From the archive, 8 July 1914: The cruelty of forcible feeding
Editorial: The Home Secretary is persisting in a 'modern barbarity' in force feeding suffragettes against their will
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We publish to-day two reasoned and powerful pleas, the one from distinguished Free Church ministers, the other from a large number of medical men, against the practice of forcible feeding still persisted in by the Home Secretary, although the “Cat and Mouse” Bill was understood to have been passed as a substitute for a practice which public opinion rightly and with increasing urgency condemns.
Both petitions are addressed to the Home Secretary, and will, we trust, carry weight with him, and at least secure the interview for which the medical men ask and which the gravity of the case and the weight of the protest should make it difficult to refuse.
Forcible feeding, as carried out against resisting prisoners, is frankly a form of torture, and it is really as such that Mr. McKenna, so far as we
understand his position, defends it. He says it is deterrent, and so it well may be, but so would be any other form of torture - the thumbscrew or the rack, or any other ancient and accredited method of inflicting intolerable pain; yet we do not now have resort to these methods, not even against women.
Perhaps this is mere weakness and sentimentalism and we ought in fact revert in this matter to the wisdom of our rather remote ancestors. But unless we are prepared to do this there seems to be no particular reason for persisting in this modern barbarity and for making executioners of our prison doctors and assistants to them of the wardresses.
It is not good for them, it is a violation of every tolerable theory of prison discipline and punishment, if it deters some it vehemently stimulates others, and on the balance it does infinitely more to keep alive than to discourage the movement against which it is directed. In a word, it is as stupid as it is cruel. Let our governors see to it, or let the public see to them.
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