I write The 1912 Diary of Edith Nicholson,

a first bit posted at www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

I’m not in a very focused or creative mood. So, I just plug away. I described the 1908 Tercentenary today, in Edith’s Diary.

 

A huge pageant, a military show of force, on the Plains of Abrahama, totally forgotten for some reason, probably WWI, the event that likely was anticipated what with the Prince of Wales coming in on the battleship Indomitable…

 

 

 

Who’s Who in 1910, Woman-Wise in Canada (and US)

Emma LaJeunesse, opera singer, known as Madame Albani. She was French Canadian and world renown.

I found a copy of a 1910 Canadian Who’s Who online and on one of the first pages I saw Madame Albani, the opera star, otherwise known as Emma La Jeunesse so I decided to scan the book to see how many women were included.

I first went to see if Julia Grace Parker Drummond was listed there, and she was! Her husband wasn’t, as he had just died. She had a long entry. “One of the founders and first President of the Canadian Women’s Club of Montreal (Montreal Council of Women.) And then her many leadership positions are listed. Lady Drummond is featured in my story Threshold Girl  www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf
and she will be featured even more in the follow up, “Edith’s Story” tentatively called the 1912 Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

I then went to look for Carrie Derick, not expecting her to be there : but she was. In 1910, she is listed as Assistant Professor of Botany, McGill. Her many academic accomplishments are listed (Gold Medalist, first female faculty member, McGill 1891), and leaves out her McGill Normal School teaching work. (Now, THAT says something about how low in people’s esteem teaching was held. In fact there are no educators listed in this Who’s Who, despite the fact there were quite a few women in that field.)

Then I went through the entire book, start to finish to see how many other illustrious female figures are listed. NOT MANY.

In fact, it seems any journalistic credentials got a young woman into the Who’s Who. A few articles published, a few poems. Nellie McClung is listed, but only as a minor writer. Lucy Maude Montgomery, who published Anne of Green Gables in 1908, isn’t there.

For an actress to be listed, she has had to won international acclaim, or at least US acclaim. And that pretty well goes for the other females listed. Hence Madame Albani.

And there are not many society women listed, which surprises me. A Society Woman only got listed if she had something to do with good works on her local council of women.

Now, taking a rough guess, there is one woman listed for about every three pages of men listed, with about 10 listings to a page. So 1 in 30 on the 1910 Canadian Who’s Who is a woman. And often it’s a woman of little accomplishment like Mrs. Valance Patriarche, Newspaper articles, magazine stories and a few poems.

Mary Riter Hamilton, the impressionist painters, isn’t there, and only one other woman painter. Mary Ella Dingham. Education Paris, France and Italy. Exhibitor in many European and North American exhibitions. President of the Women’s Art Association of Canada. And, of course, Emily Carr isn’t there either.

One nurse, one professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College near Boston. Miss Eliza Richie, daughter of a Supreme Court Judge in Nova Scotia. One doctor I think and no lawyer, although there was one famous woman lawyer being written about in the era magazines, Mabel French. I’ve a post about her on this blog.

And a missionary, working with her (more famous) husband.

Also a couple of musicians who have performed internationally. Miss Evelyn Street, Second Violinist, American String Quartet of Boston.

And just like today, there are Canadian-born women who have made a mark entirely in the US. Miss Annie Diggs of London, Ontario, worker for temperance, chairman of D.C. People’s Party and a Suffragette in Kansas. Writer of short stories and a lecturer in sociology.

Why is this interesting in the context of my story? Because in 1910, it was widely believed that A YOUNG WOMAN COULD DO ANYTHING when it came to the professions (although most sensible women wanted to be mothers and wives). That all doors were open to women. That no more barriers existed to a woman’s career ambitions.

Magazine articles featured stories about women making, say, 10,ooo a year, when the ‘average’ salary for a man was 1,000 a year.

Actresses were often featured in magazines, but in real life they were both put on pedestals and villifed as one step above a prostitute.

The two women scientists I see here, Carrie Derick and another I can’t recall the name of, were both botanists. I suspect botany was considered a soft science, because of its association with flowers and art.

In Threshold Girl I bring this up…as Flora Nicholson likes to draw so does well in botany.

But Carrie Derick’s botany background gave her credibility in a very iffy area, eugenics. And that situation will be tackled in the continuation of Edith’s Story.

I think I will have Edith peruse this Who’s Who.

A Tale of Two Montreal George Drummonds

Three Rivers in 1910

Well, in a letter from Radnor Forges Quebec in 1908, Edith mentions a “George Drummond’ who seems to be boss.. Was this the same George Drummond of Redpath Sugar who married Julia Grace Parker? I wondered… because wouldn’t that be useful for my story about Edith Nicholson, tentatively called the 1912 Diary of a Confirmed Spinster Edith Nicholson and posted at www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf, which is a follow up to Threshold Girl, published at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf.

But no.. George Edward Drummond was an Irish Canadian Business man who owned the Canadian Iron Furnace Company which owned the works at Radnor Forges, where Edith worked in 1908.

George Alexander Drummond was the Scottish Canadian businessman who married a Redpath and then Julia Grace Parker.

George Edward was younger and his original name was Drumm. I wonder if Drummond is Scottish, and that’s why he changed his name.

“At least I know where my  pots and pans come from, ” said Margaret after a visit to Radnor, a sad little company town, on the steep  decline. It would close right after Edith quit.. I guess she wasn’t that impressed. It was a company town. No ‘real’ town, no community, had sprung up around iron works la Mauricie in all the decades they had been in place.

But the Forges at the Mauricie were the first iron ore companies in Canada and they manufactured bog ore.

So they were significant. And there’s a heritage website involved. http://www.pc.gc.ca/fra/lhn-nhs/qc/saintmaurice/index.aspx

For the purposes of this story, they are significant in how Edith’s teaching job reflected how LONESOME it was to be a teacher in a rural place.

Anyway, in 1959, I also lived in a lonesome mining town, called Wabush. My family was among a handful of pioneer families who went out to Wabush Lake Labrador to live. We stayed two years, some families stayed much longer.A community did spring up around the iron ore mines, though.

The Three Rivers Forges were a Crown (Canadian ) concern, but the Wabush mines were owned by Americans.

Colporteurs, Night and Day

This is a picture of Paul Villard, MA.MD DDS as it says on his 1927 book Up to the Light which I just purchased off abebooks.

Unlike the book about French Methodist, written in 1907, it exists in a few places. Two copies were available online; Mcgill has one and so does Westmount Library.

I’m glad I bought it though because if I have to write Edith Nicholson and her work at Westmount Methodist I need to know this, how Protestant Missionaries in Quebec felt bout “Romish” French Canadians. It is a great story, I think, a Nature Nurture debate story, Evangelicals want to convert people and Eugenicists think it is worthless to do this. Edith will meet up with Miss Carrie Derick suffragist and supporter of eugenics who is quoted as saying ‘inferior’ humans tend to have large families, which sounds very much like a slur against French Canadians.

Edith will ask her why bother to teach anyone then?  And Edith will explain that her ancestors, the Isle of Lewis Scots had large families…

But in the “you learn something new every day” department.. growing up in Montreal, I noticed that many many many apartment buildings had a sign in the lobby, or in the vestibule with the buzzers, “pas de colporteurs’.. I remember thinking it sounded like Cole Porter, (although was more a Monkees kind of girl.)

And I must have asked because I thought I learned it meant, no peddlers. But colporteurs are a special kind of door to door salesmen in Quebec. Protestant evangelicals.

Colporteurs means hawkers, too. Of course.
Hmm. Anyway…

Edith’s Story or The 1910 Diary of Edith Nicholson: Confirmed Spinster is in the works at www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

which is a follow up to Threshold Girl at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

 

Motions Pictures, Movies, Films, Cinema, Interactive….and on and on

My husband noticed a while back that the plaque on the old Ouimetoscope building had disappeared. A few days later he noticed that a historic placard of sorts, commemorating the Ouimetoscope was placed in the neighbourhood. Yesterday, he noticed that the Ouimetoscope building is being converted into condos, keeping the historic name.

Hmm. Good, I guess. If you can’t turn it back into a theatre.

I’ve written a lot about Montreal in the Nickelodeon era.. and Threshold Girl is available at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

Threshold Girl tells the story of Flora Nicholson in 1911 as she attends Macdonald Teaching College. And it has public domain pictures from the Delineator Magazines of the era.

I’ve decided to do the follow up about her sister Edith and call it The Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.  It’s here in drafty form.. www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

It’s kind of a storyboard thing…Recently, I saw (read) an NFB digital story about a town closing down in Canada, called Welcome to… ah.. Pinpoint  and thought it lovely. It’s award winning.

http://pinepoint.nfb.ca/#/pinepoint

So I decided to describe Edith’s Story, which is a mix of fiction and fact, more visually. I’m not using any film, but this story is about the film era and I am going to work hard to capture that flavour.

 It’s a work in progress.

Newswatch: Anglo-Quebec style

I spend a lot of time  reading the news on the web, reading US, UK and Canadian sources (the sensible ones  so so I thought I’d check out the Google News ‘favorite search’ list for today, 20th of August – to see what the hoi polloi is curious about.

I started with the letter A for Canada (English). Amy Winehouse is first, then Ayano Tokumasu,the poor girl who fell over fence at the Niagara Falls, apple, air canada and aecl which is a story related to Fukishuma, some rod provided by Canada, whereas in the UK, although Amy Winehouse is top search subject, Arsenal comes in second, Andy Murray, Amir Khan, aston villa, Amy Childs are also on the list. Hmm. Arsenal is a soccer team. I’ve read Fever Pitch. Andy Murry, wasn’t he on one of those Extras episodes?  Hmm. I spend a lot of time on the Guardian website, but I know none of these names. Wait, Andy Murray is a tennis player. (I didn’t watch the Rogers Canadian Open last week; too busy watching my savings go down, down down, up, down, UP UP, down down down. Who needs tennis. (The next thing you know, my cat will be watching the Financial Channel.)Amy Childs is a person on Big Brother. So entertainment issues were tops here in the UK.  I guess they need a break from the week or two of heavy duty news they just endured.

( In the US for the letter Amy Winehouse, apple, Anderson Cooper, android, Amanda Knox,Antoinette Stephen, amateur radio,amazon and yes, Arsenal. Was the team bought by US concern? I wonder….. No. Hmm.  Well, I know who Anderson Cooper is, and I know amazon, but why amateur radio? Checked, can’t see why it comes up so high. Amanda Knox is involved in a murder trial. and Anoinette Stephen is another murder story. Very taboid interests!

Oh, and since I live in French Canada, I checked their 10 ten news searches. Yes, Amy Winehouse first. Algerie, apple, ashton kutcher (who according to headline, forgets the details of his investments, and Angelina Jolie who is buying a house with Brad Pitt in England. At least they can afford it but how is this news? So what? Like I fed the cat this morning.

 The fact that I just had to check the spelling of these two pretty folks’s names, says something about me. Then Android. What is Android? I ask, sounding like one of the bubble-headed beauties in the  original Star Trek..Oh, something to to with Google.

burundi, bombardier, barak obama,bute, bell, bourse, black keys, britney spears, beyonce.. (I’m using this as a memory exercise, since I can’t keep both windows open together. I  am NOT good at this. I can keep three items in my brain at best. I keep having to go back. Scary, since I think this is similar to a test they give for Alzheimer’s. Note to self: Must practice more memory games!)

That’s the B’s for French Canada. Bourse is the Stock Market. It’s also the word for purse,as in “Je n’ai rien dans ma bourse.”I bet that’s been one the the favourites in all Western Countries all week.

English Canada: blue jays, big brother  Blackberry, brad richards.bluesfest, brad griffith, bombardier

UK: big brother, bbc sport, big brother 2011, bbc, bbcnews, (and they are cutting funds for teh BBC?)beyonce, beckham, british open, borders, black ops, boeing.beyonce bachman, breaking bad and then, funny enough, betty ford, brett favre

US: bank of america, booton shooting, burger king

and a random letter for fun: (I close my eyes and touch the keyboard)…mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

memphis 3, murdoch, machbook air, mumbai, mexico, memphis three, mobile, that’s the US for M.

The UK..man utd, that’s Manchester United for cool people,  mata, manchester united ,for boring people, madeline mccann (another alleged sighting) murdoch, metsut ozil, man city, modric (whaaa?)Manchester City, Michael Jackson

Canada Anglais: Montreal, Maple Leafs, Murdoch, mac book air, Mayor Rob Ford, Mumbai.. why Montreal? Did something happen here? OH, our major cities all show up tops in their letter.

Canada French:maroc, martine obry, monaco, meteo, mylene farmer,  messi, marseilles, mercato,mesut ozil (who is a footballer.)

Oh, and I noticed, these ‘favorites’ change pretty fast.

I don’t know what this proves… a sliver of a sample…..My top news searches would not fall into any of these catagories.. but that’s because I am an English Canadian living in Quebec. We just don’t fit in anywhere.

I guess I’ll get back to living in the past, 100 years ago as I write Edith’s Story, about a young woman and the suffragettes in 1910, which is a follow up to Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf  about a college student in 1910. L. P. Hartley wrote that the Past in a Foreign Country, but he’s wrong, I think. It’s familiar territory as human nature  is very predictable.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading era newspapers, especially the Montreal Gazette. People’s interests, when it comes to the news, has really not changed much. The big difference, Minister’s Sermons and lectures aren’t reported on in the newspaper any more. (I’m glad they were, for this is very useful to me as I write this book about Presbyterian women, after all.

 The Home Secretary, in 1910, (I think it was Winston Churchill) sure came down on the suffragettes, in much the same way Prime Minister David Cameron (who was No. 4 on the news list, after David Haye, David Tennant, and NO. 1 the Duchess of Cambridge, has come down on this year’s rioters in England, the education-fee protesters and the unemployed youth looters of last week.

I think Mr. Churchill used the same confrontation rhetoric against any threat: women who rallied  for the vote and broke a window or two;  skinny Indians who promoted peaceful resistance; and the Third Reich. Churchill’s tone was appropriate for the war years, at least, and he was voted The Greatest Briton of the Century for it.

 Yes, no reporter has to sit through a sermon anymore, thank GOODNESS..The clergy has no clout today… but then, with Perry prayer vigils and the Tea Party people, maybe it’s deja vu all over again..

Mary Riter Hamilton – Copycat?

The First Gift, by Mary Riter Hamilton.

This is the other Riter Hamilton painting Edith Nicholson will see in the Montreal Art Association Salon. Apparently, this woman is opening the first gift from her fiance and she is suddenly struck by the meaningfulness of it all. The gift is of slender  irises, in cool purple, which are supposed to be just like the ‘virginal’ girl.

This is how it was described in a newspaper report. Now,in my story “Edith’s Story” the follow up to Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf  Edith either will read this at the museum in a paper brochure  or hear a living guide say it as he gives a tour. I almost wrote  ” as SHE gives a tour.” Highly unlikely, unless it is a society woman patron.  This sighting of this painting is of great significance, as a few days before Edith’s great love was killed in a fire. All true!!

So, seeing this painting and then the Maternity one will set her off on some kind of delirium. She has also taken too much nerve tonic, anyway, it being her afternoon off.

Well, ‘gift giving’  was codified in 1910 courtship.  I read in the etiquette columns and books of the 1910 era that a woman NEVER accepts a give from a man, however small, although she can give a small one. Or is it the other way around? (Again, it’s the prostitution thing, rearing its ugly head.)

This painting reminds me of Whistlers Lady with a Fan. Or Lady in White.. The one with Japanese tones.  A favorite of mine. I think I will look it up. (Just a minute…nah, just the dress, although if the colours are vivid in the still life beside her, maybe it does look like it. When was it done.. (Just a minute) Well, it’s called Symphony in White 2 and it was painted in 18 64, so likely Riter saw that painting in Europe somewhere. (Well, I just entered the two names into Google and it appears Riter Hamilton trained at an Academie (Vittie) that rivaled a certain Academie Carmen that Whistler supported. It was in Montparnasse. All things are connected!!

Marion Nicholson obviously gave a Christmas gift to Mr. Blair in 1912. He writes about it in a letter, then says that his gift (a nice one) must have got lost in the mail. A lie? Well, he had just extricated himself from a relationship where the girl obviously felt they had an understanding. So it was all very tricky for men and for women.

Alas, Marion wasn’t one to follow the rules of the day anyway.

Political Prisoners vs Criminals -Let a suffragette explain

 

I was transcribing this piece from VOTES FOR WOMEN, May 27, 1910.. for my story, Edith’s Story, the follow up to Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf and I realized that this piece is relevent to the discussion happening today after the London Riots. Militant Suffragettes were considered hooligans by many and treated as such by politicians like the Home Secretary (who was Winston Churchill at this time, I think) but this beautifully written article proves otherwise.

Of all the actions of the Suffragettes none have been so widely misunderstood as the prison mutiny and the hunger strike. Even among those who have nothing but admiration for the women who have faced ill-usage and imprisonment for protesting at Cabinet Minister’s meetings, or for taking part in deputations  to the Prime Minister at the House of Commons, there are many who regard the hunger strike not merely as tactically and perhaps morally wrong, but as justifying to some extent the statement that the militant Suffragists are hysterical and unbalanced.

 

This criticism is partly due to the fact that the prison mutiny and hunger strike were the latest phase of militancy – and it has been a noteworthy feature at every stage of the present campaign that critics have fastened upon the latest militant methods for attack, while condoning and even sometimes expressing approval of earlier militant methods – and partly due to the fact that the outside public have never properly realized that there was an important principle underlying the apparently unaccountable behaviour of the Suffragettes in prison.

To incur WANTONLY additional punishment in prison, to undergo GRATUITOUSLY the terrible ordeal of starvation, to submit to the torture and forcible feeding rather than act rationally – these might be evidences of hysteria; but to determine, FOR A SUFFICIENTLY IMPROTANT PURPOSE, on a course of action without flinching, and to carry it through to the bitter end – these are evidences of a well-balanced mind and an heroic and untameable spirit.

 

To understand the action of the Suffragettes it is necessary to go back in history and trace in brief the treatment which has been adopted in past centuries and in other countries towards those who, like the present day Suffragettes, have incurred imprisonment, not on account of degrading crimes implying moral turpitude, but on account of actions taken with a political object.

In ancient days shoe who conspired to reform the government were dealt with barbarously; first they were tortured, then they were killed, and finally their bodies were mutilated. Later on, though the death penalty was still enacted, the savage accompaniments were omitted. As times advance, public opinion demanded greater and greater differentiation between the treatment of ordinary criminals punished for their selfish anti-social actions and that of men and women who had run counter to the law in consequence of their political views.

 

Even in the Bastille, we find political prisoners given considerable privileges; thus Parades was allowed to have what books he pleased, to carry on correspondence, and to be visited by friends. In the early part of the last century Cobbett was imprisoned in this country; not only did he have books and correspondence, but he was actually allowed to have the constant company of one of his children, who took up his abode in the prison to be with him. The condition of the political prisons of Neapolitan King Bomba in the forties raised a storm of indignation in the is country, because though they had certain privileges as to writing and reading, they were in other respects treated as common criminals and subjected to unhealthy and degrading conditions.

From the commencement, in dealing with the Suffrage prisoners, the Government departed from this honourable tradition.

Christobel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney, in October 1905, were sentenced to the third division in Strangways Gaol, Manchester, and were thus classed as the lowest criminals.  Again in July, 1906, Annie Kenney and the others suffered imprisonment in the second division (a slightly better class, but still totally different from that allotted to political offenders.) In October 1906, ten more women were arrested and nine were sent to the second division and one to the third. This time, considerable feeling was aroused, because among the number was the daughter of Richard Cobden. Liberal members appealed to the Home Secretary, Mr. Gladstone, and he made representations to the magistrate, and they were transferred to the first division and received treatment approximating to that of political prisoners. For some twelve months, this practice prevailed, then once again, the old methods was adopted. Suffrage prisoners were sent to the second and in some cased to the third division and there suffered the full  treatment of prison discipline. Visitors and correspondence were only allowed at rare intervals, and the latter was always open to inspection by the authorities. Permission was refused Christabel Pankhurst to write a book in prison, which was not to have been published until she came out.

 

At first women suffrage prisoners accepted this without protest the punishment which was meted out to them; their compassion for the ordinary prisoners (many of whom for quite trivial offences were being treated in a way which would evidently unfit them for life when they came out) prompted them to protest rather against the whole system of prison treatment than against the absence of differentiation in their favour. But as time went on they realized that by remaining silent on this matter they were allowing the traditions of proper treatment of political offenders  to be abrogated, and in order that the future political prisoners might not suffer It was necessary to protest.

At first their protest was confined to words; the Home Secretary appealed to. He refused to make any change, and offered two excused for his position – firstly, that the matter was one for the magistrate and not for himself, secondly, that the offenses were ordinary breaches of the law and to be punished as such. To these he subsequently added a third excuse to the effect that the prisoners had for a time been put in the first division but had abused their privileges. There is an element of inconsistency in these replies, which are to some extend mutually destructive, but in addition each can be directly answered.

The Home Secretary undoubtedly possesses the power by the use of the Royal Prerogative of mercy to order the removal of a prison to a higher class. Even without using this he can make recommendations to the magistrate, as was actually done in 1906. …

With regard to the second assertion, that the Suffragettes are not political offenders, we have the decision of an English Court in the year 1891 in the extradition case of Rex vs. Cathioni, in which it was laid down that an offence is political if it is committed with a political object, even thought it be the offence of murder itself. Moreover, we have the test offered by the Rr. Honorable Gladstone, of public opinion , whether in the eyes of the public the offender is considered guilty of moral turpitude.

According to both these, all the women suffrage prisoners have been political offenders.

As for Mr. Gladstone’s third excuse, no charge was ever made at the time, nor has any charge whatever been formulated since.

When Mrs. Pankurst and Christable Pankhurst had been in prison together in the autumn of 1908, Mrs. Pankhurst had claimed the right to speak to her daughter while in exercise. This led to a severe reproof from the wardresses, which roused the anger of the other suffragettes present., who made a protest.  Punishments were meted out all around, and Mrs. Pankhurst was kept in close confinement, but at length, the Government gave in and she was permitted to talk to her daughter at stated times.

It was not, however, till June 1909, that prison tactics were decided on by the members of the WSPU, as a definite ploy. The essential feature was that a claim was to be made for treatment as political offenders. If this was disregarded a protest was to be made inside the walls of the prison. This would take the shape of a passive resistance to prison regulations, to wearing prison dress, to confinement in separate cells, to routines of prison life; and this was to be followed by breaking the windows of the cells, at once a vigorous protest against prison discipline and a concrete and effective method o f remedying a serious abuse, the absence of proper ventilation.

All these methods were, in fact, carried out, but by the heroic courage of one woman a still more terrible method was been put into operation. Miss Wallace Dunlop adopted as the strongest protest she could make, a method used in the Russian Prisons by the prisoners –hunger strike. The hunger strike is passive resistance carried to its supreme limit. It offers no active resistance to wrong, but it frankly stakes life in the effort to win justice.

Mrs Wallace Dunlop said in effect to the Government; “I hold the rights of political prisoners so sacred that I am willing to die in their defence; choose, therefore, between doing justice and allowing me to die in prison.”

It was a terrible step to take, involving untold suffering as well as risk of life, but Mrs. Wallace Dunlop with a full sense of seriousness of what she was doing, had made up her mind and intended to go through with what  she had undertaken. In sprite of threats and cajoling, in spite of great physical distress, she remained firm. And the end of four days, the Government gave in. They would not give her political treatment, it is true, but equally, they would not let her die in prison. They ordered her release. Thirteen other woman suffrage prisoners who went to Holloway a few days later also adopted the hunger strike. They first they carried out the protest against prison discipline which they had premeditated. For this they had to face the severe rigours of prison punishment, close confinement for several days without exercise in narrow, airless and semi dark cells, and under under these conditions may of them faced hunger for three, four, five and some for over six days. In the end they all won; their spirit proved triumphant over physical suffering. They were released by order of the Government lest that great releaser, Death should free them from their bondage before their sentences expired.