Mrs. [Kate] Harvey’s Imprisonment.
Message From Mrs. Harvey.
Comrades,— I planned a very different first week out of Holloway, but I
reckoned without the Governor! And it is a bitter disappointment to be unable
to gather up the threads of my life more rapidly; I want, more than I can
express, to be working with you again.
The fight, however, is going on, and will go on, until we have done everything
in our power to force some logic and common-sense into the rules and
regulations of the Home Office; at present they are singularly deficient in
both.
Lying here I have learned the history of the last month. I am overwhelmed
with the thought of all you have done, and hope before long to have the
privilege of showing my keen appreciation of your strenuous efforts and of
thanking you for your personal sympathy. Meanwhile, I am trying to let
patience have her perfect work, so that all the sooner I may be able to
attack arrears of work. ―Yours, as ever,
K. Harvey.
The Government’s Vindictiveness.
The Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League have
endeavoured ever since the prosecution of Mrs. Harvey to demonstrate the
vindictiveness of the Government’s pursuit of that lady; and if further
evidence of it were required it would be found in the treatment she has
received at the hands of the Governor of Holloway and the Home Office.
Owing to the shameful dampness of her cell — a hospital cell! — after the
daily scrubbing, Mrs. Harvey contracted a rheumatic chill at the beginning of
the week before her release. Application was at once made to the Governor and
the Home Office for the services of a homeopathic doctor, Mrs. Harvey being
accustomed to that form of medical treatment. It may be of interest to know
that when a similar request was made recently, on behalf of Miss Forbes
Robertson [another suffragette, arrested for window-smashing], it was not
only granted without delay, but her own medical adviser was brought from
St. Leonards at the
Government’s expense. In the case of Mrs. Harvey the request was curtly and
insultingly refused.
The Governor’s Idea of Her “Satisfactory Condition.”
Had Mrs. Harvey received the necessary treatment at the time she applied for
it, there is little doubt that the indisposition would have proved a slight
one. In consequence of the attitude of the authorities, and the distress of
mind occasioned by it to a woman of frail constitution, her condition changed
gravely for the worse, and for several days was very serious, the
indisposition having developed into gastric catarrh. Mrs. Harvey suffered
great pain, was completely helpless, and her temperature rose. In two days
she lost a stone in weight, and her appearance even after much improvement
had taken place was a great shock to her solicitor, who was allowed to visit
her later on. But in reply to a telegram from her daughter (the greatest
anxiety being felt owing to the refusal to allow the attendance of a
homeopathic medical adviser), the Governor had the assurance to reply that
the prisoner’s condition was “satisfactory.”
…It would almost seem as if prison authorities considered a dangerous illness
to be the “satisfactory” state for prisoners who suffer for principle and not
for crime.
When Mrs. Harvey requested that a renewed petition be forwarded to the Home
Office on this question of medical attendance, the Governor informed her that
this could not be done until the result — i.e., the acceptance
or refusal — of a prior petition (to be allowed to see her solicitor) was
settled. Almost immediately after he had made this excuse for delay, the
wardresses wished to prepare Mrs. Harvey for the solicitor’s visit! The
object of the Governor’s behaviour, in pretending he did not know of the
result of the prior petition when he had already instructed the staff in that
result, was to postpone further petitioning until the week-end, and thus to
manufacture still more delay.
Such petty meanness and falsehood for no purpose, save more completely to
annoy and distress a sick and helpless woman, would be contemptible in a
porter or a warder. What is it, then, in the Governor of a Government
institution? It reflects beyond doubt the official attitude towards those
who are not deemed powerful enough to retaliate.
Solitary Confinement — Solitary Exercise.
Another convenient method of torture was provided by the fact that Mrs.
Harvey suffers painfully from deafness. No sound penetrated her cell, nor
was she allowed to have her cell-door open, although in the hospital such a
privilege is frequently permitted to the sick or afflicted. Rule 243a,
specially devised to give privileges to those whose lack of “moral
turpitude” entitles them to come under it, became, in her case, an instrument
of torture. It guarantees Suffrage prisoners against association with
criminals, and allows them to exercise together: but as the only Suffrage
prisoners were hunger-striking, and that entails solitary confinement, Mrs.
Harvey was not allowed to see them. Her request that she might be allowed to
be in the ward with the women and babies was refused. She was exercised
alone, as well as locked up alone, in utter silence as well as solitude for
the entire month — a refinement of cruelty, we venture to say, which reflects
little credit on the gentlemen who indulged in it, or the system which allows
it.
We believe these facts speak for themselves, and have only to be placed
before the public to secure their condemnation. We maintain that prisoners
have as clear a claim to the special form of medical treatment, as they have
to the special form of religious ministration in which they believe and in
which they feel secure.
There are a few other mentions of the Harvey case scattered around in the same issue, mostly examples of how it served as a rallying cry at various suffrage meetings.
