Mrs. Ruland's Advanced Placement United States History Class

Hunger Striker Describes Forcible Feeding.

Philadelphia, Jan. 22.-"Revolting" is the word Miss Alice Paul, the American suffragette, who returned on Thursday by the steamer Haverford from exciting adventures in England, applies to the forced feeding which she endured in Holloway jail. Miss Paul, by the way, doesn't look at all like the popular conception of an agitator. She astonishes persons who sees her for the first time, after hearing of her doings, by her exceedingly feminine appearance. She is a delicate slip of a girl, whom no one would suspect of being an interrupter of public meetings and a victim of prison hardships.

"I resorted to the hunger strike method twice," she added to a Tribune reporter. "I was clapped into jail three times while in England, and during my first and second terms I refused to eat. Once I didn't touch food for five days. Then the authorities decided to feed me by force. I refused to wear the prison garb, too, and I would not perform the labor I was sentenced to do; so, of course, I had to spend my days in bed. When the forcible feedings was ordered I was taken from my bed, carried to another room and forced into a chair, bound with sheets and sat upon bodily by a fat murderer, whose duty it was to keep me still. Then the prison doctor, assisted by two woman attendants, placed a rubber tube up my nostrils and and pumped liquid food through it into the stomach. Twice a day for a month, from November 1 to December 1, this was done."

When Miss Paul was asked if she ever threw a stone through a window, she said:

"No, indeed. I never did and I never shall. I think such deeds belong to rioters and women are seldom rioters."

Miss Paul merely threw words at the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, and frightened him, she says, nearly to death. It was during a meeting at Guild Hall. Miss Paul, who seems not to mind going without food for any length of time, got into the hall the night before, disguised as a scrub woman, and secreted herself until the meeting began.

"It was a weary vigil," she said, "but it paid. The Prime Minister made a most eloquent speech, and I listened, waiting for a chance to break in. At last there came a pause. Summoning all my strength, I shouted at the top of my voice: "How about votes for women?

"You would have thought I had thrown a bomb. There was serious disorder, but Mr. Asquith was the most startled of all. You see, the hall was guarded by a cordon of police, and he felt safe from interruption. While the officers searched for me he stood like a statue, after one great start. I was found and arrested, and imprisonment followed."

Miss Paul left Philadelphia for her home in Moorestown, N. J., immediately after landing, and intends to give her attention for the present to the recovery of her health, which suffered somewhat from her stormy experience. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and had gone to England to continue her studies, when she was drawn into the militant suffrage movement.

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