TWO HORRIBLE SUICIDES.
(By Cable.—Press Association.—Copjilgbt.) ST. PETERSBURG. Augnst 15. It is reported that two political prisoners in Odessa gaol saturated their mattresses with petroleum yesterday and set them on fire. One of the men was burnr ed to death; the other was rescued.
[Suicide by burning has been regularly practised by prisoners in Russia for the past twenty years. Its continuance shows that the conditions of prison life are as terrible as ever. The immediate occasions are many, but the silence torture is perhaps the commonest. A recent refugee to London described in vivid language the terrors of this treatment in the St. Peter and St. Paul prison at St. Petersburg. So awful did the silence become — the warders are even forced to wear list slippers to render the punishment the more complete—that the sputter of a candle or the turning of the leaves of a book by a gaoler in the pasSage outside the cell has proved as startling as the report of a gun to people living imder normal conditions. The method of self-destruction by burning has been followed also by prisoners, and especially girls who have been brutally flogged by their captors.],
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Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 195, 16 August 1906, Page 5
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196TWO HORRIBLE SUICIDES. Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 195, 16 August 1906, Page 5
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