Part 32 (1/2)

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I have a lame foot.” But I was jerked down the steps and away into the dark. I didn't have my feet on the ground. I guess that saved me. I heard Mrs. Cosu, who was being dragged along with me, call, ”Be careful of your foot.”

Out of doors it was very dark. The building to which they took us was lighted up as we came to it. I only remember the American flag flying above it because it caught the light from a window in the wing. We were rushed into a large room that we found opened on a large hall with stone cells on each side. They were perfectly dark. Punishment cells is what they call them. Mine was filthy. It had no window save a slip at the top and no furniture but an iron bed covered with a thin straw pad, and an open toilet flushed from outside the cell . . . .

In the hall outside was a man called Captain Reems. He had on a uniform and was brandis.h.i.+ng a thick stick and shouting as we were shoved into the corridor, ”d.a.m.n you, get in here.”

I saw Dorothy Day brought in. She is a frail girl. The two men handling her were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly they lifted her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron bench-twice. As they ran me past, she was lying there with her arms out, and we heard one of the men yell, ”The suffrager! My mother ain't no suffrager. I'll put you through .”

At the end of the corridor they pushed me through a door. Then I lost my balance and fell against the iron bed. Mrs. Cosu struck the wall. Then they threw in two mats and two dirty blankets.

There was no light but from the corridor. The door was barred from top to bottom. The walls and floors were brick or stone cemented over. Mrs. Cosu would not let me lie on the floor. She put me on the couch and stretched out on the floor on one of the two pads they threw in. We had only lain there a few minutes, trying to get our breath, when Mrs. Lewis, doubled over and handled like a sack of something, was literally thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed. We thought she was dead. She didn't move. We were crying over her as we lifted her to the pad on my bed, when we heard Miss Burns call:

”Where is Mrs. Nolan?”

I replied, ”I am here.”

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Mrs. Cosu called out, ”They have just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here, too.”

At this Mr. Whittaker came to the door and told us not to dare to speak, or he would put the brace and bit in our mouths and the straitjacket on our bodies. We were so terrified we kept very still. Mrs. Lewis was not unconscious; she was only stunned. But Mrs. Cosu was desperately ill as the night wore on. She had a bad heart attack and was then vomiting. We called and called. We asked them1to send our own doctor, because we thought she was dying . . . . They [the guards paid no attention. A cold wind blew in on us from the outside, and we three lay there s.h.i.+vering and only half conscious until morning.

”One at a time, come out,” we heard some one call at the barred door early in the morning. I went first. I bade them both good- by. I didn't know where I was going or whether I would ever see them again. They took me to Mr. Whittaker's office, where he called my name.

”You're Mrs. Mary Nolan,” said Whittaker.

”You're posted,” said I.

”Are you willing to put on prison dress and go to the workroom?”

said he.

I said, ”No.”

”Don't you know now that I am Mr. Whittaker, the superintendent?”

he asked.

”Is there any age limit to your workhouse?” I said. ”Would a woman of seventy-three or a child of two be sent here?”

I think I made him think. He motioned to the guard.

”Get a doctor to examine her,” he said.

In the hospital cottage I was met by Mrs. Herndon and taken to a little room with two white beds and a hospital table.

”You can lie down if you want to,” she said.

I took off my coat and hat. I just lay down on the bed and fell into a kind of stupor. It was nearly noon and I had had no food offered me since the sandwiches our friends brought us in the courtroom at noon the day before.

The doctor came and examined my heart. Then he examined my lame foot. It had a long blue bruise above the ankle, where they had knocked me as they took me across the night

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