A Feisty Feminist Confronts Ellis Island Officials

by Vincent Parrillo

Emmeline Pankhurst

[Author’s note: In the recently released film Suffragette, which is the story of this movement in England, Meryl Streep has a supporting role as Emmeline Pankhurst. Her story also has an American chapter as given in my new historical novel, Defenders of Freedom. Here is an excerpt; the year is 1913.]

With her graying hair drawn softly back from her elegant face, and a gentle smile upon her thin lips, Emmeline Pankhurst’s image was that of an attractive, pleasant woman. Wearing a long sealskin coat over an olive broadcloth suit and a blue cloth hat with a black plume, this widowed mother of four radiated an endearing charm to one and all.

And yet, this diminutive, 55- feminine figure was perhaps the most hated woman of her time in England, and her notoriety had preceded her ocean voyage to the United States aboard the liner Provence. Though she was only coming for a visit, as earlier in 1909 and 1911, this time her notoriety was such that Ellis Island authorities had taken special steps to deal with her.

Born into a family that constantly championed women’s rights, both her father and mother had been extremely active in the suffragist movement and Emmeline not only followed in their footsteps, but emerged as one of the movement’s fiery leaders. Through passionate speeches in private homes, in assembly halls, and in front of the Parliament building, she urged her followers to take disruptive and destructive actions until women received the same legal and political privileges as men.

Mrs. Pankhurst performed no violent deeds herself, but other English women acted upon her words. For the past eight years, she had kept London in continual tumult. Physical battles with police, arson, vandalism, and rioting were common…. Arrested frequently on various charges—including conspiracy, incitement to riot, and obstructing the police in the performance of their duty—Emmeline had been imprisoned eight times. Subjected to the brutal prison treatment that was then accorded to convicted criminals, she went on a hunger and thirst strike until granted the status of a political prisoner.

Another time she went on a hunger strike when her fellow imprisoned women agitators did not receive the same political status and prison transfer as she, instead suffering the same harshness of incarceration experienced by imprisoned felons. When her imprisoned female followers also went on a hunger strike, prison officials fed them forcibly with tubes. Because of a heart condition, Mrs. Pankhurst was spared this ordeal. However, her health broke down from lack of food and drink.

To counter the hunger strikes, Parliament had passed the “Cat and Mouse Act.” This permitted the release of the female hunger strikers until they regained their health, at which point they would be arrested again to continue serving their prison sentences. Released from prison after serving only a few days of her three-year prison term, Emmeline set sail for America for a lecture tour to raise funds for her cause.

Publicity about her planned lecture tour sparked hundreds of angry letters and telegrams to Ellis Island officials. Other letters of protest reached city newspapers, their publication intensifying further the emotional reaction of American males against the frail Englishwoman, attempting to recover from her latest hunger strike, while peacefully sailing towards the Statue of Liberty and the land of freedom.

Even some women resented her arrival. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, a naturalized citizen, formerly of England, wrote that admitting Emmeline Pankhurst to the United States “would be an insult to all Englishwomen residing in this country.” Though some American suffragette groups enthusiastically welcomed Emmeline’s imminent arrival and planned a huge meeting at Madison Square Garden, other suffragette groups either resented her lecture tour, either because it was raising funds only for the English movement or they feared her presence would be a detriment to the American suffrage cause.

Acting Ellis Island Commissioner Byron Uhl asked his superiors in Washington for a ruling as to whether Mrs. Pankhurst’s conviction and delayed imprisonment constituted moral turpitude. In reply to a request from the Secretary of State for data about her alleged crimes, the English Consul General, John L. Griffiths, provided a candid report of her offenses and criminal record. As to whether these offenses involved moral turpitude, Mr. Griffiths replied, “That opinion necessarily depends upon whether the persons expressing the opinion believe or do not believe in militant suffragism.”

Ultimately, the Commissioner General in Washington sent his special instructions to Ellis Island. She was to be treated as all other alien applicants. Without regard to newspaper accounts or letters from the public, officials were to implement the law as it applied. Questioned by an immigration inspector on board ship with other first-class cabin passengers, she admitted to a conviction in England for conspiracy with a three years’ sentence, of which she served three months. With that, she was detained and taken to Ellis Island to appear before the Board of Special Inquiry, which would determine her eligibility to enter the United States.

Soon thereafter, and over the objections of her attorneys Frank O’Neil and Herbert Reeves, she was escorted alone into the hearing room and saw three men seated behind a table that rested against a wooden railing that was a few inches higher. In a seventy-minute session, the three board members proceeded to ask her a great many questions, all of which she answered simply, without any sign of irritation, remaining calm and collected throughout....

After completing their questioning, the board officials met in private to reach a decision. In short order they asked Mrs. Pankhurst to return to the room…[and] denied [her] entry into the United States on the grounds of moral turpitude [and ordered her to] be held in custody on Ellis Island until [her] deportation.

Acting Commissioner Uhl arranged for her to stay in the comfortable rooms next to his office.... The next day, Emmeline confidently prepared her speech for Madison Square Garden, and later read the deluge of telegrams sent by supporters. . . . Meanwhile, her lawyers Reeves and O’Neil argued her case before Anthony Caminetti, the Commissioner General of Immigration, in his office on the seventh floor of the Department of Labor building. Also at the hearing were six reporters. Caminetti had invited them to avoid any criticism of a secret, star-chamber hearing as newspapers had leveled against the Ellis Island Board of Special Inquiry procedures in this case.

In early afternoon, Caminetti continued the order of detention until a formal hearing the next morning on whether or not the charge of moral turpitude was warranted. Almost immediately, President Wilson—swamped with an avalanche of telegrams protesting the Ellis Island board’s action—stepped in personally, asking the Secretary of Labor and Commissioner General to meet with him at the White House.

That meeting occurred before the hearing, which turned out to be brief and perfunctory. Caminetti reversed the Ellis Island board’s verdict and directed that Emmeline be permitted to enter the United States without bond.

Emmeline’s exit from the island was a triumphant one. Dozens of reporters and photographers came to record her departure from the island. Flanked by friends and other well-wishers, she accepted the enthusiastic congratulations of the press as well as of her supporters, and boarded the ferry for Manhattan.

That evening, she received a standing ovation from the 300 assembled dinner invitees at the Aldine Club as the guest of honor of the Women’s Political Union…. [L]oud and enthusiastic applause greeted Emmeline as she arose to speak.

Thank you so much. What has happened in the last two days has meant much to our cause. I would not have had it otherwise for anything.

I want you to think what it would have meant to those fighting women in England had the verdict in Washington been a different one than what it was today. Think and remember that they are fighting against frightful odds and that this means much to them. Think what it means to them to be able to realize that the government of the United States of America knows what this movement means. You may have some narrow laws, narrowly administered, but still the just hearts of the American people are sound and liberty still reigns here.

Some are asking today, what right has Mrs. Pankhurst to come to America? I have the same right as any other representative of a repressed people, and I am here in pursuance of that right, to ask the sympathy of the American people.

Benjamin Franklin went to France for such sympathy, and you know that France responded. Irish Nationalists have been coming to America for years for that sympathy, some of them convicted of the same crimes that I have been, and America has welcomed them.

And so I, too, have come to ask your sympathy and to say to you that our battle is your battle. Even at Ellis Island our mission was understood. It is the same everywhere in every civilized nation on the earth.

I am glad, indeed, to be here tonight, but all the time I am here in America, I shall be longing and yearning to get back on the firing line with my comrades in arms.

When she finished, a third, sustained standing ovation expressed the admiration of her listeners. That roar of approval was even greater when ten times that number of people came to Madison Square Garden to hear her in the first venue of her lecture tour….

She spoke first of her detention at Ellis Island, complimenting those in charge and said the work there was admirably done. She made a point of congratulating the matrons and told how one of the officials on Sunday had taken her all over the station.

“Since I was first here four years ago, the cause here has progressed by leaps and bounds. It is a certainty that women will get the vote here. Even the antis accept that. All they want to do now is to make progress as slow as possible.

“The whole system of government in England is an elaborate system of how not to do things. It takes an earthquake to get an act of Parliament out of the House of Commons.”

After the loud applause abated, a woman cried out, “Wouldn’t socialism bring political equality to women?”

“Our cause is not going to wait for socialism or any other ism.”

“What about women doing military duty? Would they be soldiers?”

“Whenever there has been a real fight for home and self- preservation, women always fought."

A woman in the gallery asked, “What lasting good was ever won by force?”

“Liberty!” she quickly replied. “Your ancestors fought for it once and we women in England fight for it now.”

As Emmeline’s image improved through her speaking engagements in virtually all the major cities in the East and Midwest, the image of Ellis Island officials declined. Newspaper editors across the country ridiculed them with accusations of sheer stupidity. They complained of prudish, pedantic officials making the American people the laughing-stock of Europe. Revise the moral turpitude clause of immigration law, they demanded, since dense immigration bureaucrats could not be trusted to interpret it with ordinary intelligence and common sense.

Her speaking tour completed, Pankhurst returned to England with $20,000 raised for her cause [nearly half a million U.S. dollars today] Remaining in the United States was the powerful influence of her words upon the women who had heard her.

[As detailed in Defenders of Freedom, Emmeline’s words and actions would have a strong impact on the actions subsequently taken by American suffragettes. Back in England, she ceased militant suffrage activism with the outbreak of World War I, urging support for the British cause. Later an opponent of Bolshevism, she died in 1928 at age 69, just weeks before the vote was extended to British women over 21. Two years later, her statue was erected in London’s Victoria Tower Gardens.]

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Vincent N. Parrillo is professor of sociology at William Paterson University, where he twice received the Faculty Achievement Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Creative Expression. He is executive producer, writer, and narrator of four award-winning PBS television documentaries, including Ellis Island: Gateway to America. An internationally recognized expert on immigration and Fulbright scholar, Vince has given talks at more than 100 universities in Asia, Europe and North America, including Roehampton University. He has also published numerous articles and textbooks on immigration and diversity, is co-lyricist of Hamlet: The Rock Opera, and directed an outdoor production of The Comedy of Errors in New Jersey.

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Ellis Island: American Dream or Nightmare?

by Vincent Parrillo

Over the years many people have viewed Ellis Island sentimentally. Rev. Sydney Bass, an English Methodist minister, was decidedly not one of them. He would compare the immigrant processing station to Dante’s Inferno and as “worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta.” Here is his story, as he told it and which appears as an anecdote in my new historical novel, Defenders of Freedom, which is about women’s suffrage and Ellis Island between 1907 and 1919.

On a cold morning in January 1911, Rev. Sydney Bass stepped onto the dock at Ellis Island. An English Methodist minister, he had arrived on the White Star’s Adriatic on his journey to become the new pastor of a church in Harrison Valley, Pennsylvania. Foregoing the comfort of a cabin passenger, he instead traveled in steerage to experience firsthand the nature of that passage and to gather stories and experiences of those with him. These, he felt, would serve him well for many sermons to his new congregation.

Upon entry into the Great Hall, a line doctor marked in chalk an “L” (lameness) and “F+” (feet) on his overcoat, and then signaled a gateman to take him to one of the medical examining rooms. Asked to strip down to his underwear, he received a full medical examination to determine any other issues. Finding no others, the doctor discussed with him the physical problems affecting his entry. Because he had polio as a child, he had some atrophy and partial paralysis in his right leg, which was slightly shorter than his left leg, as well as some deformity in his right foot, combining to give him a significant limp.

When the doctor stated these defects would affect his ability to earn a living, Bass countered that it was fortunate, then, that his brains were on the other end, and that he did not preach and lecture with his feet.

Next, he was taken into a large holding room. It was now nine-thirty in the morning. The acoustics in the room intensified the noise coming from six hundred detainees of many nationalities, causing him to cover his ears until he could adjust to the clamor.

As freezing as it was outside, in this poorly ventilated room—filled with so many immigrants—the temperature was so hot that he took off his overcoat, folded it, and sat upon it, leaning his back against the wall near a ventilating shaft. The babble of voices continued to assault his ears. He realized with a strong sense of repugnance that many of those near him were Italians. He was outraged that he, an English gentleman, was placed in the same room as these illiterate, dark-complexioned peasants.

When he began feeling claustrophobic, hemmed in by all these people standing near him, he stood up and discovered to his disgust that the side of his coat touching the floor now had the mucous of someone’s spittle, about the size of a silver dollar.

Before he could give much thought to his revulsion, his nostrils were filled with the odors from the multitude of unwashed humanity surrounding him. Worsening that unpleasant aroma was the smell of garlic that some were eating and the breaths coming from those too close for him to endure. Even though he had ministered in some of the worst slums in England, he found this to be the worst smell he had ever encountered. He could almost taste and feel it.

He pushed his way through the crowd, trying to find somewhere in the room where the scents were not as awful. He located the men’s room and went in to relieve himself. Discovering that the air in this room of urinals and toilets was better than any part of the common room, he remained there as long as he could.

When he had been in the common room for one hour, Bass saw the door open for a moment, and he slipped out. Walking to the nearest official he saw, he asked for permission to wire the British consul and two prominent officials in his church. In a stern voice, the gateman ordered him back into the common room.

Shortly before one o’clock, gatemen moved all immigrants to the dining hall. As they walked, Bass complained to one of them, “You know, it’s ridiculous to detain me for a bad leg and then make me stand on it all these hours.”

The gateman shrugged and said nothing.

The dinner of lentil soup, corned beef with peeled boiled potatoes, peas, and bread was surprisingly good, especially accompanied with a bowl of tea. Returned to the common room afterwards, he sought refuge in the men’s room where the better air could aid his adjustment. A few other English immigrants joined him, until one of the gatemen ordered all of them to leave.

As the next several hours passed slowly, the English detainees found one other and clustered together, a total of sixteen men and four women. They conversed and learned about one another, finding some solace in commiserating with one another.

After their five o’clock supper—consisting of mutton stew, bread pudding with raisins, bread, butter, and tea—officials began leading the detainees downstairs to their sleeping quarters. Anticipating conditions similar to those in the common room with the smells of the Italians he disdained, Bass stood aside and refused to move.

“I will not go down there!” he insisted. ‘We English should not be herded together in such close quarters with so many others. Can’t you at least put the English all together in one room?”

Soon, the sixteen English detainees found themselves together in a dormitory room in the main building on the balcony level. To his dismay, Bass quickly discovered they shared the room with eleven others. Twenty-seven canvas hammocks, damp and impregnated with salt and disinfectant (a probable necessity, he thought), hung suspended from the ceiling in stacks of three and lined up in nine rows. He lay upon one, but he was unable to sleep. Adding to his discomfort was the constant screams of women somewhere in the distance.

Somehow he endured the terrible night. Before morning’s first light, gatemen roused him at four o’clock for breakfast. Twenty minutes later, seated in the dining room, Bass and his compatriots realized they were covered with bedbug bites. He prayed that his oatmeal, baked beans and pork, bread, butter, and tea was the last meal he would have to eat here.

Back in the smelly common room, he heard his name called at ten-thirty. Threading his way through the crowd, he was taken to the waiting room outside Board of Special Inquiry Room Number Two. Some other cases were being heard before his, and so he sat there until told to leave for his midday dinner.

After consuming some oxtail soup, roast pork, mashed potatoes, succotash, bread, butter, and tea, he anxiously returned for his hearing. At twelve-thirty, he was able to plead his case. The board allowed him to speak without interruption.

He explained that he was a minister coming to accept a preaching position in Pennsylvania. He had sixty dollars in his pocket and his property included securities worth hundreds of dollars. He could also present to them his certificate showing his success in examinations and his ministerial credentials, none of which the board wanted to see. At the conclusion of the hearing, the board chairman announced their unanimous decision that he be deported as an alien without visible means of support and thus liable to become a public charge.

Dumbfounded and angry, Bass appealed the decision, got permission to wire the British Consul and his sponsors and—with assurances from church leaders and the British Consul—Ellis Island Commissioner William Williams granted the appeal.

Embittered, Rev. Bass left the island and, six months later, offered vivid testimony at a congressional hearing on the abuses he said he endured. His claims were strongly contradicted by Secretary of Labor Charles Nagel, two New York congressmen, and Ellis Island Commissioner William Williams. The latter asserted that surprise inspections conducted in the past three years by congressional critics and journalists found no such conditions.

What was the truth? No doubt Rev. Bass encountered some unpleasant conditions and culture shock in his treatment, but was it as bad as he claimed? We’ll never know for certain, but his was not the only complaint about immigrant treatment back then. Some of those grievances and the ensuing controversies are detailed both in Guardians of the Gate and in Defenders of Freedom.

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Vincent N. Parrillo is professor of sociology at William Paterson University, where he twice received the Faculty Achievement Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Creative Expression. He is executive producer, writer, and narrator of four award-winning PBS television documentaries, including Ellis Island: Gateway to America. An internationally recognized expert on immigration and Fulbright scholar, Vince has given talks at more than 100 universities in Asia, Europe and North America, including Roehampton University. He has also published numerous articles and textbooks on immigration and diversity, is co-lyricist of Hamlet: The Rock Opera, and directed an outdoor production of The Comedy of Errors in New Jersey.

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Ellis Island and British Immigrants to the USA

by Vincent Parrillo

Most people do not think of British immigrants in connection with Ellis Island. In fact, most historical photographs of the place depict southern, central, and eastern Europeans, easily recognizable in their kerchiefs, folk costumes, or dark-haired, dark-complexioned countenances. In fact, in my own public television (PBS) documentary, Ellis Island: Gateway to America, I utilized many of those same images.

However, many British immigrants also went through Ellis Island. For example, in the 1890s— the period in which my historical novel, Guardians of the Gate, begins its tale of the people and events occurring there—nearly 329,000 emigrants left the United Kingdom for the United States. Some were first- and second-class passengers and therefore processed on board ship and not at Ellis Island. Most, though, were the lower and working classes traveling in steerage, and their first steps on American soil were on the Island. (Included in my novel, for example, is the true
incident of the deportation of a Scottish family.)

Earlier, between 1870 and 1889, about 1.3 million British immigrants arrived. Ellis Island did not exist then, so they were processed at a state-run immigration station called Castle Garden, which previously had been a concert hall, and still stands in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan. That impressive number was lessened somewhat by the hundreds of thousands of British subjects who left, disenchanted with what they had found in America. Perhaps, as Charles Dickens complained after his visit in 1842, they found Americans too rude, arrogant,
anti-intellectual, prone to be violent, and hypocritical. His was a harsh judgment, indeed, but it didn’t stop other Brits from coming. Between 1900 and 1929, another 1.2 million British migrated to the United States. Again, most were first processed at Ellis Island to gain clearance for entry.

Just because they were British didn’t ensure these immigrants would breeze through Ellis Island. For example, among my weekly blogs that relate true immigrant stories is the firsthand account of a Scottish teenager arriving in 1921 with her family and the hunger and other tribulations they experienced there. A more recent blog gives the account of an English minister, whose 1911 detention on Ellis Island so disgusted him that he testified before a congressional committee on the abysmal conditions he encountered. If you’re interested, you can read these and other immigrant tales at vincentparrillo.posterous.com.

Ellis Island was also a transit stop for several notorious or otherwise prominent British subjects. In 1903, anarchist John Turner was detained at Ellis Island and then deported to England because of his political opinions. Her political views kept English suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst detained on the Island in 1913 and then ordered deported by a Board of Special Inquiry on the grounds of “moral turpitude.” A public outcry prompted President Woodrow Wilson to reverse that decision two days later. Sir Auckland Geddes, British ambassador to the United States, inspected Ellis Island in 1922, and his report criticized its lack of cleanliness, inefficiency in handling appeals, smells, and wire cages. The controversial report strained relations between the two countries for a while.

Among some of the well-known British immigrants arriving in the Port of New York (although not all went through Ellis Island) were writer Rudyard Kipling (1892), comedian Henny Youngman (1906), comedian Bob Hope (1908), comedian Stan Laurel (1912), conductor Leopold Stokowski (1912), actor Cary Grant (1920), actor Leslie Howard (1921), and author Joseph Conrad (1923).

Born in London to an English-born cabinet maker of Polish heritage and an Irish-born mother, Stokowski presented what an Ellis Island inspector thought was a good opportunity. He told the future conductor that his name was “foreign” and he would give him a new name. “Thank you very much,” said Stokowski, but my name is Stokowski.” His voice rising more and more, he added, “It was my father’s name, and his father’s before him, and it will stay my name!” The inspector, accustomed to intimidating immigrants by his presence, was taken aback and quickly withdrew the offer.

Other prominent British expatriates who settled in the United States include model and actress Mischa Barton, musician Peter Frampton, labor leader Samuel Gompers, movie director Sir Alfred Hitchcock, actor Anthony Hopkins, actor Peter Lawford, and preservationist John Muir.

On average, about 17,000 British immigrants continue to arrive annually in the United States. These not-so-famous arrivals—mostly known only to their family, friends, and co-workers— settle in many states, but Southern California, particularly the Santa Monica region, has become the permanent home of several hundred thousand first-generation British Americans, who maintain their pubs and traditions among the surfers and rollerbladers.