OLD NEWS/OPINION: Hunger striker wasn't well served by attention

In mid-January 1921, Mrs. Ernest S. Harrington of Danville, Ill., consented to drink a glass of milk, and it was front-page news in Arkansas.

Actually, across this great land, newspapers informed Americans that Sadie Harrington's 48-day hunger strike was over.

Make that her purported 48-day hunger strike.

In the first two decades of the 20th century, self-starving arose as a perilous but powerful tool for political prisoners. In principled passive aggression, the powerless damaged themselves to shame their oppressors. In Sadie's case, it's not clear who was the oppressed.

Victoria Wolcott, a history professor at the University of Buffalo, identifies the first modern hunger striker as Marion Dunlop, a British suffragist who refused to eat while in prison in 1909 and was forcibly fed. Dunlop had been convicted of committing petty crime while protesting. (She had marked a wall in the House of Commons with a rubber stamp.) She refused to pay her fine and was packed off to prison for a month.

Historically, dissidents lost the spotlight when they entered British prisons, but word of Dunlop's hunger strike vaulted the walls. Public outcry, Wolcott writes, allowed her to assert her status as a political prisoner. "Political prisoners had more rights than other prisoners and were not considered merely criminals," Wolcott writes.

When hunger-striking suffragists such as Dunlop were force-fed, news traveled. After release, she and her sisters-in-arms spoke and wrote about the brutality of a process that shocked decent people, especially, Wolcott writes, because of the prevailing idea of women's bodies as frail vessels. The uproar provided proof of concept: Hunger strikes get widespread attention. (See arkansasonline.com/125strike.)

Dunlop's first speech after her release was attended by a lawyer visiting England from India, Mohandas Gandhi. It's a powerful weapon, refusing to eat.

Some American suffragists, notably Alice Paul, eventually followed the example of the British radicals. But after ratification of the 19th Amendment in August 1920 outlawed disenfranchising voters on the basis of sex, reports on hunger strikes for suffrage gave way to reports on hunger strikes for Irish independence.

Beginning with the Easter Uprising of 1916, some Irish dissidents who sought independence from Britain refused to eat in prison. In fall 1920, those self-starving Irish political prisoners included Terence MacSwiney, lord mayor of Cork. MacSwiney was arrested for having seditious documents and a code key. He starved himself all the way to death, the first Irish republican to do so. Reactions reverberated for weeks. As far away from the fray as Arkansas, front pages of the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat followed his decline and demise.

Early in 1921, MacSwiney's brother and a compatriot — both also described by the Gazette as lord mayors of Cork — stowed away on a steamer to the United States. The Gazette reminded its readers how MacSwiney had died when its Jan. 5 front page reported these Irishmen as picked up and released by police in Virginia. The starved martyr's compatriots soon set about making speeches and fundraising for Sinn Fein. (Full disclosure: My sainted grandfather quite likely contributed.)

In an essay about Terence MacSwiney's death, historian Jason Perlman writes that "the hunger strike is a weapon which is designed to turn weakness into strength, a political and propaganda tool which has the power to cast the striking prisoners as victims and the government being struck against as the oppressor."

In this country, the tool was picked up and used by domestic dissidents. And by "domestic," I mean family members trying to coerce less religious family members to go to church.

In October 1920, a minister at Lexington, Ky., made headlines when he stopped eating for 27 days in an attempt to shame his wayward daughter into attending his revivals. He also wanted her to stop teaching school. She wouldn't quit teaching, and, after a while, he went back to eating.

The save-a-soul diet didn't work for that preacher — unless his goal was not in fact to bring his girl to God but rather to swell his congregation, which swoll up. In the case of Sadie Harrington, though, the weapon backfired spectacularly. Here's a headline from the Jan. 16, 1921, Gazette:

Abandons Hunger Strike to Save Husband's Soul

The Plump Mrs. Harrington of Danville, Ill., Gives Up as Hopeless Effort to Force Ernie to Become a Holy Roller Preacher

According to The New York Times, Sadie had declared on Nov. 20, 1920, that she would never eat again unless her husband, Ernest, joined her church and began to preach the Gospel.

Ernie Harrington was a popular butcher with a grocery store. Sometimes, he smoked. In news reports picked up by various papers, such as the Chattanooga News and The Moline (Ill.) Dispatch and The New York Times, Ernie seems so sensible and likable that the adjectives applied to Sadie convey disapproval. Especially that word "plump."

On Jan. 9, the Gazette reported that after months of thinking she was being dramatic, Ernie was concerned about Sadie's health.

"I thought she was only bluffing when she started," he said, "and would soon give up her foolish notion. But I now see she is determined to go the limit, but I am just as determined as she is."

On Jan. 10, the Times reported that although Sadie looked unchanged to many, Ernie thought she had lost 70 pounds. But he had talked to lawyers who assured him he would not be prosecuted should her self-starvation lead to death:

"I have done everything to induce her to eat except to join her church and I will not do that."

I'm sure it matters that women didn't have much power in their marriages, and who knows what that relationship was actually like. But Ernie was at the store trying to sell groceries while being pestered by reporters. Meanwhile, she was chewing ice chips in bed, surrounded by a group of fans who praised her and egged her on.

On Jan. 12, a Fox newsreel cameraman from Chicago, a "husky" fellow named Harry Birch, invaded the Harrington home.

Birch had stopped in at the grocery store for permission to meet Sadie, and after being kicked out politely enough, he headed up to the house. Then Ernie came home.

Birch's nose was broken, both eyes were closed and his face was swollen, but he declined to file a complaint. He told the Moline Dispatch that Ernie had walked into the house, taken off his coat and invited him out to the woodshed.

By Jan. 15, Sadie's religious coterie left her. When her minister encouraged her to break her fast and drink some milk, she did. She said:

"I thought I heard the voice of the Lord telling me to take no food until Ernie had turned to the church, but it may be that I was wrong."

It also may be that she overheard the doctor saying he didn't believe she'd gone without food more than a week or two. And, that there was a Grand Jury about to look into religious fanaticism in the area. Also, that the prosecutor planned to have her sanity investigated.

As her husband said, she agreed to go back to her ordinary routine of life.

Which involved anonymity.

Somebody should turn this into a movie.

Email:

cstorey@adgnewsroom.com

This ad for cold cream in the Jan. 16, 1921, Arkansas Gazette tells women they need to work at staying pretty or their husbands won't want them. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
This ad for cold cream in the Jan. 16, 1921, Arkansas Gazette tells women they need to work at staying pretty or their husbands won't want them. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
If your man's not making enough money, maybe he needs more iron in his blood. Ad from the Jan. 16, 1921, Arkansas Gazette. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
If your man's not making enough money, maybe he needs more iron in his blood. Ad from the Jan. 16, 1921, Arkansas Gazette. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

Upcoming Events