Lucy Burns - Life in Jail

Life in Jail

Burns was arrested while picketing the White House and was sent to Occoquan Workhouse. In jail, Burns joined Alice Paul and many other women in hunger strikes to demonstrate their commitment to their cause, asserting that they were political prisoners. Burns was prepared for the hunger strikes since she had previously participated in them in Europe with the WSPU. Being imprisoned did not stop Burns activism. From within the workhouse she organized protests with other prisoners.

Burns also helped organize and circulate one of the first documents that defined the status of political prisoners. This document described the rights of political prisoners and listed their demands for an attorney, family visits, reading and writing materials, and food from outside the prison. It was circulated through holes in the walls until every suffrage prisoner had signed it. Once prison official realized what Burns was doing, they had her transferred to a district jail and put in solitary confinement.

After Burns was released, she was quickly rearrested for continuing protests, picketing, and marching at the White House. Upon her third arrest in 1917, the judge aimed to make an example of Burns, and she was the given the maximum sentence. Once again a prisoner at Occoquan Workhouse, Lucy Burns endured what is remembered as the “Night of Terror.” The women were treated brutally and were refused medical attention. To unite the women, Burns tried to call roll and refused to stop despite numerous threats by the guards. When they realized Lucy Burns spirit was not going to be easily broken, they handcuffed her hands above her head to her cell door and left her that way for the entire night. Burns was so loved and respected by her fellow suffragists that the woman in the cell across from her held her hands above her head and stood in the same position. Despite her courage and extraordinary leadership skills, the burden of working so diligently did bother Burns at times; she once told Alice Paul, “I am so nervous I cannot eat or sleep. I am such a coward I ought to be a village seamstress, instead of a Woman’s Party organizer.”

After enduring the torture of the “Night of Terror,” the women refused to eat for three days. The guards tried to tempt the women with fried chicken, but this was only viewed as an insult; Burns told the other women “I think this riotous feast which has just passed our doors is the last effort of the institution to dislodge all of us who can be dislodged. They think there is nothing in our souls above fried chicken.”

Realizing something urgent needed to be done or he would potentially have dead prisoners on his hands, the warden moved Burns to another jail and told the remaining women that the strike was over. He also ordered Burns to be force fed. Historian Eleanor Clift recounts that the force feeding of Lucy Burns required "five people to hold her down, and when she refused to open her mouth, they shoved the feeding tube up her nostril." This treatment was extremely painful and dangerous, causing Burns to have severe nosebleeds. Of the well-known suffragists of the era, Burns spent the most time in jail.