Prisoners (Temporary Discharge For Ill Health) Act 1913 - Women Writing About The Experience of Being Forcibly Fed

Women Writing About The Experience of Being Forcibly Fed

In a book called Suffrage and the Pankhursts, Jane Marcus argues that forcible feeding was the main image of the women's suffrage movement in the public imagination. Women wrote about how the experience made them feel in letters, diaries, speeches and suffrage publications, including Votes for Women and The Suffragette. One of the force-fed suffragettes, Lady Constance Lytton, wrote a book that suggested that working-class women were more likely to be forcibly fed in prison than upper-class women. In general, the procedure was described as a physical and mental violation that caused pain, suffering, emotional distress, humiliation, anguish and rage.

Read more about this topic:  Prisoners (Temporary Discharge For Ill Health) Act 1913

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