Page:Chertkov - Christian Martyrdom.djvu/23

12 In the Tionet district, 83 deaths occurred among 100 families. In the Dushet district, 20 deaths occurred among 72 families. Almost all are suffering from diseases, and disease and mortality are constantly increasing.

Besides these deaths there have been others (due to actual violence) among the Spirit-Wrestlers in prison and in the penal battalion.

The first to die in this way, in July 1895, was Kirill Konkin, the cause of death being blows received as corporal punishment. He died on the road, before reaching the place of his exile, in a state of hallucination, which commenced while he was being flogged. Next, in August 1896, died Michael Scherbinin in the Ekaterinograd penal battalion, tortured to death by flogging, and by being thrown with violence over the wooden horse in the gymnasium. Among those confined in the prisons, many have already died. Some of them, while dying, were locked up in separate rooms, and neither their fellow-prisoners, nor parents, wives and children who had come to bid them farewell, were allowed even to enter the room where the dying lay, alone and helpless. More deaths are to be expected both among the population suffering from want in exile and in the prisons.