The Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act 1913, commonly referred to as the Cat and Mouse Act, was an Act of Parliament passed in Britain under H. H. Asquith's Liberal government in 1913.
Some members of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU, commonly referred to as suffragettes) had been imprisoned for acts of vandalism in support of women's suffrage. In protest at being imprisoned, some of the suffragettes undertook hunger strikes. The hunger strikers were force-fed by the prison staff, leading to a public outcry. The act was a response to the protestations. It allowed the prisoners to be released on licence as soon as the hunger strike affected their health; they then had a predetermined period of time in which to recover after which they were rearrested and taken back to prison to serve out the rest of their sentence. Conditions could be placed on the prisoner during the time of their release. One effect of the act was to make hunger strikes technically legal. The nickname of the act came about because of the domestic cat's purported habit of playing with its prey, allowing it to temporarily escape a number of times, before killing it.
Government use
After the act was introduced, force-feeding was no longer used to combat hunger strikes. Instead, suffragettes on hunger strike were kept in prison until they became extremely weak, at which point they would be temporarily released in order to recover. This effectively allowed the government to claim that it was not responsible for any harm (or even death) which might result from the starvation. During the recovery period, any law-breaking on the part of the suffragette would see them put straight back in prison.
The time spent out of prison recovering was not counted as time served towards the hunger strikers' prison sentences. Once deemed recovered, they would be recalled to prison to continue their sentence. This meant that suffragettes could be repeatedly released and imprisoned for the same offence, without a further trial.
Background
To attain the goal of suffrage on the same basis as men, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU, known colloquially as the suffragettes) engaged in acts of protest such as the breaking of windows, arson, and the "technical assault" (without causing harm) of police officers. Many WSPU members were jailed for these offences. In response to what the organisation viewed as brutal punishment and harsh treatment by the government at the time, imprisoned WSPU members embarked on a sustained campaign of hunger strikes. Some women were freed on taking this action, but this rendered the policy of imprisonment of suffragettes futile. The prison authorities then turned to a policy of force feeding hunger-strikers by nasogastric tube. Repeated uses of this process often caused sickness, which served the WSPU's aims of demonstrating the government's harsh treatment of the prisoners.
Faced with growing public disquiet over the tactic of force feeding, and the determination of the jailed suffragettes to continue their hunger strikes, the government rushed the act through Parliament. The effect of the act was to permit the release of prisoners for them to recuperate from the effects of a hunger strike whilst leaving the police free to re-imprison offenders once they had recovered. The intention of the act was to counter the tactic of hunger strikes and the damaging consequences for the government's support among (male) voters by the force feeding of women prisoners but, if anything, it reduced support for the Liberal government.
Women writing about the experience of being forcibly fed
In a book called Suffrage and the Pankhursts, Jane Marcus argues that forcible feeding was the main image of the women's suffrage movement in the public imagination. Women wrote about how the experience made them feel in letters, diaries, speeches and suffrage publications, including Votes for Women and The Suffragette. One of the force-fed suffragettes, Lady Constance Lytton, wrote a book that suggested that working-class women were more likely to be forcibly fed in prison than upper-class women. In general, the medical procedure of force feeding was described as a physical and mental violation that caused pain, suffering, emotional distress, humiliation, anguish and rage.
