FLOGGING IN SIBERIAN PRISONS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6362, 17 December 1898, Page 1

FLOGGING IN SIBERIAN PRISONS.

A recent number of the Vratsch, a medical journal published weekly in St Petersburg, conta-ins the following account of the Siberian prisons from the pen of Dr Jjolws, a surgeon in tJio convict prisons on the island of Saioialin. It is the duty o$ Dr Lobas to say whether an " arrestant " or convict is in a fit state to receive a certain number of stripes, eiwer with the knout or rod. "I beg your Excellency to have the goodness to attend on a certain day at tho prisons entrusted fo my care, so that you may be present at tne execution of the sentences given by tho courts of law ; " this is the official invitation sent to Dr Lobas by the Governors of the prisons. : Passing along a .gloonry passage of the Alexander Prison, whose walls are covered with black mouldiness, and reek with the strong scent of pine cones strewing on the floor, we find at the end of the corridor chairs and tables for the authorities who wetness tine infliction of the punishments ; among the officials are a lawyer, the chief of the prison, and the surgeon, and a little way off is placed the "block" of threatening aspect, behind which stands the wielder of the knout, who awaits his victims with a curious look. His garb is apparently in,ttnded to make the situation all the more impressive ; he wears a tall white h-ead-covering, soft felt shoes, a blood-red shirt with its sLeeves turned up, and he carries, the knout in his liand. Along the one wall stands a row of convicts with smoothly shaved heads, and facing them is a long line of warders armed with loaded revolvers in the hand. The stillness, as of the grave, \vl4ch stemps all present, is broken from time to time by THE RATTLING OF THE HANDCUFFS and the leg fetters, and by a furtive cough or the rustling of the papers upon the table pf the prison Governor. ;, "Who will be the next?" is the question that is all too clearly to be read upon the deathlike features of the arrestants." ; : " Sidorov "is called out by the Governor in a quiet, restrained voice. Sidorov steps unsteadily .and with an increasing totter and : rattling, "of his chains out of the line of ! grey, long felt coats. I note his lips growing pale and the fear in his widely opened eyes, as- though he were a hunted wild beast. ■ ; "Lie down," is the command.. Hastily making the sign of the Cross on his breast, Sidorov lies down at length on the bench, and throws each arm around it ; he is then bound by leathern thongs to the bench, and his hands are tied together beneath it. " How many?" asks the warder charged with counting the strokes. " Sixty " is the quiet answer of the Governor. " Look out " or " Pull yourself together " forms the general remark of the knoutwielder, and the next moment the blows are on Sidorov, who utters heart - piercing shrieks. One, two, three— the warder calls aloud the tale of the stripes, every one of hisses and leaves 'its mark on the culprit. The cry that at first followed every stroke has gradually become an unbroken I'jowl and roar,, and readers must have strong nerves if they can. picture further all the hideousness of this , DIABOLICAX FORM OF PUNISHMENT. This sort of castigajtion is inflicted upon convicts whenever it is ordained by the law or by the police and local authorities. The dispenser of blows is always a fellow taken from the prisoners themselves, and in his hands the fate of ,the delinquent may be said literally to lie. The krout consists of a thick wooden stick, to which is fastened a strongly plaited lash, about thirty inches long and two inches wide, and this thong is cut so as to form three lashes at its end. A convict who retains the smallest degree of human feeling can never be induced to undertake this office, and thus only the most reprobate and hardened criminals are chosen for the dread work. To these inhuman creatures the courts of Russia entrust human life. It is In their power to inflict only light punishment iipon the condemned, to make him a cripple for the rest of his days, or to send him to fils grave on the spot ; and yet the officials never •deem it necessary to put any restraint on these floggers. The experienced flo^gers are really skilled at their work. If they wish to ahow any mercy to the delinquent, they rain blows on his body with the middle part of the whip, while the cruel tips of it fall beyond the prisoner and on the bench ; but if no mercy is to be given, then the knout is made to do its fell purpose. In the hands of a skilled flogger the motions of the knout ore so quick that they can scarcely be rightly followed by an inexperienced observer. In either case, the prisoner naturally howls; but the difference in the result is very marked. The lightened form of punishment can be bought, and woe ,to him .who is not able TO PROPITIATE THE FLOGGER. Permanent injury and death as the results of the knouts were formerly by no means rare, but now they are exceptions. Very much depends also upon the personality of the chief of the prison ; if he is a man of the least kindly feeling he will not j allow the flogging to bo earned out to gruesome lengths ; but, are there many such men to be found- on the outermost fringe of the Russian Empire? What official is there now in those Siberian prisons who does not know the repeated and stereotyped injunction of the Governor to the flogger, " Don't lay it on too lightly ; strike harder, but not too quickly"? The chief of one of the Snklwlin prisoT)* found fault with the too lax administration of such punishment in a neighbouring prison, and referred in the following words to the method observed by L'im : — "I manage the business thus; tho criminal 'is bound to the bench, and I light a ciga,rette ; then I walk from wall to wall of the corridor with; the regularity of a pendulum. The flogger knows his work; so soon as I liave reached one wall, thwack comes down the knout for number ' one ;' as I reach the other wall number 'two' resounds, and so on." Another chief, being dissatisfied with the jjentlfl handlin.fr of the scourge, snatched it from the flogger's hand, and, laying it about the back of the " arrestant," showed ;j t-lie flogger how he ought) !to use it. Other Governors again cause the flogger himself to bo severely beaten, if they think that he does not do his duty. The Courts generally condemn to flogging confirmed criminals, fugitives from Siberia and vagabonds, many of whom have received altogether from five to six hundred blows. An old Siberian tramp finished his curriculum vit«e with the following words: — "I have received all told 1400 stripes of the birch-rod, 600 blows from the knout, and numberless thrashings by sticks." As is to bo expected, the statistics of the Siberian prison show the futility of these punishments as corrective measures. In proportion as the punishments increase in number and cruelty, so the relapses and l>a«kslidings into crime increase. Nostalgia, or intensified home sickness, is curiously strong iv the inmates of the Siberian prisons, and will not be repressed by the MOST CRUEL SYSTEM OF WHIPPING. Hitherto we have dealt only with the knout, which is the rarer form of punishment, and must, be ordered by a court of law. The usual corporal punishment by means of rods cind sticks is somewhat different, for they form the Alpha and Omega of the corrective measures in use in Siberian prisons. This form of punishment is regarded rather as a bagatelle, and yet its effects are much worse than those of the

knout, for it is meted out to all in the same measure ; it needs not to be ordained by a court of law, and the victim undergoes no previous medical examination as to his fitness to bear the punishment. Every Governor of prisons can give thirty and every District Governor one hundred of these blows at their sole discretion. It is the naked truth that even criminals when grievously ill do not escape this punishment. A female prisoner in the district «f Korsakov was whipped to such an' extent that she fell down dead. That the Governors of Siberian prisons are not ail monsters, but *iwt there are in exceptional cases kindly-hearfc*d men is seen in the case of Sibjagin, the former director of the prison at Irkutsk ; he went bo far in his dauntless reforms as to entirely abolish punishment by whipping. And what was the result? The prispn discipline improved astonishingly, transgressions and crimes almost ceased to be the order of the day, and attempts to escape became a thing of the past. Not once did the convicts working in the open, fields seek to make their escape from the scanty guard watching them. Unfortunately, this instructive example remained an isolated case.