"Eventually eight of the women received sentences of imprisonment varying from one month to fourteen days, whilst Charlotte Marsh was sent to prison for three months' hard labour, and Mrs. Leigh for four. We knew that Mrs. Leigh and her comrades in the Birmingham Prison would carry out the hunger strike, and, on the following Friday, September 24th, reports appeared in the Press that the Government had resorted to the horrible expedient of feeding them by force by means of a tube passed into the stomach. Filled with concern the committee of the Women's Social and Political Union at once applied both to the prison and to the Home Office to know if this were true but all information was refused. The W. S. P. U. now made inquiries as to the probable results of this treatment, and were informed that it was liable to cause laceration of the throat and grave and permanent injury to the digestive functions, and that, especially if the patient should resist, as the tube was being inserted or withdrawn there was serious danger of its going astray and penetrating the lungs or some other vital part. The whole operation, together with all the attendant circumstances, could not fail to put a most excessive strain upon the heart and the entire nervous system, and, if there were any heart weakness, death might ensue at any moment. In the Lancet for September 28th, 1872, a case was reported of a man under sentence of death, who had been forcibly fed by means of the stomach pump, that is to say by means of an india-rubber tube passed through the mouth into the stomach, the method used in the case of the Suffragettes. The man had died. In the same issue of the Lancet, appeared the opinion upon this question of several prominent medical men. Dr. Anderson Moxey, M.D,, M.R.C.P., had said: " If anyone were to ask me to name the worst possible treatment for suicidal starvation I should say unhesitatingly, forcible feeding by means of the stomach pump." Dr. Tennant stated that this method of feeding produced " an incentive to resistance," and that the exhaustion thereby introduced was sometimes so great as to cause death by syncope. Dr. Russell had met with a case in which death had occurred immediately after the placing of the tube " before it could be withdrawn, much less used " ; and Dr. Conolly was " appalled by the dangers resulting from the forcible administration of food by the mouth." Amongst the various important medical experts consulted by The Women's Social and Political Union was Dr. Forbes Winslow, whose wide experience in cases of insanity could not be questioned. When asked professionally to give his views on the subject he said: So far as the stomach pump is concerned it is an instrument I have long ago discontinued using, even in the most serious cases of melancholia, where the victim, perhaps from some religious delusion, refuses all nourishment. It possibly may be regarde by some as the most simple means of administering food, but this I challenge by saying at once that it is the most complicated and the most dangerous. . . . I have known some of the most serious injuries inflicted by the persistent use of the stomach pump. I have known a case in which the tongue has been partly bitten off where it had been twisted behind the feeding tube. He added that forcible feeding was especially dangerous in cases of heart and lung weakness or of rupture or hernia, and that the result of persistent use would be to seriously injure the constitution, to lacerate the parts surrounding the mouth, to break and ruin the teeth."