July 26, 1914
BECKY EDELSON IN A RAGE.
Threatens to Smash Prison Furniture and Denies She Is Eating.
With loud demands for her lawyer, accompanied by expressions that startled those employed in the Workhouse, Becky Edelson ceased to be a quiet hunger striker yesterday and adopted tactics similar to those of the suffragette furies in England.
The prisoner threatened to small all the furniture in the hospital, and became so boisterous that she annoyed the other patients. She was forced for that reason to give up her comfortable bed in the hospital and to return to the cell in which she was kept for the first two days of her three months term.
Three times yesterday she was led from her cell to the mess hall. Food was offered to her, but she asserted that she would smash the dishes if they were not taken away. She demanded that she should be released or that she should be fed forcibly, and said many things uncomplimentary to Commissioner of Correction Davis.
One of her complaints was that the authorities and the newspapers had conspired to make her seem ridiculous by saying that she was eating "on the side." She said that she wanted to get out on a peace bond so that she could tell her anarchist friends that she was really keeping up her hunger strike. Then she would be willing to return to jail, she said, and keep right on with the hunger strike as before.
Commissioner Davis attempted to find Justus Sheffield, the lawyer representing Miss Edelson, but it was said that he was ill and could not visit his client.
Mr. Sheffield, it was asserted, would visit miss Edelson on Monday. A plan was considered to have some radical sympathizer with Miss Edelson give a peace bond for her when she would be released, whether she consented or not. That would make her free from arrest, unless she engaged again in disorderly conduct. Alexander Berkman said Miss Edelson would never consent to come out on a peace bond except for the purpose of breaking it so as to go back to prison again after making one speech in public.
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