would die when she died, or would live for a time in her dead body. This last ghastly doubt seems to have been particularly harrowing to her in her morbid mental condition, but even in the face of such reflections she finally decided to allow herself to be hanged. Early in January, 1883, the Government, without reference to her condition, of which it was still ignorant, commuted her sentence to penal servitude for life[1] and sent her with a returning party of common-criminal exiles to the city of Irkutsk. Although it was mid-winter, she was not provided with a sheepskin overcoat, nor with felt boots, and she might have perished from cold on the road if the common criminals in the party had not taken pity upon her and furnished her with warm clothing at the expense of their own comfort. When she reached Irkútsk she was in such a condition that she had to be lifted out of her sleigh. As a result of this prolonged agony of mind and body, her child, a short time afterwards, was born dead in the Irkútsk prison. When we left Siberia in 1886 she was still living. All that I know of her life since that time is that it has ended.
When one of my informants first knew Madam Kutitónskaya she was a happy, careless school-girl in Odessa, and no one would have ventured to predict that in less than ten years she would develop into a woman of such extraordinary energy, courage, self-control, and firmness of purpose. There are few things more remarkable in the records of heroism than the determination of Madam Kutitónskaya to allow herself to be hanged, with a child in her womb, in order that the horror of such an execution might stir the emotions of every man and woman who heard of it, and give wider publicity to the series of events of which it was the final
- ↑ I was credibly informed, and in justice the fact should be stated, that this commutation of sentence was asked for by Governor Ilyashévich, whose life Madam Kutitónskaya had attempted. Whether he felt, upon reflection, some stirrings of pity and remorse, or whether he merely wished to make a showing of magnanimity in order to throw doubt upon the reports of his cruelty at the mines and break their effect, I do not know.
