Force feeding in Newcastle Gaol
Although most often associated with the treatment of suffragettes, force-feeding was also used more widely in prisons as a means of imposing discipline. A number of women supporting the suffrage movement went on hunger strike in Newcastle Gaol and were subjected to the ordeal of force feeding (for example, Lady Constance Lytton in 1909). However, what is less well-known is that some men held in the gaol during and after the First World War also underwent the ordeal of force feeding. These men were all Conscientious Objectors.
The Military Service Act 1916 introduced compulsory military conscription for all single men aged between 18 and 41 who were not eligible for exemption. Conscientious Objectors could claim the right to refuse military service on a number of moral, ethical, political and/or religious grounds - and could put their case for exemption to a local Tribunal. There were around 16,000 conscientious objectors during the First World War. Most of these men accepted alternative civilian jobs to help the war effort or worked as stretcher-bearers in the army, for example. However, around 6000 COs refused to compromise, and of these almost 1000 became known as ‘absolutists’. Although conscripted and classified as soldiers, the ‘absolutists’ refused to perform military service or to work in non-combatant roles of any sort, whether ‘economic, commercial, or other activities’, believing that this would amount to aiding the war effort. They were court-martialled, imprisoned, and released, only for the cycle to be repeated.
British conscription poster for the Military Service Act 1916. Source London: Parliamentary and Joint Labour Recruiting Committees. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
A number of these men were held in Newcastle Gaol. One such man was John George ‘Jack’ Sadler. Sadler refused to be conscripted and applied to the Newcastle Local Tribunal for recognition as a conscientious objector, to exempt him from military service. When this was refused on 28 March 1916, he appealed and on 11 May 1916, the Northumberland Appeal Tribunal agreed that Sadler was a genuine conscientious objector but ordered him to get a civilian job involving 'work of national importance’. However, Sadler was an 'absolutist', believing that such work would in effect contribute to furthering the war, so claimed the right to be exempted absolutely from any service. On 3 November 1916 Sadler was arrested at his house as an absentee from the Army. He was fined by Newcastle Magistrates’ Court and formally enlisted without his consent on 6 November 1916. On 7 November, he refused an order to wear Army uniform and was charged with the military offence of disobedience. An Army Court-Martial convicted him of disobedience and Sadler was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour, with the sentence commuted to six months. Sadler served his sentence partly in Newcastle Prison, and partly in Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs Prisons, London.
Sadler was one of an increasing number of COs held in prison. Conditions in prison were poor and the treatment harsh. The government asked the Central Tribunal to review all cases of COs who had been sentenced to at least three months imprisonment, and, if satisfied that a man was a 'genuine' conscientious objector, to offer him both release from prison and suspension from Army service, on condition of accepting a special scheme of civilian work set up under the Home Office. After an interview in January 1917 the Central Tribunal accepted that Sadler was a genuine objector, but Sadler believed that accepting the Home Office Scheme would be unacceptable on the same grounds as the work of national importance, and he was returned to gaol. On release, he was returned to the Army, again ordered to put on uniform, again refused, again court-martialled and was sentenced to two years hard labour, again commuted to six months. On his second release, the cycle began for the third time. Sadler was still in Newcastle prison in early 1919.
In fact, despite the end of the First World War in November 1918, many COs remained behind bars; some chose to go on hunger strike until either death or release in protest at their continued incarceration. In 1913, the Prison Commissioners of England and Wales had begun to maintain a register of hunger strikes in English prisons – the ‘Register of Criminal Prisoners on Hunger Strike (other than Suffragettes)’. It recorded why the prisoner was hunger striking, the methods used by prison doctors to deal with their refusal to take food, and the prisons in which protests took place. Research by Ian Miller established that between 1913 and 1940, the Register of Criminal Prisoners on Hunger Strike (other than Suffragettes) detailed 834 prisoners who went on hunger strike.
Unfortunately, Miller’s research also revealed that Newcastle was one of the nineteen prisons with the highest number of incidences of force-feeding being performed. COs on hunger strike in Newcastle Gaol – including Jack Sadler - were force fed by a rubber tube inserted in the mouth extending to the stomach, through which liquid nourishment was poured. As Max Hodgson noted, ‘Generally carried out twice a day, it was often performed by inexperienced prison medical officers on struggling patients.’ Some of the cases are particularly shocking. In June 1918, the case of the force-feeding of a CO in Newcastle Gaol was raised in the House of Commons. Philip Snowden, a Labour MP and staunch critic of conscription, asked the Home Secretary if H. Walker, a conscientious objector in Newcastle Gaol, had been forcibly fed and if any inquiry would be made into the,
‘allegations of barbarous treatment by the prison medical officer; whether Walker was forced to the cell floor, held down by several officers, and a feeding-tube forced through his nose in such a violent manner as to cause intense suffering and bleeding, meanwhile the doctor sitting laughing at him and taunting him by imitating his moans and cries; and whether the man is still in a state of extreme weakness as a consequence of this treatment?’
The answer from a Mr Brace, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department is both revealing and chilling:
‘These allegations have been investigated by the visiting committee of the prison, who find that the prisoner's refusal to take food made it necessary to administer food artificially; that the prisoner violently resisted; that no more force was used by the prison officials than was required to overcome his violence; that the medical officer behaved in a kindly and considerate manner throughout, and that the prisoner is not in a state of weakness owing to his treatment, and has since then taken food voluntarily.’ (House of Commons Debates (4 June 1918), vol. 106 col. 1386)
In July 1918, Snowden also raised the case of Frank Higgins in the House of Commons. Higgins was then under sentence of two years' hard labour in Newcastle Gaol, had gone on hunger strike and was being force-fed. After his arrest on 13 April, it appeared that Higgins had been continuously hunger-striking, first in Leeds Prison and then in the military hospital at Newcastle, and subsequently in Newcastle Gaol. The Home Secretary, Sir G. Cave noted that Higgins had refused food while in Leeds Prison but did not know whether he had also refused food while in military custody between 9 May and 21 June. However, since Higgins had been held in Newcastle Prison after receiving a further sentence on 21 June, he had refused food and continued to do so in July, although the Home Secretary thought that Higgins might have taken some food voluntarily for a few days in early July. In fact, The Register of Criminal Prisoners on Hunger Strike (other than Suffragettes) records that between 1917 and 1918, CO Frank Higgins was force-fed by prison doctors twenty-two times in seven days in Newcastle Gaol, followed by a further 188 feedings over a period of sixty-three days.
In 1918, immediately after the death of CO William Edward Burns in Hull after being force-fed, all prisons were advised that ‘artificial feeding’ should no longer be used on COs. Instead, hunger-striking prisoners could be released from gaol temporarily but recalled under The Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act of 1913 (better-known as the Cat and Mouse Act) when their health was deemed sufficiently restored. In this way Jack Sadler was temporarily discharged from Newcastle Prison from 5 March to 3 April 1919. Interestingly, on 10 March 1919 questions were again raised in Parliament about the treatment of COs in Newcastle Prison. 11 COs had begun hunger-striking on 16 February. Responding to suggestions of their mistreatment in Newcastle Prison, the Home Secretary said,
'The conscientious objector has not done what the average man in this country considers to be his duty to his country… Every man in prison today has been found not to have such a conscientious objection as would entitle him to total exemption'.
Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Health Act 1913 ('Cat and Mouse' Act). Image courtesy of Parliament.UK
In April 1919 it was ordered that all COs still in prison who had already served at least 20 months would have their sentences commuted to time served.
Dr Clare Sandford-Couch
Leeds Beckett University
For more information on the force feeding of COs, see Ian Miller, A History of Force Feeding (2016). The Imperial War Museum also carries some fantastic resources on Conscientious Objectors, including oral histories. We have also included below, this fantastic film from the remarkable AmberSide Collection on the life of John Sadler. To see more from their archive click here
Amber Side ‘Sadler Story’ (1985), Amber Current Affairs Unit, 1985, 23 mins
