CONDITIONS IN PRISON.
MEN DIE FROM HEAT. PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 24. Investigators sent -to the county prison here, following the discovery yesterday of, four convicts dead in their cells as a result of a five-day hunger strike, describe conditions m the isolation block as being like the Black Hole of Calcutta. The investigators believe that the convicts were confined behind steel doors. The windows were closed, the water turned off, and the radiators heated to the limit so that the men died slowly from the intense heat and suffocation. Nineteen other convicts have been admitted to hospital nearly dead. The Coroner to-day promised arrests if the autopsies warranted them. Relatives who viewed the bodies of the. four dead men indicate that violence to a shocking degree had preceded death.
A message yesterday stated that the hunger sti'ike began as a protest against what was described as monotonous food. The superintendent of the prison, Mr William Mills, announced that the men committed suicide, but the Cozener said that there were mysterious circumstances surrounding their deaths. Their bodies were black and blue and the skin had been burnt off in places. The Coroner declared that the men had been scalded to death.
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Bibliographic details
Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 228, 25 August 1938, Page 11
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199CONDITIONS IN PRISON. Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 228, 25 August 1938, Page 11
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