Suffragettes were usually not treated as political prisoners as they expected, but as common prisoners, without the special privileges political prisoners got (own clothes, bigger cell, newspapers, access to other prisoners). In 1909 they began hunger strikes to protest, and many were force-fed. Lady Constance Lytton described the process:

"Then he [the doctor] put down my throat a tube which seemed to me much too wide, and was something like 4 feet in length. The irritation of the tube was excessive. I choked the moment it touched my throat. Then the food was poured in quickly, it made me sick a few seconds after it was down and the action of the sickness made my body and legs double up, but the wardresses instantly pressed back my head and the doctor leant on my knees."

Other suffragettes became so weak that the prison officials let them go, only to rearrest them as soon as they began to recover. The parliamentary bill that allowed this was nicknamed the Cat and Mouse Act.