THE HORRORS OF SIBERIAN PRISONS.

Colonist, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5783, 22 April 1890, Page 4

THE HORRORS OF SIBERIAN PRISONS.

The 'Northern Messenger* has a paper of interest, by V, Ptitsin, describing the Russian prisons of the Lena district, which serve as haltingplaces for the convicts on their way to Siberia ; and the pictures he draws of the sufferings of these outcasts before they reach their final destination are (says the Review of Reviews) as harrowing and gruesome as the most sensational statements with which Mr Q.

Kennau shocked a phlegmatic public. Thus we read of 100 men being crammed into a dark cell in which 40 perSOni could with diffioulty be accommodated, the temperature being as low as 24deg Fahr ; of the atmosphere being so poisonous in some cells that the prisoners are compelled to sleep with the door open, letting in j the frosty air in which the mercury of, a Fahrenheit thermometer descends to 20dega below zero. He tells us of weak women and children, on that {rightful journey in the depth of a Siberian winter, who, in favourable oases, are fed only on black bread, and bitterly complain that they get very little even of that; in unfavourable cases, which are verp frequent, receive neither food nor money for a space of several hundred miles, and are thus wholly dependent upon the sorely -tried charity of the poverty stricken peasant. He speaks of ricketty wooden prisons through which the Arctic wind blows as through muslin, and into the wooden walls of which the prisoners, for the edification of M. Ftitsin, plunged their fingers as easily as into soft snow or molten butter ; of rooms sodden with unnameable filth and ordure, sick persons of both sexes lying helplessly on the cold, putrescent floor, so close together that an apple, if it fell, would not reach the ground, crying, moaning, complaining of the cold. Worst of all, he describes bright little children, the smile of innocence playing on their lips, lying uncared for in a corner of the cell set apart for syphilitic women, * just like puppies or kittens ; ' of the tortures of the so-called • naked people, 1 — convicts who, unable any longer to endure the pangs of hunger, sell their clothes, buy food with the proceeds, and perform a journey of hundreds of miles in their linen, sure of being soundly flogged if they arrive alive. A considerable portion of every batch of convicts is composed of ' naked people.' whom the peasant-earners cover with straw, horse-cloths, or Whatever is handy, and hurry them off to the next station, no matter how ill they may be, apprehensive lest they should succumb in the district for which they are responsible. Thete are many halting-places unprovided with prisons, where the peasants are obliged to take in the convicts for the Dight. This wonld seem a welcome change from the cold hospitality of a regular prison ; but it has terrible drawbacks. The convicts complain, ■ays M. Ptitsin, that while the pea■ants are deliberating and squabbling about the billeting of the batch of prisoners, the latter have to standsome covered only with their linen and a piece of tarpaulin — for half a day in the open air, hungry, weary, and perishing of cold, the thermometer often registering 86 degrees below zero^ (Fahr.) Small wonder that convicts are frozen to death, cut down by want, swept away by disease, and that a mere fraction of those sent to Siberia ever get to their destination.