Stitching While Imprisoned, Part 2

In this episode, Isabella discusses needlework created by suffragettes and a woman with an alias of "Myrllen," as well as the British charity Fine Cell Work.

As always, images and resources discussed in this episode are available on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @sewwhatpodcast.

Transcript

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Whatsup stitches!! Hello hello hello! Thank you for joining me here today! Today’s episode is part two of women stitching while imprisoned. I’ll be looking at two 20th-century examples of incarceration stitching and then will finished up the episode with a discussion about a charity that teaches needlework to prisoners that they can do in their cells. I’ll get more into that at the end of the episode, obviously, but I will just say it is the perfect ending to this two parter because it carries on the theme of people stitching while incarcerated but turns it on its head to give prisoners paid, highly skilled work and therefore both a means through which to focus and channel their emotions AND a way to earn a living once they leave the prison system. Which is very cool!!! I will post links to that charity, which is called Fine Cell Work, on the “Sew What?” Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages, along with images of the other stuff I’ll discuss today. Yay, woohoo, yeehaw, all of those things!

Before I get into today’s objects, I wanna mention a few things. The first thing is that although I’ve focused on imprisoned WOMEN who stitched, men did it too. So I wanna give a lil shout out to them. An example of dude stitching while imprisoned is Ray Materson. He was born in Connecticut in 1954 and was arrested after a series of robberies and was sentenced to 15 years in a state penitentiary in Connecticut. To help pass the time, he taught himself to embroider by using unravelled socks for thread and a sewing needle he got from a security guard. He stitched teeny tiny tapestries depicting life outside of prison and sold his works to other inmates for things like cigarettes and bags of coffee. And when I say teeny tiny, I really, really mean it. Most of his pieces have 1,200 stitches per square inch and measure around 2.5 by 3 inches, which is like SOOO crazy to me. He was released from prison in 1995 but continues to create miniature embroideries, which is very wholesome. There’s something about the healing, comforting power of needlework in the face of incarceration that moves beyond all gender, race, and socioeconomic lines. And that’s something that has been utilised largely for good for the last few hundred years, as seen in the work of Elizabeth Fry and Fine Cell Work, both of which I will talk about in more depth at the end of this episode.  

And along with that, the second thing I need to say is that I realise that the objects I’ve talked about in these last two episodes are made by exclusively white people, which does not at all represent imprisonment, which disproportionately affects people of colour and which is a deeply flawed, screwed up institution. I searched high and low for historic examples of people of colour stitching while imprisoned but couldn’t find anything, which is definitely weird and feels not accurate at all. It may be that I wasn’t searching in the right places. So that is to say yes, these two episodes focus exclusively on white women (and one white man) which is spooky when discussing an issue that affects people of colour, especially Black individuals, way more often. The prison industrial complex is a very, VERY bad time!!! And obviously that’s only the tip of the iceberg and my saying that doesn’t change anything. But if you know of historic examples of people of colour stitching while imprisoned, please let me know and I’ll share it on the “Sew What?” Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages so we can all learn together. Contact me on any of those social media platforms or by email at sewwhatpodcast@gmail.com. We love to learn and grow and strive to present a not white-washed view of textile history. Okay, that’s that on that, here we go. 

Okay, time for today’s objects. Let’s first get into the embroideries stitched by suffragettes, the women in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century who fought for women’s voting rights. There are quite a few pieces done by British suffragettes in the early twentieth century, from large banners to tiny panels. The first piece I’ll talk about is the known as “the Suffragette Handkerchief,” which is on display at the The Priest House in West Hoathly, West Sussex. The handkerchief has 66 embroidered signatures and two sets of initials. Most of the women who stitched their names were in Holloway prison because they participated in the Women’s Social and Political Union window smashing demonstrations of March 1912. 61 of the women who stitched their signatures were known to be arrested for smashing windows and received prison sentences ranging from two to six months. A lot of the women had been arrested before for actions taken on behalf of women’s suffrage. 24 of the women took part in the 1912 hunger strikes and 16 were force fed during that time. So clearly, these women had seen some major stuff and were deeply dedicated to getting women the vote. 

Mary Ann Hilliard supposed started the handkerchief and kept it as a souvenir of her fellow prisoners. Supposedly it was stitched during one of the women’s limited exercise periods while they were all imprisoned, but I have some questions about how they obtained their materials. I just can’t think of someone being given a large handkerchief to stitch on in prison unless they were an exception or received special treatment or something??? And many of the names are stitched in different thread colours, which solidly do not look like they were taken from unravelled rags, socks, or other available textiles. Were the Suffragettes given these materials because needlework was expected and/or encouraged for female prisoners by the early 20th century? Or did this group have access to materials other prisoners wouldn’t have had? I honestly do not know. Clearly, I have a lot of questions. But what I find so interesting is the idea that these women were trying to free themselves from some of the shackles of patriarchy by fighting for women’s votes, but they used a typically feminine art to commemorate their incarceration. It’s like they turned what is usually considered a gentle craft on its head and used it to memorialise their very not gentle actions and the very not gentle consequences of them. They used this art form that was historically considered almost completely under the purview of women while trying to broaden the scope of women’s power and experiences, which is very rad and which we love to see!  

Also, on another, not political note, the Suffragette Handkerchief is very cool because it really shows how personal and unique needlework is. Every women’s signature is different and you can really see the variety of ways in which they held the needle and made their stitches. Ugh, I love how personal the connection between hand and needle is, that everyone’s stitching is different the same way everyone’s writing and drawing and painting is different. Ugh, it’s so good.

There are a number of suffragette handkerchiefs that survive, which is very cool. Another one of them was stitched by a woman named Janie Terrero in 1912 and is at the Museum of London. She was another suffragette jailed in Holloway Prison for window smashing. Terrero’s handkerchief has on it the embroidered signatures of women who participated in a hunger strike at the prison.  

And beyond handkerchiefs, there are other similarly large-scale embroidered pieces by suffragettes. The Museum of London also holds the WSPU Holloway Prisoners banner. WSPU stands for the Women’s Social and Political union, who I mentioned earlier. This banner is similar to the Suffragette Handkerchief and the Janie Terrero one because it is made up of the signatures of suffragettes in Holloway Prison. There are 80 embroidered signatures and they’re all of the hunger striking suffragettes in the prison. The embroidered signatures were turned into a larger piece by Ann Macbeth, head of embroidery at the Glasgow School of Art. Macbeth originally designed it as a friendship quilt and donated it to the WSPU Scottish Exhibition and Bazaar held in Glasgow in 1910 to raise funds for the suffragette movement. It was converted to a banner for the “From Prison to Citizenship” procession in June 1910 and it was carried as part of the Prisoner’s Pageant in that procession. 

But large scale embroidered pieces weren’t the only things stitched by British women imprisoned for trying to get the vote in the early 20th century. There are smaller pieces, too, made by individual prisoners. Clearly, no matter the scale, these imprisoned women took this art historically associated with and sometimes forced upon women into their own hands, using it for their own political purposes. They used a typically feminine, “delicate” craft to memorialise brutal, violent acts. And these women platformed their own identities while creating these textiles that were powerfully at odds – they all stitched their names and only that. They said “we were here. We fought the fight. And we used our needles for political power.” They used stitching to fight for the vote even from behind prison bars. 

I will end my suffragette embroidery spiel with a really good quote from Natasha Hughes’s article called “Stitching Solidarity: Janie Terrero and the Political Power of the Needle” in the Decorating Dissidence journal. Hughes writes, “The suffrage cause, which used textiles as a key weapon in their campaign against the establishment, is a prime example of this: ‘far from desiring to disentangle embroidery and femininity, they wanted embroidery to evoke femininity – but femininity represented as a source of strength, not as evidence of women’s weakness’ thereby asserting and embodying their mission through their needles. They marched under meticulously stitched banners, proclaiming their demands in silk and wool, each one an embodiment of female courage and resolve, conveyed within a medium purposefully selected for its public palatability.”

Now, the other object I wanna get into today, made more than 30 years later and on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, is called Myrllen’s Coat. Everything I know about Myrllen’s objects comes an article by Catherine Heard, a professor in the department of visual arts at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. So shout out to Catherine Heard! A queen. 

Okay, so in 1948, a woman with schizophrenia was admitted to the Eastern State Hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee. Once there, she began shredding rags to create coloured thread and repeatedly asked hospital staff for a sewing needle. She then, over the course of 7 years, made several densely embroidered garments covered with images and nearly incomprehensible text. In 1955, the woman was medicated with a new drug, chlorpromazine, and stopped stitching. Most of her stitching was lost, along with her identity. Today, we only know her by her pseudonym Myrllen and only two of her works survive. Her scarf is in the Lakeshore Mental Health Centre in Knoxville Tennessee and a coat is in the Tennessee State Museum. I’ll be focusing just on her coat. Most of the information we have about Myrllen comes from her former nurse who met Myrllen when she was admitted to the Eastern State Psychiatric Hospital at 28 years old because she was exhibiting threatening behaviour toward her husband and neighbours.

In the hospital, after lots of begging, Myrllen was granted a needle and dull scissors and she began shredding rags from the hospital laundry for her thread. Her objects involved a whole variety of stitches, but she mostly used satin, chain, and wheel stitch. The motifs and text are stitched in all directions and angles. The most recurring motifs are actually domestic scenes – there are houses with gardens and domestic interiors with girls and women. The depiction of the ladies, with their made up faces and red lips and nails covered in nail polish, seem to come directly from magazine ads. And other images come from other parts of pop culture – Myrllen stitches a popular 1940s cartoon character, Little Lulu. She also stitches darker, more disturbing images within her embroideries about the American Dream. She stitches her own arrest before she was transferred from jail to the mental hospital. And she also stitches a faceless, naked woman, falling while holding a crutch. According to Catherine Heard, “The naked figure implies psychic trauma; the floating shapes a hallucinatory aura. Counter to Myrllen’s elaborate embroideries of the American Dream, this image serves as a punctum, revealing her reality as a woman who was ill, isolated and vulnerable. This image alone reverberates with fear.” 

In addition to stitching scenes, Myrllen also stitched words upon words. The text seems almost legible at first, but is actually a series of fragments and straight up gibberish. It’s similar to the Agnes Richter jacket and Lorina Bulwer’s long embroidered pieces in that way. Myrllen’s text feels tantalizingly close to being comprehensible, like if we could read it we could understand who Myrllen was and what she felt and what she experienced in Eastern State Hospital. But, like a lot of the other pieces of needlework made by imprisoned women, her stitching speaks for her. We don’t even know her name, but we do know what advertisements and comics she saw and what visual culture she was surrounded by and what words and images were swirling around in her head. It’s really lucky that Myrllen’s coat and scarf survive and tell her story.

 Okay, now let’s jump into the 21st century. The question to ask is “Is there still that connection between imprisonment and stitchery?” Yes, there is!! It is so alive and well! There’s a British charity called Fine Cell Work, which I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. It runs rehab projects in prisons by training inmates in needlework that they undertake in their cells. In addition to learning skills, the inmates are also paid for their work. It then sells those stitched cushions, quilts, and other gifts. And since 2018, the charity has also provided apprenticeships in textiles and mentoring programmes for ex-offenders. I am putting links to Fine Cell Work’s website and products and their social media accounts so you can see for yourself and buy some stuff, if you’re able to and interested. There’s even a play called Stitchers, by novelist Esther Freud, about Lady Anne Tree’s founding of Fine Cell Work.

 I think Fine Cell Work is doing really good, important, and necessary work. And it reminds me a lot of the work undertaken by one of my favourite historical Quakers over 200 years ago. That Quaker was Elizabeth Fry, who, in 1817, helped found the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. The charity provided inmates with materials so they could learn to stitch and knit, as it was thought that needlework was calming and promoted the development of high-level skills. I like that for more than 200 years, the connection between imprisonment and stitching has been formalised. 

 But let’s not forget that the objects I’ve looked at in these past two episodes were made outside of that formalised system. They weren’t made by women taught to stitch to help relax them or pass the time or give them a skill. The needlework we’ve seen in these past weeks were made by women who already had needlework skills and who used embroidery to express their frustration, angst, sadness, and confusion at being imprisoned. So there are two different systems going on here – there is the teaching of needlework as a way to help inmates emotionally and economically and then there’s also the use of needlework by inmates who wanted and/or needed to commemorate their experiences and express their emotions through stitch due to a lack of other materials or because needlework was their chosen medium. The latter group, the ones I’ve focused on, were working outside of the system. And that’s what makes their work so poignant and meaningful I think. They were shut away and usually denied needlework materials, yet they still figured out ways to use fabric as paper and needles as pens to put into words and images all they were feeling and going through. 

 Now, to conclude, lemme just say that these pieces of needlework made by imprisoned women are more than just a form of expression. They do something I think a lot about in art and material culture generally, which is say “this is who I am and this is where I was.” That’s something I think about a lot and it’s actually one of the reasons I started studying art history in undergrad – I wanted to get into the richness of the every day experience. And it’s one of the reasons I really, REALLY love centuries-old graffiti, too. There’s clearly this innate human need and desire to be remembered – it’s why people have been etching their names and dates and initials and whatever into church walls or tree trunks for so many hundreds of years. And I think that beyond being a way for these trapped women to move beyond prison or asylum walls, the needlework of imprisoned women is also a way for those women to say “this is me. This is my experience. This is where I am and who I am. Remember me.” Whether or not they did that on purpose, their needlework and the fact that it’s survived does that for them. We remember them because of their embroidered panels and jackets and scarfs and handkerchiefs. And we get to dig into and tell stories we wouldn’t be able to without those objects. So even though most of the women I’ve discussed in these two episodes never got to leave prison, their needlework did and I’m really grateful for that. We get to remember their names and mourn their incarceration because their embroidery escaped incarceration, even though they themselves did not. 

 Oof, that was a pretty grim ending. But with a topic as poignant and sad as women stitching while imprisoned, a sad ending makes sense. I’m sorry not to end this on a super high note, but the history of needlework is complicated, right? Lots of highs and lots of lows. And I think it’s important to discuss the sad pieces as much as the happy, jolly, bright ones. I hope you agree. As always, thanks for going on this journey with me.

And thank you for listening! And thanks for all of your support and for liking the podcast! It brings me such joy so thank you. See you next week!

 Now go out and stitch some stories. And go check out and support Fine Cell Work! How cool! Bye!!