The campaign that led women suffrage prisoners to Occoquan Workhouse began in 1848, when the Seneca Falls Convention in New York launched the American women’s rights movement and adopted a resolution declaring that women should secure their right to the elective franchise, a measure Elizabeth Cady Stanton won with the help of Frederick Douglas. Progress remained slow, and by 1913 women had full suffrage only in nine states and the territory of Alaska. In 1916 Alice Paul founded the National Woman’s Party, which held the party in power responsible for the fate of woman suffrage and in 1917 began picketing the White House to press President Wilson and the Democratic Party to support the Susan B. Anthony amendment, first proposed in 1878. Beginning in June 1917, scores of women were arrested for unlawful assembly and sentenced either to pay a $25 fine or serve jail terms; rejecting what they saw as unjust fines, they received sentences from 30 to 60 days and in some cases 6 months. Some were sent to D.C. jails, but most went to Occoquan Workhouse in Lorton, Virginia. Those arrested included graduates of distinguished schools, students, teachers, nurses, at least two physicians, a geologist, a professor of history, and socially prominent women such as Lucy Ewing, niece of Adlai Stevenson, Vice President under Cleveland. The youngest arrested was 19 and the oldest woman to serve at Occoquan was 73. At the workhouse, the women had their mail withheld, faced unwashed blankets and contaminated food, were forced into prison dress, and were ordered to do prison labor. Insisting that they were political prisoners, some refused to work and were placed in solitary confinement on bread and water, while others led by Lucy Burns of the National Woman’s Party Executive Committee went on hunger strike and were force-fed. As reports of their treatment spread, public outrage and demands for an investigation forced their release late in 1917, and their sentences were reversed on appeal in 1918. On August 26, 1920, the Susan B. Anthony amendment was ratified, ending a 72-year struggle for basic political rights, and the women imprisoned at Occoquan contributed significantly to that victory.
