Biography
Jessica Henderson 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. Doris Stevens recorded her term as: February 1919: eight days in Charles Street Jail.
Updated Boston custody chronology: arrested and incarcerated February 24, 1919; sentenced February 25; released March 4, 1919. The dated stay is eight elapsed days. These dates follow the supplied record correction; earlier source notes are retained as historical background where accounts differ.
Updated Boston custody dates
Updated Boston custody chronology: arrested and incarcerated February 24, 1919; sentenced February 25; released March 4, 1919. The dated stay is eight elapsed days. These dates follow the supplied record correction; earlier source notes are retained as historical background where accounts differ.
Stevens identifies Jessica Henderson’s daughter Wilma as eighteen and reports that the two were arrested together in Boston. Wilma spent a night in the house of detention and was released as a minor. Jessica’s eight-day sentence remains an imposed term; the daughter’s overnight detention is not assigned to her mother.
James J. Kenneally’s reconstruction identifies Jessica Henderson among the February 1919 Boston suffrage prisoners whose proceedings were heard by Municipal Court Chief Justice Wilfred A. Bolster. The eight-day sentence described in this episode was nominal; individual releases after fines were paid must not be replaced with an assumed eight days served.
Kenneally, Historical Journal of Massachusetts 45(1), Winter 2017, printed pages 113–118.
