Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/120

98 On the contrary, that year, regarded from the point of view of vital statistics, seems to have been a better one than usual. Below will be found another table, also taken from the annual report of the inspector of exile transportation, containing statistics of sickness and death in the same prison for the year 1884.

Such an annual death-rate as this is not to be found, I believe, outside the Russian empire, in all the civilized world. In the prisons of France the average death-rate is about 3.8 per cent., in the prisons of Austria 3.5 per cent., in the prisons of Belgium and Denmark 1.8 per cent., in the prisons of the United States 1.7 to 2 per cent., and in the prisons of England 1.4 per cent. In the Tiumén forwarding prison the average death-rate was 29.5 per cent., or almost 300 per thousand.