Biography
Pauline Adams was a Dublin-born suffragist who emigrated to the U.S. in 1898 and founded the Norfolk Equal Suffrage League at her home in 1910. On September 4, 1917 was one of thirteen NWP picketers arrested in front of Wilson's reviewing stand at the Selective Service parade. Refusing the $25 fine, chose 60 days at Occoquan; released November 4, 1917. After ratification became the second woman to practice law in Norfolk (1921). Pauline Adams was a suffragette and commonly picketed outside the White House for women's suffrage. In 1917, she was arrested (officially charged with "obstructing traffic") and given a choice between 60 days in jail or a $25 fine. She chose the jail. Soon after Adams was sentenced, the prison where she was housed was investigated for mistreatment of its inmates. The food had worms and the prisoners were deprived of blankets, combs, eyeglasses, soap, and even toothbrushes.
Doris Stevens records Pauline Adams’s arrest at the February 9, 1919 watchfire demonstration and release for lack of evidence. This was a separate episode from her September 1917 picketing imprisonment. The entry does not provide an exact physical release day, jail admission, statutory charge or complete custody duration; release for lack of evidence is not recorded as a formal acquittal.
Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, Appendix 4, printed page 354.
Stevens describes Adams as a Norfolk clubwoman and congressional-district chair of the National Woman’s Party.
In chapter 9 of her 1920 firsthand account, Doris Stevens includes this suffragist among the named signers of the imprisoned women’s joint demand for political-prisoner treatment. The signers refused prison labor as a matter of principle and asked for access to counsel, correspondence, books, outside food and visits. Stevens reports that the authorities answered the petition by transferring its signers and Lucy Burns to the District Jail and placing them in solitary confinement. This describes a transfer within existing imprisonment, not an additional arrest or an independently measured custody term.
Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom (1920), chapter 9 of Part III.
Irwin names Pauline Adams among the August 23, 1917 pickets sentenced by Judge Pugh to a $25 fine or thirty days at Occoquan, and among those arrested again August 28. Matthew O’Brien handled the appeal. The March 4, 1918 reversal and dismissal applied to the actual August 23 and August 28 appellants, rather than automatically to every later picketing case. The imposed thirty days does not establish full-term service. Irwin, pp.228–264.
