Force-fed

Force-feeding is the practice of feeding a human or animal against their will. The term ''gavage'' (, , ) refers to supplying a substance by means of a small plastic feeding tube passed through the nose ( nasogastric) or mouth (orogastric) into the stomach.

Of humans

In psychiatric settings

Within some countries, in extreme cases, patients with anorexia nervosa who continually refuse significant dietary intake and weight restoration interventions may be involuntarily fed by force via nasogastric tube under restraint within specialist psychiatric hospitals. Such a practice may be highly distressing for both anorexia patients and healthcare staff.

In prisons

Some countries force-feed prisoners when they go on hunger strike. It has been prohibited since 1975 by the Declaration of Tokyo of the World Medical Association, provided that the prisoner is "capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment." The violation of this prohibition may be carried out in a manner that can be categorised as torture, as it may be extremely painful and result in severe bleeding and spreading of various diseases via the exchanged blood and mucus, especially when conducted with dirty equipment on a prison population. Large feeding pipes are traditionally used on hunger striking prisoners whereas thin pipes are preferred in hospitals.

United Kingdom

Suffragettes who had been imprisoned while campaigning for votes for women went on hunger strike and were force fed. This lasted until the Prisoners Act of 1913, also known as the Cat and Mouse Act, whereby debilitated prisoners would be released, allowed to recover, and then re-arrested. Rubber tubes were inserted through the mouth (only occasionally through the nose) and into the stomach, and food poured down; the suffragettes were held down by force while the instruments were inserted into their bodies, an experience which has been likened to rape. In a smuggled letter, Sylvia Pankhurst described how the warders held her down and forced her mouth open with a steel gag. Her gums bled, and she vomited most of the liquid up afterwards.

Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union, was horrified by the screams of women being force-fed in HM Prison Holloway. She wrote: "Holloway became a place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell performing their hideous office. ...I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears." When prison officials tried to enter her cell, Pankhurst, in order to avoid being force-fed, raised a clay jug over her head and announced: "If any of you dares so much as to take one step inside this cell, I shall defend myself."

In 1911, Wiliam Ball, a male working class supporter who had broken two windows and consequently been sentenced to two months, was given this treatment and then separated from contact with his family, leading to his clandestine transfer to a mental hospital. This case was taken up by groups such as WSPU and the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, whose pamphlet on the case had the subtitle ''Official Brutality on the increase.''

The first woman in Scotland to be force fed was Ethel Moorhead, in Calton Jail, who despite being under medical supervision became seriously ill. The governor, Major William Stewart, argued that her illness was not caused by the feeding regime, but also said:

We must face the fact that artificial feeding is attended with risk and we must teach uffragette prisonersthat, while we appreciate the risks, we are quite prepared to go on and will not be deterred from detaining people like oorheadbecause there is a risk to their health, if we take the necessary steps to make sure their detention is effective... They have the idea that they can frighten us by pointing out the risk to health.

But the governor also recognised that there was a risk of the public deciding that prison authorities were "going too far". After Moorhead's release, the WPSU published a handbill, ''Scotland Disgraced and Dishonoured'', with Moorhead describing her experience being fed by force:

The tube filled up all my breathing space, I couldn't breathe. The young man began pouring in the liquid food.

I heard the noises I was making of choking and suffocationuncouth noises human beings are not intended to make and which might be made by a vivisected dog. Still he kept on pouring.

In 1914, Frances Parker, another Scottish suffragette, was being force-fed by the rectum (a nutrient enema, a standard procedure before the invention of intravenous therapy) and once by the vagina in the Perth prison:

Djuna Barnes, an American journalist, agreed to submit to force-feeding for a 1914 ''New York World'' magazine article. Barnes wrote, "If I, play acting, felt my being burning with revolt at this brutal usurpation of my own functions, how they who actually suffered the ordeal in its acutest horror must have flamed at the violation of the sanctuaries of their spirits." She concluded, "I had shared the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex."

The United Kingdom also used forcible feeding techniques against Irish Republicans during their struggle for independence. In 1917, Irish prisoner Thomas Ashe died as a result of complications from such a feeding while incarcerated at Dublin's Mountjoy Jail. The outrage of Ashe's death from the Irish public was so great that force feeding has never been used in Ireland since.

United States

Ethel Byrne was the first female political prisoner in the United States to be subjected to force feeding after she was jailed at Blackwell Island workhouse on January 22, 1917, for her activism in advocating for the legalization of birth control. She subsequently went on a hunger strike and refused to drink water for 185 hours.

Under United States jurisdiction, force-feeding is frequently used in the U.S. military prison in