Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/117

Rh and of the sickness and misery in which it resulted. He replied in the affirmative. The local authorities, the prison committee, and the inspector of exile transportation for Western Siberia had reported upon the condition of the Tiumén prison, he said, every year; but the case of that prison was by no means an exceptional one. New prisons were needed all over European Russia, as well as Siberia, and the Government did not yet feel able financially to make sweeping prison reforms, nor to spend perhaps ten million rubles in the erection of new prison buildings. The condition of the Tiumén prison was, he admitted, extremely bad, and he himself had resigned his place as a member of the prison committee because the Government would not authorize the erection of a new building for use as a hospital. The prison committee had strongly recommended it, and when the Government disapproved the recommendation, he resigned.

In the foregoing pages I have tried to describe the Tiumén forwarding prison as it appears to the senses; I will now describe it as it appears in the official records.

Colonel Vinokúrof, inspector of exile transportation for Western Siberia, in his annual report for 1884 refers to it as follows:

It thus officially appears that the Tiumén forwarding prison, including the log buildings that once constituted the étape and two unwarmed wooden barracks, cannot properly be made to hold more than 850 prisoners. From the table quoted below it may be seen how many prisoners these buildings actually did hold during the exile season from May