The Hastings Standard. MONDAY, SEPT 17, 1906 A RUSSIAN GAOL.

Hastings Standard, Volume X, Issue 5304, 17 September 1906, Page 2

The Hastings Standard. MONDAY, SEPT 17, 1906 A RUSSIAN GAOL.

The horrors of a Russian gaol have been vividly described by Mr Barnet Beck, a revolutionary who has been incarcerated m Odessa. The conditions, he says, are unendurable. The filthy sells are not tit for dogs, yet they are often crammed with prisoners of both sexes. His own cell in Odessa, he says, was about Bft by Bft, but it had to accommodate twenty-seven persons, including three young boys and several women. The straw underfoot was not changed for many weeks, and owing to the dampness of the stone iloor and the lack of sanitary accommodation, it soon became full of filth and vermin. Tha greatest sufferers, of course, were the women. The food consisted mainly of rotten cabbage and half baked black bread. Complaints from prisoners simply made the gaolers harsher. " A few days ago," wrote Mr Beck, from the gaol, " the prisoners in a neighbouring cell complained to the Governor of the quality of the food. The chief warder immediately threatened to have them knouted if they did ! not withdraw that complaint The prisoners refused; whereupon the warder ordered the soldiers to drag out the leader. who was knouted on the .-pot, and then thrown into a ' career,' that is a small dark cell about aft by lift and -ut in height, where the prisoner was chained , to the wall in such a manner that be

could neither sit nor stand, but was practically hanging by the hands, into which the irons cut deeply. The others refused to withdraw the complaint, and the warder ordered two more prisoners to be knouted. The prisoners refused to allow their comrades to leave the cell, whereupon the soldiers drove them all out by blows with the but ends of their rifles, and made them run the gauntlet Jn the corridor. One man's eye was destroyed by a thrust from a bayonet, a woman's breast cut open, and several were stunned." Many of the Odessa prisoners had never been before the Courts, and as a protest against their illegal punishment they resorted to the desperate expedient of a "hunger strike," abstaining from food for seven days. In that time young men and women grew old aud grey. Several prisoners died, others < went mad, and all the prisoners were ; meditating an awful vengeaace on " the murderers of Hussia's youth."