Edna Purtell: Suffragist

Hartford, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., 1918 Phillip Hoose “He broke two of my fingers taking my banner away.”

Edna took the train to Washington. On August 6, she and hundreds of other suffragists hoisted long, streaming banners and began to march toward Lafayette Park, shouting slogans as they advanced. They were angry that Democrats in the U.S. Senate had gone on summer recess without voting on a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would give women the right to vote. At the park, they demanded that President Woodrow Wilson come out of the White House to speak with them. But whenever one of the women tried to speak, she was grabbed by the police and forced into a patrol wagon. Outraged, a few women scaled a statue of Lafayette and shouted their defiance from the top to all who could hear.

Edna was one of them: “I was so young that I could climb the statue and call out, ‘Lafayette, we are here!’ The police wouldn’t arrest you until you began to speak. Those were their orders. I was arrested four times for climbing the statue. Some of the police would throw us in the wagon, others would help us in. They would take us down to the jail, then they’d let us go. The older women couldn’t go back to Lafayette Park, but I went back. I carried the American flag, and sometimes another banner that said, ‘I come from Connecticut, the Cradle of Liberty.’ It was purple, white and gold [suffragist colors].

“The last time I was arrested a young policeman came over [and said] they had orders to take those banners away from us. I said to him, ‘Oh, I can’t give you this banner. This banner is my banner of liberty’ . . . [Then] a great big cop came along and told him, ‘Take [her banner] away.’ The young cop said to him, ‘You take it away.’ [The other cop] bent back my fingers, and he broke two of them taking it away . . . We were taken to the Washington District workhouse. Many of the women were desperately ill. We couldn’t even drink the water in that place.”

The Washington District workhouse was set in a swamp. Years before, it had been declared “unfit for human habitation” and had been closed down. Shortly after they entered, the women voted to go on a hunger strike. That meant they would live only on the reddish brown drinking water that trickled through rusted pipes. One prisoner after another became ill. U.S. senators who visited were shocked by the conditions and demanded their release. President Wilson received a flood of telegrams from outraged citizens, and, after five days, the women were freed. Edna’s broken fingers were still untreated when she stepped outside. The women immediately applied for a permit to hold a second rally in Lafayette Park. This time, police made no attempt to stop them.

Edna’s arrest and imprisonment made the Hartford newspapers. When she returned to her job in the filing department of the Travelers Insurance Company, her admiring co-workers greeted her with a large sign reading VOTES FOR WOMEN. The company president wasn’t pleased.

“When I came back, Batterson [the president] called me down [to his office]. He said, ‘You know, Miss Purtell, you’re liked very well here, but we don’t want you to be talking about suffrage . . .’ I said to him, ‘Mr. Batterson, during work hours I’ll take care of my job. But once I get in that elevator, what I talk about is my business, not yours. And on our coffee break, that’s our coffee break, and I’ll talk about anything I want.’”

Which factor led to the release of the women imprisoned in the Washington District workhouse?
Pressure from the public and officials
The lack of space inside the workhouse
A settlement negotiated with the police force
Newspaper coverage of Edna Purtell’s injuries