"LIFERS" IN A BURMESE PRISON.

Western Star, Issue 1353, 11 May 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

"LIFERS" IN A BURMESE PRISON.

The inspection is over and the order is given to go to dinner; the gang shambles off clanking, and the men take their places round the slabs, a convict warder, or good conduct man in a forage cap, takiDg the head of each. Another word of command and they sit down and attack the food; the noonday sun is blazing upon their bald heads, but no one minds that, and the convicts dispose of their soup and rice with a • vigorous satisfaction that betrays this to be the event of the day. Dinner over, they go in pairs to the trough beside the well, where they take a driok of water and fall in to await the orders to return to their various occupations. Some spend the looms, where the coarse cloth used in the jail is turned out, others at the oppresses and saw-pitp, or the mortars wherein the paddy is husked for the prisoner's daily rice. GANGS OF SHORT TERM MEN' are marched off holding hands to work outside the walls at the timber-yard, or, if fortunate, well-behaved convict?, to the garden. Long-term prisoners are sent to the hardest, coarsest work within the walls ; there is no prospect of the slight change of scene ex-mural labour affords for them. Hammer in hand, they sit day after day breaking stones, which they do in the listless, mechanical way peculiar to prison labourers. Well fed and kept steadily at work, they are, as the superintendent points out, in perfect muscular condition—a fact to which they are quite alive, and which does not conduce to their good behaviour. Conspiracies to break out are not uncommon,. gjlthough, owing.to the system of n^et '

allowing one batch of men to remain together for more than a night or two in succession, they are seldom matured. A DETERMINED ATTEMPT TO " BREAK JAIL " took placa in the great central prison at Rangoon a few years ago, resulting in a stand-up fight between warders and convicts. Same 20 " lifers " confined in a large stone cell whose gate opened upon their workyard, were the culprits. The hammers and road-metal which provided their daily labour were kept in this yard so the first aim of the convicts was to obtain access to the shed where these weapons lay. About midnight the attention of the sentry was called to the illness of one of the occupants of the cell by another man, who was apparently the only wakeful member of the gang besides the sham invalid. A Madrasee apothecary was called to the grated window of the den, and obtained sufficient information to enable him to prepare some remedy. Seeing that all the convicts were sound asleep on his return with the potion, he did not attempt to give the medicine to the sick man through the window, but, against rules, caused the guard to open the gate, intending to take it into the cell himself. The instant the gate was opened

THE SLUMBERING CONVICTS sprang to their feet, rushed at the apoth ecary and knocked him down in such a position that his recumbent form effectually prevented the guard behnd closing it. They quickly made their way into the workshed, and, arming themselves with hammers and stones, prepared to resist the warders, who had been attracted by the noise and the shouts of a sentry on the wall. A furious conflict now ensued between the warders, big muscular Panjaubees, armed with heavy cudgels, and the convicts with their extemporised weapons. The warders were reinforced until both parties were fairly matched, and the rough and tumble fight in the dark progressed amidst extraordinary confusion. The work-yard was over looked py two huge j wings of the jail in which a large number cf prisonors were confined; these men were roused to a pitch of frantic excitement by the uproar below, and they dashed about their ward a like caged animals,

WITH SCREAMS AND YELLS of encouragement to their fellows. The sentries ou the watch-towers on the main wall meantime kept up a desultory fire in the air to piove to the convicts the impossibility of passing that, if they should succeed in scaling the high spiked iron railing of their yard. The combatants fought hand to hand for some time, neither side gaining any advantage whilst above the roar of human voices, and the sickening crash of heavy clubs on the convicts' shaven skulls, the alarmbell clashed ont a warning to the military that their assistance Jwas rquired. Warders had been summoned from all parts of ths jail, and a general outbreak seemed imminent, when the appearance of the with a revolver suddenly decided matters. Panic seized the convicts, and they dropped their weapons with one accord and crowded back' into the cell, leaving two of their number dead in the yard.—-From " In a Burmese Prison," in the Oornhill Magazine.