Biography
Elizabeth McShane was a member of the National Woman's Party and one of the "Silent Sentinels" imprisoned during the 1917-1919 campaign to picket the Wilson White House for woman suffrage. She was jailed three times and hunger-struck in at least two of those terms. (November 9, 1891 - August 13, 1976; later Elizabeth McShane Hilles)
Arrested while picketing on November 10, 1917, she was sentenced on November 16 to fifteen days. She was sent first to the Occoquan Workhouse and then transferred to the District Jail, where she was FORCE-FED during a hunger strike. She was released on November 27, eleven days after sentencing.
Arrested again on August 6, 1918 during the Lafayette Square demonstration, she was released and then convicted, and was committed about August 15 to the old District Workhouse on a fifteen-day sentence. She was released on August 20 after a hunger strike, roughly five days into the term.
Arrested a third time on February 9, 1919 at the final watchfire demonstration, she was sentenced on February 10 to five days in the District Jail and released on February 13.
Stevens's appendix dates that last term to January. The chronological narrative in Irwin and the Library of Congress detailed chronology both place it in February, and this record follows them.
Photo credit
Elizabeth Vail McShane, 1913 Vassarion senior-year portrait, Vassar College Libraries; reproduced in Jessica Roden’s biographical sketch of Elizabeth McShane Hilles. Photographer unspecified. Exact rectangular crop from the identified yearbook entry; original pixels preserved. Source.
