first time that day] in his presence. The stench that met him was so great that, in spite of his desire to conceal from the prisoners his recognition of the fact that their accommodations were worse than those provided for dogs, he could not at once enter the building. He ordered the opposite door to be thrown open, and did not himself enter until a strong wind had been blowing for some time through the prison. The first thing that he saw, in one corner of the corridor, was an overflowing parásha [excrement bucket] and through the ceiling was dripping filth from a similar parásha in the story above. In that corner of the corridor he found six men lying on the floor asleep. He was simply astounded. "How can people sleep," he exclaimed, "on this wet, foul floor, and under such insupportable conditions?" He shouted indignantly at the warden and other prison authorities, but he could change nothing.
—"Afar," by M. I. Orfánof, pp. 220-222. Moscow, 1883.
Scurvy constituted 13.7 per cent. of all the sickness in the Vérkhni Údinsk prison in 1888.
—Rep. of Chf . Pris. Dept. for 1888, p. 293.
THE YENISÉISK PRISONS.
The following are the official statistics of sickness and mortality in all the prisons "of general type" in the province of Yeniséisk for the years 1886, 1887, and 1888.
1886. | 1887. | 1888. | |
Average daily number of prisoners | 1715 | 1877 | 2117 |
Average daily number in hospital | 427 | 449 | 445 |
Sick-rate—per cent. | 24.9 | 23.9 | 21 |
Total number of deaths | 247 | 231 | 205 |
Death-rate—per cent. | 14.4 | 12.3 | 9.6 |
—Reps of Chf. Pris. Adm. for years indicated, pp. 9, 9, and 9. |
Death-rate in railroad convict camps in North Carolina in 1879 and 1880 11.5 per cent.; in Texas convict camps 4.7 to 5.4 per cent.
—"The Convict Lease System in the Southern States," by George W. Cable, Century Magazine, vol. xxvii, p. 582.
PRISONS IN GENERAL.
A correspondent of the Nóvoe Vrémya reports that, notwithstanding the recent journey through Siberia of the chief of the prison administration, Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, the unsatisfactory condition of the prisons and of the exiles remains unchanged. The whole prison question, the