Greta spoke like the wardresses, in a tone out of which all modulation had gone.
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Two wardresses held her down while a doctor clamped open her mouth with a steel implement.
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But the German wardresses remained vaguely aware of her special status and seem to have relaxed in her company.
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A fellow Scottish prisoner, Lilias Mitchell, described the forcible feeding of the hunger strikers as "a sort of hell for two hours" and reported that Hudson "fought splendidly - knocked down all the six wardresses & told the doctor what she thought of him!"Leneman, Leah (1991). A Guid Cause. Aberdeen University Press. P112.
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Long before women were commonly employed as fully sworn police officers, many police forces employed uniformed women with limited powers to search and attend to female prisoners and deal with matters specifically affecting women and children. These female officers were often known as "police matrons". Officers in women's prisons sometimes also used the title of "matron"; sometimes the matron was a senior officer who supervised the other wardresses. Institutions such as children's homes and workhouses were also run by matrons.
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Wright remembered the wardresses were distressed at helping the doctor in this 'gruesome task'. After calling off hunger strike when suffragettes were going to be treated as political prisoners, she stopped eating again in protest at the length of sentence. Maud Arncliffe-Sennett wrote during Wright's force- feeding that it was a national disgrace. Due to the effect on her health, Wright was released after serving four of the six months sentence and went to recuperate in Switzerland with Charlie Marsh.
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Parker joined other suffragettes in defiantly embroidering her signature on a piece of cloth, under the eyes of the wardresses, now known as The Suffragette Handkerchief. Like many suffragettes she went on hunger strike and was subjected to force-feeding. alt= Later that year she was imprisoned twice, once for breaking windows, and once for breaking into The Music Hall in Aberdeen with the intention of disrupting an appearance by David Lloyd George. On both occasions she was released after going on hunger-strike for several days.
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While there the pair were repeatedly force-fed and Elsie received a hunger strike medal from the WSPU. While in prison Elsie kept a diary on six sheets of brown toilet paper on which she wrote with a blue pencil. One day after being force- fed she wrote: 'Sunday: After big struggle fed me through throat- pain at heart after- Doctor came back examined me and tried to make me take medicine and after put to bed by my wardresses'. While the pair were in Holloway the 'Cat and Mouse Act' was passed to try and prevent those who were becoming extremely ill from malnutrition from dying.
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A group photograph of 1915, taken on the steps of the ivy-clad central block, captures nineteen officers, with the ranks of major and captain, all but one – Jarvis – sporting a rather fierce moustache. According to Stanley, the female staff was no less fierce. In parallel with their male co-workers the asylum wardresses became nursing assistants, but they were to be supervised by fresh intakes of trained nurses drawn from the Red Cross, who in turn were to be managed by experienced ward sisters from the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. In charge of this contingent of some fifty female staff was the newly appointed hospital matron, Miss Gibson, who (unlike her male counterpart) supplanted the former asylum matron.
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In the Third Ravensbruck Trial, also called the Uckermark process,(14th to 16 April 1948), Braach and Toberentz were indicted of being part of the SS female guardians, also called Wardresses (Aufseherinnen, SS-Gefolge) under British military penal code in the Hamburg Curiohaus, together with three other female relatives. The accused was charged with the following: # Abuse of female Allied prisoners in the period from May 1942 to April 1945 at the girls camp Uckermark # Participation in selection of female Allied prisoners for the gas chamber in the period from May 1942 to April 1945 at the girls camp Uckermark # Abuse of female Allied prisoners in the period from 1944 to April 1945 in the concentration camp at Ravensbrück # Participation in selection of female Allied prisoners for the gas chamber in the period from May 1942 to April 1945 in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück Braach's indictment included one to four points. For lack of evidence, she was acquitted, as was Toberentz, on April 26, 1948. The indictment included only crimes against Allied nationals, and since only German non-conformist girls and young women were under the girls camp, this was not the subject of the process.
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