Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/543

Rh who recently visited the prison, "it is doubtful whether pigs would eat it."

— Balagánsk correspondence of newspaper Sibírskaya Gazéta, No. 42, pp. 1119-1120. Tomsk, Oct. 20, 1885.

Scurvy constituted 28.4 per cent. of all the sickness in the Balágansk prison in 1888.

— Rep. of Chf. Pris. Adm. for 1888, p. 293.

THE BARNAÜL PRISON.

All sorts of disorders and irregularities are reported in the Barnaül prison, including drunkenness, fraud, embezzlement, counterfeiting [the tools and materials for which were furnished to the prisoners by the police], and murder.

— Newspaper Vostóchnoe Obozrénie, No. 12, p. 9. St. Petersburg, June 17, 1882.

Scurvy constituted 14.5 per cent. of all the sickness in the Barnaül prison in 1886.

— Rep. of Chf. Pris. Adm. for 1886, p. 223.

THE BIRUSÍNSKI ÉTAPE.

Typhus fever constituted 15.2 per cent. of all the sickness in the Birusínski étape in 1886, 17.5 per cent. in 1887, and 43 per cent. in 1888.

— Rep. of Chf. Pris. Adm. for years indicated, pp. 222, 316, and 293.

THE CHEREMKHÓFSKI PRISON.

The condition of the Cheremkhófski prison is described to us by an eye-witness as something terrible. In four small cells [which do not contain, all together, more than 1700 cubic feet of air] there are packed thirty prisoners, including five or six women — one of them decrepit — and a baby. The cells are foul and stinking; the floors, in many places, have rotted and given way; and the sleeping-platforms are dirty and broken. Fleas and bedbugs are there in myriads, and, to use the expression of one of the prisoners, "they just regularly drink blood." No clothing is furnished, and some of the prisoners have nothing to wear but the shirts in which they were arrested. In short, it is impossible to describe all that one can see. "This is a grave and not a prison," said one young