Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - The Terror in Russia (1909).djvu/24

Rh the prison, which has been built for 600 inmates, containing regularly 1,800.

During last winter the epidemic appeared almost everywhere. In Pyatigorsk it appeared in January; in Perm in February. It was eruptive typhus, and the chief doctor of the zemstvo infirmary, M. Vinográdoff, died on February 2nd, after having been infected while he received in the infirmary 18 typhus patients brought from the local prison. In February 70 persons had already died, but the prison administration, as the ex-member of the Duma, M. Polétaeff, writes to the St. Petersburg papers, refused even to permit the prisoners to improve their food at their own expense. Many soldiers and warders were infected in their turn, and another prison doctor, Pilipin, and two warders, as also several soldiers of the military garrison, died from typhus.

In the government of Ekaterinoslav the prisons of Lugan and Bakhmut (a prison which was built for 50 persons, but had 350 inmates) soon were infected. In a few weeks the number of typhus patients in this last prison reached 54, and 100 a few days later. In the capital of the province, at Ekaterinoslav, where 1,317 persons were kept in a building that had been built for 300 inmates, typhus was raging. There were 130 patients in February, 235 in March. There appeared also cholera, which was due to the rotten food distributed to the prisoners and to contaminated water.

In Poltava typhus has raged since November last, and continues still. In the province of Kursk the typhus epidemic broke out in seven different gaols; in the provincial prison all sick continued to be kept in chains, and they were transported in this way to the zemstvo infirmary; 16 warders all fell ill. In Simpheropol there were in February 86 cases of recurrent typhus and 3 of eruptive typhus; in March there were 200 cases, and the epidemic showed no signs of abatement.

The same ravages were apparent in the prisons of Kherson, Zenkoff, Radomysl, Berdichef, and several other towns of South-West Russia.

The same in Warsaw (where the prison of the Praga suburb