Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/534

518 518 APPENDIX allowed to publish false information with regard to the adminis- tration of provincial affairs, and that the censor, who was at the same time the acting-governor, would unhesitatingly cross out any description of the Tomsk forwarding prison that, in his judgment, was exaggerated, or unduly pessimistic. Let us see, then, what the acting-governor of the province allowed the Tomsk news- papers to say about this great exile-forwarding depot the same fall that I visited it and wrote the "ghastly descriptions," from which Mr. de Windt says he entirely failed to recognize the prison described. Under the heading " City News," the Siberian Gazette referred to the overcrowding of the prison in question as follows : The excessively large number of exiles lately received has compelled the local authorities to put them not only into the forwarding prison, where on the 1st of October there were 2140 prisoners [not couutiug the sick], but also into the prison castle where at the same time there were 1120, aud even into the building of the " convict company" [arrestantski rot], to which were sent 120 families. The sick were housed in the for- warding prison, where there were more than 300, and in the prison castle, where there were 80. During the month of October the number of exiles increased to 3400, of whom 2400 were confined in the forwarding prison. This prison was built to accommodate only 1200 persons, and its capacity is now even less than that, owing to the fact that three out of the eleven prison buildings have been given up to the sick. The overcrowding of the hospital is already so great that the surgeon can receive no more patients, and the sick must be left in the same cells with those that are yet well. This state of things bears very heavily upon the children. — Siberian Gazette, No. 42, Tomsk, Oct. 20, 1885, p. 1114. The editors of the two Tomsk newspapers were so opposed to each other in character, temperament, and journalistic policy, and were, moreover, on such hostile terms personally, that they would not speak to each other when they met accidentally in my room. Nevertheless, in their opinion of the Tomsk forwarding prison they heartily coincided, and the conservative, Government-favored paper, having less to fear, was much more bold and uncompromis- ing in the expression of its views than was the humane and liberal journal of Mr. Adrianof. Four days after the appearance of the above-quoted paragraph in the Gazette, the Messenger, in a leading editorial on the same subject, said, " A month has now elapsed since the suspension of the movement of exile parties from Tomsk into Eastern Siberia. This intermission, which is customary and is due