Imprisonment is not the only penalty inflicted; cases of petty larceny are generally dealt with by flogging. The culprit is handcuffed and with the identical article which he stole, or one similar, suspended from his neck, is marched through the streets of the neighbourhood in which the theft was committed. He is preceded by a man beating a gong, and at each beat of the gong an officer who walks behind gives him a severe blow with a double rattan across the shoulders, exclaiming, “This is the punishment due to a thief.” As the culprit has to pass through three or four streets his punishment, although regarded by the Chinese as a minor one, is certainly not lacking in severity, and is often accompanied by a considerable flow of blood.
A thief who had stolen a watch from one of his countrymen was flogged through the Honam suburb of Canton, but the officer appointed to flog himwas very corpulent, and from his great earnestness in the discharge of his duty became quite breathless before the various streets along which the culprit was sentenced to pass had been fully traversed. The person from whom the watch had been stolen, seeing that the thief might escape the full severity of his penalty, snatched the double rattan from the hand of the exhausted officer and applied it himself most unmercifully to the thief’s back. Women who are convicted of thieving are in some instances punished in this way. Occasionally a long bamboo is used in cases of petty larceny. When this is the case, however, the culprit receives his flogging in court in front of the tribunal. He is at once denuded of his trousers and the number of blows varies according to the nature of the larceny, from ten to three hundred.
Mr. Henry Norman, who witnessed a most cruel flogging in court, which left the prisoner in a pitiable state, asserts that when a policeman was called to suffer the same punishment, it was seen that he had bound strips of wood on himself to catch the full force of the bamboo. The prescribed number of strokes were administered, but the fraud was plainly apparent to the magistrate and all the spectators, and the policeman, who was none the worse for the flogging, went about his duties as usual when the ordeal was over. Spectacles of this kind, says the same authority, seem to be highly enjoyed by a Chinese audience.
Chinese Punishment
Thecangue, or square and heavy wooden collar, is one of the modes by which petty offenders are punished in China. The weight varies with the offence, and they are worn from a fortnight to three months, during which time thecangueis not removed by day or night. This device inflicts severe punishment, preventing the culprit from assuming any position of rest. The name of the prisoner and the nature of his offence are written on thecanguein large letters, so that “he who runs may read,” and he is often made to stand at one of the principal gates or in some other conspicuous place as an object of universal contempt.
Thecangue, or square and heavy wooden collar, is one of the modes by which petty offenders are punished in China. The weight varies with the offence, and they are worn from a fortnight to three months, during which time thecangueis not removed by day or night. This device inflicts severe punishment, preventing the culprit from assuming any position of rest. The name of the prisoner and the nature of his offence are written on thecanguein large letters, so that “he who runs may read,” and he is often made to stand at one of the principal gates or in some other conspicuous place as an object of universal contempt.
Thecangue, or square, heavy wooden collar, is another mode by which petty offenders in China are punished.Canguesvary in weight, some being considerably larger and heavier than others. The period for which an offender is sentenced to wear this collar varies from a fortnight to three months. During the whole of this time thecangueis not removed from the neck of the prisoner either by day or by night. Its form prevents the wearer from stretching himself on the ground at full length, and to judge from the attenuated appearance of prisoners who have undergone it, the punishment must be terribly severe. The name of the lawbreaker and the nature of his offence are written on thecanguein large letters, “so that all the world may read.” The authorities often make the victim stand from sunrise to sunset at one of the principal gates or in front of one of the chief temples or public halls of the city, where he is regarded as an object of universal scorn and contempt.
Another mode of punishing a criminal is that of confining him in a cage. The cages are of different forms, the worst being too short to allow the occupants to place themselves in a recumbent position and too low to admit of their standing. To the top of one kind is attached a wooden collar orcangueby which the neck of the criminal, which it is made to fit, is firmly held. Another cage resembles the former in all respects but one. The difference consists in its being higher than its occupant,so that while his neck is held fast by the wooden collar attached to the top of the cage, the tips of his toes barely touch the floor. Indeed, the floor, which is only a few inches from the ground, is sometimes removed so that the prisoner may be suspended by the neck. This punishment almost invariably proves fatal. The victims are as a rule thieves and robbers. They are often punished by being bound to stones by means of long chains passed round their necks. The stones are not large, but sufficiently heavy to inconvenience them as they walk to and from the prison to the entrance gates of theyamun, in front of which they are daily exposed. These stones are their inseparable companions by night and by day throughout the whole period of their incarceration. In some instances they are bound to long bars of iron and are daily exposed to the scorn of all passers by.
For capital and other offences of a serious nature there are six classes of punishment. The first, calledling che, has already been mentioned. It is inflicted upon traitors, parricides, matricides, fratricides and murderers of husbands, uncles and tutors. The criminal is cut into either one hundred and twenty, seventy-two, thirty-six or twenty-four pieces. Should there be extenuating circumstances, his body, as a mark of imperial clemency, is divided into eight portions only. The punishment of twenty-four cuts is inflicted as follows: the first and second cuts remove the eyebrows; the third andfourth the shoulders; the fifth and sixth the breasts; the seventh and eighth the parts between each hand and elbow; the ninth and tenth the parts between each elbow and shoulder; the eleventh and twelfth the flesh of each thigh; the thirteenth and fourteenth the calf of each leg; the fifteenth pierces the heart; the sixteenth severs the head from the body; the seventeenth and eighteenth cut off the hands; the nineteenth and twentieth the arms; the twenty-first and twenty-second the feet; the twenty-third and twenty-fourth the legs. That of eight cuts is inflicted as follows; the first and second cuts remove the eyebrows; the third and fourth the shoulders; the fifth and sixth the breasts; the seventh pierces the heart; the eighth severs the head from the body. A great many political offenders underwent executions of the first class at Canton during the vice-royalty of His Excellency, Yeh. On the fourteenth day of December, 1864, the famous Hakka rebel leader, Tai Chee-kwei by name, was put to death at Canton in the same manner.
The second class of capital punishment, which is calledchanor decapitation, is the penalty due to murderers, rebels, pirates, burglars, etc. Prisoners who are sentenced to decapitation are kept in ignorance of the hour fixed for their execution until the preceding day. Occasionally they have only a few hours’ and in some instances only a few minutes’ warning. When the time has arrived for making the condemned man ready for execution, an officerin full costume, carrying in his hand a board on which is pasted a list of the names of the prisoners who are that day to atone for their crimes, enters the prison, and in the hearing of all the prisoners assembled in the ward, reads aloud the list of the condemned. Each prisoner whose name is called at once answers to it, and he is then made to sit in a basket to be carried once more into the presence of a judge. As he is taken through the outer gate, he is interrogated through an interpreter by an official who acts on the occasion as the viceroy’s representative.
Mr. Henry Norman described in 1895 an execution of fifteen offenders of this class which he had witnessed. The condemned were carried into the place of execution in flat baskets suspended from bamboo poles, and literally dumped out, bound hand and foot. A slip of paper was stuck in the queue of each condemned man, which described the nature of the crime. These were taken out and stacked up by one of the executioners, and then the work of severing the heads began, one of the executioners holding the victim’s shoulders while the other used the knife. All of those about to be beheaded witnessed the decapitation of their comrades, and the spectators yelled with delight and frenzy. When the last head had been severed, the place was ankle-deep in blood and the executioner, who used the knife, was covered with it. The bodies were thrown into a pond and the heads were put in earthenwarejars and stacked up with others surrounding this potter’s field.
A third punishment is callednam-kow, or death by strangulation. This is inflicted on kidnappers and all thieves who with violence steal articles the value of which amounts to five hundred dollars and upward. The manner in which this form of capital punishment is inflicted is as follows:—A cross is erected in the centre of the execution ground, at the foot of which a stone is placed, and upon this the prisoner stands. His body is made fast to the perpendicular beam of the cross by a band passing round the waist, while his arms are bound to the transverse beam. The executioner then places round the neck of the prisoner a thin but strong piece of twine, which he tightens to the utmost and then ties in a firm knot round the upper part of the perpendicular beam. Death by this cruel process is very slow and is apparently attended with extreme agony. The body remains on the cross during a period of twenty-four hours, the sheriff before leaving the execution ground taking care to attach his seal to the knot of the twine which passes round the neck of the malefactor.
The fourth class of punishment is calledman-kwan, or transportation for life. The criminals who are thus punished are embezzlers, forgers, etc. The places of banishment in the north of China and Tartary are named respectively Hack-loong-kong, Elee Ning-koo-tap and Oloo-muk-tsze. All convictsfrom the midland and southern provinces are sent to one or the other of these places, where the unhappy men are employed in a great measure according to their former circumstances of life. Those who are of a robust nature and who have been accustomed to agricultural pursuits are daily occupied in reclaiming and cultivating waste lands. Others, more especially those who have been sent from the southern provinces, where the heat in summer is almost tropical, are, in consequence of the severity of the cold which prevails in northern latitudes, made to work in government iron foundries. The aged and those who have not been accustomed to manual labour are daily employed in sweeping the state temples and other public buildings.
The fifth class of punishment is termedman-low, or transportation for ten or fifteen years. The criminals of this class are petty burglars and persons who harbour those who have broken the laws. Such offenders are generally sent to the midland provinces of the empire, where the arrangements for convict labour are similar to those of the penal settlements of the north. Convicts of this class who are natives of the midland provinces are sent either to the eastern, western or southern provinces of the empire. The barbarous practice of tattooing the cheeks is also resorted to with these prisoners. The sixth class is calledman-tow, or transportation for three years. A punishment of this nature is the portion of gamblers, salt smugglers, etc. A convict ofthis class is transported to one of the provinces immediately bordering upon that of which he is a native or in which his crime was committed.
Oppression by the ruling class was always rife in China, and instances might be multiplied recording the cruel misusage of inferiors by the mandarins. One case in which ample vengeance was exacted by the aggrieved victim may be quoted here. The story is told by Lady Susan Townley in her “Chinese Note Book.”
“A well-to-do farmer called Chiang-lo lived happily on his estate with a pretty wife whom he loved, until one day, as ill luck would have it, a rich Mandarin passed that way, who, seeing the fair dame, straightway desired her. Anxious to get rid of the husband by fair means or foul, he trumped up a charge against him, and the farmer was condemned ‘to be a slave to a soldier,’ which meant that he would be marched in heavy chains from Peking to the northern frontier of China, cruelly beaten at every station (they occur about every eighteen miles), and ill-treated at will by the soldier in charge of him. This sentence is usually equivalent to death, for few can survive the hardships of such a journey, the fatigue, heat, cold, hunger and torture. But our friend with hatred in his heart resolved to live in order to be revenged upon his enemy. So he bore all his sufferings with superhuman courage, and finally arrived at his destination on the frontier, where he was put to work in a mine.” After hehad been there about three years His Majesty Kwang Hsu assumed the reins of government, and accorded a general pardon to all criminals. Thus in a night Chiang-lo recovered his freedom, and without a moment’s hesitation set off to trudge back to Peking. “This time there was hope in his heart for he meant to kill his enemy and the wife who had betrayed him. When he saw her again, however, all his old love for her returned and though she refused to go with him, and though he knew that if he killed them both, Chinese law would account him guiltless, whereas if he killed her lover and spared her, he would be considered guilty of murder, and would have to bear the penalty, he did not hesitate one moment, but left her and went to find her seducer.
“For days he tracked him about the town, waiting for a favourable opportunity. At last it came, as his rival passed him in the deep embrasure of the Chien-men gate. Springing from his place of concealment he challenged him to fight, but the coward refused. Then Chiang-lo ... drew his knife and repeatedly stabbed him in the heart. When he saw his enemy lying dead at his feet, the apathy of despair fell upon him. Wiping his knife on his sleeve he bowed his head, and turning his steps to the nearest police station calmly gave himself up. A few weeks later he was beheaded.”
It is interesting to read that the prevailing method of punishment in China in the seventeenthcentury differed little from that in force at a very recent date. In the memoirs of the Jesuit Louis le Comte, published in 1698, he says: “They have several ways of inflicting death. Mean and ignoble persons have their heads cut off, for in China the separation of the head from the body is disgraceful. On the contrary, persons of quality are strangled, which among them is a death of more credit.... Rebels and traitors are punished with the utmost severity; that is, to speak as they do, they cut them into ten thousand pieces. For after that the executioner hath tied them to a post, he cuts off the skin all round their forehead which he tears by force till it hangs over their eyes, that they may not see the torments they are to endure. Afterwards he cuts their bodies in what places he thinks fit, and when he is tired of this barbarous employment, he leaves them to the tyranny of their enemies and the insults of the mob.”
Cruelty, which is one of the strongest characteristics of the Chinese nature, manifests itself not only in the application of criminal law, but with a peculiar callousness they delight to torture dumb animals and enjoy witnessing the sufferings of children and adults of their own race. A common practice of the professional kidnapper is to blind a child after stealing it, and then carry it away to another town and sell it for a professional beggar. Infant life is still being destroyed by parents in some districts of China, and the abominable custom is difficult toeradicate, as the children are simply abandoned and left to starve, and if the crime is discovered it is difficult to prove deliberate murder.
Cases have been known of Chinese boatmen refusing to rescue persons who had thrown themselves overboard from a sinking craft and were drowning, unless they agreed to pay an exorbitant sum asked as the price of rescue. They have even been known to look on passively while their fellow-countrymen were struggling for life in the water, without raising a hand to help them.
It is but natural to expect that in a country where such occurrences are common, the punishments inflicted on the really guilty should exceed anything known in the practices of the enlightened nations of to-day.
PRISONS OF JAPAN
Enlightened Japan has striven to establish a perfect prison system—New prisons—Deportation to the island of Yezo—Agricultural labour and work in coal mines—Two fine prisons in Tokio—Description by Mr. Norman—The gallows—Training school for prison officials—Disciplinary punishments and rewards.
Japan as an enlightened and progressive country has made strenuous efforts to establish “as perfect a prison system as possible; one which is in harmony with the advancement of science and the results of experience.” These reforms were commenced in 1871 and were continued in various new prisons at Tokio, Kobold, Kiogo and upon the island of Yezo, all admirably organised and maintained. This movement was hurried on by the great overcrowding of the small provincial prisons on account of the accumulation of long-term prisoners. No proper discipline could be applied and there was absolutely no room for short-term offenders. Most of those sentenced to hard labour and deportation are now sent to the penal settlement on the island of Yezo, where they are employed both within the prisons and at agriculture in the open air. Everyadvantage is taken of the natural aptitudes of the Japanese, and the inmates of gaols prove the most expert and artistic workmen. The very worst criminals are sent to the prison of Sorachi in the remote island of Yezo, beyond Poronaibuto—a bleak, desolate spot surrounded by the usual bamboo fence—which holds about sixteen hundred convicts. They are to be seen squatted on mats at work, each in front of his own sleeping place, and on a shelf above are his wadded bed-quilt, with a mosquito curtain on top of each. The place is so isolated and surrounded by such an impenetrable jungle that escapes are out of the question. A little further on is the prison of Poronai, in a delightful spot, where the most extensive coal fields of Japan are located. A small building houses some six hundred convicts who work in the coal seams on the side of the hill. “Hard labour indeed,” says Mr. Wingfield. “Heavily chained, by light of a safety lamp the wretched convicts were crouching in holes where there was no room to raise the head or stretch the limbs, and here they had to remain for eighteen hours at a time.” Their sentences were for twelve years, although remission might by good conduct be secured after seven. Yet these luckless Japanese bore their irksome lot with a light heart. “As we were leaving Poronai at 5A. M.,” says the same observer, “we met a batch of miners marching to face their ordeal and many after the eighteen hours are completed have to be removed to hospital. Theywere clanking their chains right merrily, talking and laughing loudly, bandying quips and jokes.”
Japan is a land of rapid transition and nothing has changed more completely in recent years than Japanese prisons. Still there was some system, even in ancient days. The sexes were kept apart, the penalty of the log worn round the neck and fastened to the ankle was not imposed upon the aged or juvenile offender, nor upon dwarfs, invalids or pregnant women. In the sixteenth century a prison reformer arose who organised five new prisons in Yeddo for five different classes of prisoners, comprising females and persons of different conditions of life. Proper prison officers were appointed, and security was obtained without despising sanitary needs. Still there must have been much mutual contamination, owing to the indiscriminate herding together, and the maintenance of internal order was left to the prisoners who chose among themselves ananoushi, or head, with eleven assistants to control the whole body. Flogging was inflicted and handcuffs were universally worn. In 1790 a house of correction was established on the island of Yshikavoy in the Bay of Yeddo, to which were committed all vagabonds or incorrigible prisoners whom it was thought unsafe to set free lest they should relapse into crime. The work on this island was chiefly the manufacture of oil. In cases of escape and recapture the fugitives were branded with a certain tattoo mark on the left arm.
Even in the middle of the nineteenth century the same brutal methods of torture prevailed as in China (from where their bloody codes were mostly borrowed), and there are preserved collections of instruments of torture as diabolical as any known to history. Crime, too, was not lacking in those “isles of the blest,” and every species of moral filth and corruption abounded, which was shown in its true colours when the liberty of the press was granted, in 1872-1874. The number of executions and deaths in the native prisons at that time was said to average three thousand per annum.
The chief prison of the empire, in Tokio, as described by Mr. William M. Griffis, who visited it in 1875, was very different in its sanitary appointments and general condition from the prisons of Tokio to-day. A curious feature was a small roofed in structure in the prison yard, with open sides, where condemned men of rank were allowed to expiate their crimes by plunging the dirk into their own bodies, after which the executioner cut off their heads. The head, laid on a tray, was then inspected by an officer of justice. There were very few of such executions after 1871. The ordinary criminal was beheaded in the blood-pit, so-called, which was a pit surrounded with a much stained and slashed wooden curb, and kept covered by a sort of trap-door. In the pit were mats, one above the other, which had been soaked with the blood of many criminals. “The faint odour that ascended,” saysMr. Griffis, “was more horrible in the awful cloud of associations which it called up than the mere stench.” It was then April and twenty-five heads had fallen there since the year began. The criminal was led to the pit blindfolded and was beheaded with an ordinary sword, sharp as a razor. Death followed frequently on the day of sentence and never later than the day after.
Tokio has now two prisons; the first and chief is situated upon the island of Oshikawa at the south of the city, and the second, the convict and female prison of Ichigawa, is in the centre of the city. The former is completely isolated, all communication with the mainland being by police ferry, and can accommodate two thousand men and boys, who are serving terms of ten years or less. The prison of Ichigawa usually contains fifteen hundred men and about one hundred women, among whom are many serving life sentences. Attached to the prison is a convict farm, and it is here that capital punishment is carried out. Otherwise the two prisons resemble each other closely and a description of one will answer for both, says Mr. Norman, who described them in 1892, and gives the following account:
“The entrance is through a massive wooden gateway, into a guard-room adjoining which are the offices of the director and officials. The prison itself consists of a score or more of detached one-story buildings, all of wood and some of themmerely substantial sheds, under which the rougher labour, like stone-breaking, is performed. The dormitories are enormous wooden cages, the front and part of the back formed of bars as thick as one’s arm, before which again is a narrow covered passage, where the warder on guard walks at night. There is not a particle of furniture or a single article of any kind upon the floor, which is polished till it reflects your body like a mirror. No boot, of course, ever touches it. The thick quilts, orfuton, which constitute everywhere the Japanese bed, are all rolled up and stacked on a broad shelf running round the room overhead. Each dormitory holds ninety-six prisoners, and there is a long row of them. The sanitary arrangements are situated in a little addition at the back, and I was assured that these had not been made pleasant for my inspection. If not, I can only say that in this most important respect a Japanese prison could not well be improved. In fact, the whole dormitory, with its perfect ventilation, its construction of solid, highly-polished wood, in which there is no chance for vermin to harbour, and its combined simplicity and security, is an almost ideal prison structure. Of course the fact that every Japanese, from the emperor to the coolie, sleeps upon quilts spread out on the floor, greatly simplifies the task of the prison architect in Japan.
“On leaving the dormitories we passed a small, isolated square erection, peaked and gabled like alittle temple. The door was solemnly unlocked and flung back, and I was motioned to enter. It was the punishment cell, another spotless wooden box, well ventilated, but perfectly dark, and with walls so thick as to render it practically silent. ‘How many prisoners have been in it during the last month?’ I asked. The director summoned the chief warder, and repeated my question to him. ‘None whatever,’ was the reply. ‘What other punishments have you?’ ‘None whatever.’ ‘No flogging?’ When this question was translated the director and the little group of officials all laughed together at the bare idea. I could not help wondering whether there was another prison in the world with no method of punishment for two thousand criminals except one dark cell, and that not used for a month. And the recollection of the filthy and suffocating sty used as a punishment cell in the city prison of San Francisco came upon me like a nausea.”
In Japan a prison consists of two parts—dormitories and workshops. There is nothing whatever of cells or regulation prison buildings properly speaking. It is a place of detention, of reformation, and of profitable work. The visitors found in the first workshop, to their great surprise, a couple of hundred prisoners making machinery and steam boilers. One warder, carrying only a sword, was in charge of every fifteen men. The prisoners were working on contract orders for privatefirms, under the supervision of one skilled master and one representative of the firm giving the contract. They work nine hours a day, and are dressed in cotton suits of a peculiar terra-cotta colour. When the foreigners entered, the warder on guard came to attention and cried, “Pay attention!” Every one ceased work and bowed with his forehead to the floor, remaining in that attitude until a second order bade them rise. They were making large brass and iron steam pumps, and the workshop, with its buzz of machinery and its intelligent labour, was much like a part of an arsenal here or in Europe.
Another shop contained the wood-carvers, where more than a hundred men, with blocks of wood between their knees, were carving with keen interest upon all sorts of things, from simple trays and bowls to fragile and delicate long-legged storks. “I bought,” says our author, “an admirably-carved tobacco box, representing the God of Laughter being dragged along by his cloak by six naked boys, and afterward I asked some Japanese friends who supposed I had picked it up at a curio-dealer’s, how much it was worth. They guessed tenyen—thirty shillings. I paid sixty-eightsenfor it—less than two shillings. It is a piece of work that would be admired anywhere, and yet it was the work of a common burglar who had made the acquaintance of a carving tool and a prison at the same time.”
There were also paper-makers, weavers (whowere making the fabric for the prison clothing), fan-makers, lantern-makers and workers in baskets, mats, and nets. A printing shop, too, there was, where the proof-reader was a criminal of more than ordinary interest. He had been secretary of legation in France and had absconded with a large sum, leaving his shoes on the river bank to lead the authorities to believe he had committed suicide, but he had been arrested eventually in Germany with his mistress.
In one of the shops jinrikishas were being made, in another umbrellas were being carved elaborately and in another every kind of pottery was being turned out. To the amazement of the visitors, they found sixty men, common thieves and burglars, making the exquisite cloisonné ware—“cutting by eye-measurement only the tiny strips of copper to make the outline of a bird’s beak or the shading of his wing or the articulations of his toe, sticking these upon the rounded surface of the copper vase, filling up the interstices with pigment, coat upon coat, and firing and filing and polishing it.” The finished work was true and beautiful and it was difficult to believe that these men knew nothing at all about it before they were sentenced. It would be hard to imagine teaching such a thing to the convicts at Dartmoor or at Sing Sing. In the prison at Tokio the convict is taught to do whatever is the limit of his natural ability. If he cannot make cloisonné, he is assigned to the wood-carving department,or perhaps to make pottery. If he cannot do these, he can possibly make fans or basket-work, or set type or cast brass. And for those who cannot reach so high a limit as these occupations there is left the rice mill or stone-breaking, but of two thousand men only thirty were unable to do any other work but that of breaking stones.
Prisoners receive one-tenth of the sum their handiwork earns. A curious custom is that every adult prisoner is kept for an additional six months after his sentence expires unless he is claimed by friends in the meantime, and if he has not reached adult age he is detained until that is attained. During the added six months these prisoners wear blue instead of the universal reddish garb.
“The women’s quarter at Ichigawa,” continues Norman, “is separated from the men’s by a high wooden fence and gateway guarded by a sentinel, and consists of two or three dormitories and one large comfortable workshop, where all are employed together at labour let out by contract. When I was there they were all hemming silk handkerchiefs, each seated upon the matted floor before a little table, and very neat they all looked, and very pretty some of them, with their loose red gowns and simply twisted hair. ‘Those are forgers,’ said the officer, pointing to three of them; ‘I do not like them to be so pretty.’ One of the women had a young baby playing beside her, and another of them as she glanced up at us showed a face entirely differentfrom the rest, pale, sad and refined, and I saw that her hands were small and very white. It was Hanai Ume, the once famous geisha of Tokio, famous for her beauty, hersamisen-playing, her dancing, her pride, and most famous of all for heraffaire d’amour. Two years ago a man-servant managed to make trouble between herself and her lover, whom she expected to buy her out of the life of a professional musician at anybody’s call, and then offered to make peace again between them on his own terms. So one night she called him out of the house and stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. Now music is mute for her and song is silent and love is left behind.
“To the gallows is an easy transition, as it is a natural conclusion. In a secluded part of the grounds at Ichigawa, there is a forbidding object like a great black box, raised six feet from the earth at the foot of a long incline cut in the grass. A sloping walk of black boards leads into the box on the left-hand side. The condemned criminal is led up this and finds himself inside upon the drop. The rope is adjusted and the cap fitted, and then at a signal the bottom of the box falls back. Thus the Japanese method is exactly the opposite of our own, the official spectators, including a couple of privileged reporters, being spared the ghastly details of the toilette on the scaffold, and seeing nothing until an unrecognisable corpse is suddenly flung out and dangles before them.”
The state of Japanese advancement in matters of penology is shown by the fact that in Tokio a school is maintained for the training of prison officials in theory and practice, with an annual attendance of from eighty to one hundred students. They are instructed in the laws relating to prisons and prisoners, in the general outline of the penal code, the sanitary care of prisons, the treatment of criminal patients, and kindred subjects.
The number of felons and misdemeanants is decreasing annually, while there has been a slight increase, on the other hand, in the number of contraveners. There are three disciplinary punishments in the prisons: first, solitary confinement in a windowed cell; second, reduction of food supply; third, solitary confinement in a dark room.
Medals are granted by the prison governors as rewards to any prisoners who have worked diligently and conducted themselves properly in prison, but no medal can be awarded more than three times to any one individual. Medallists enjoy certain privileges and leniency of treatment, and pardons are based on the medal system.
PRISONS OF EGYPT
Penal code in Egypt of Mohammedan origin and derived from the Koran—The law of talion—Price of blood—Blood feuds and blood revenge—The courbash freely used to raise taxes—Old police in Cairo—Extensive reforms—Oppressive governors—Tyrannical rule of Ismail Pasha—Protection and security guaranteed to the fellaheen by British occupation—Prison reform—Tourah near Cairo—Labour at the quarries—Profitable workshops—Assiut prison—Life at Tourah—Attempts to escape—Convicts employed on the communication line in the Sudan campaign—Excellent sanitation and good hospital arrangements.
The land of the Pharaohs has ever been governed by the practices and influenced by the traditions of the East. From the time of the Arab conquest, Mohammedan law has generally prevailed, and the old penal code was derived directly from the Koran. Its provisions were most severe, but followed the dictates of common sense and were never outrageously cruel. The law of talion was generally enforced, a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Murder entailed the punishment of death, but a fine might be paid to the family of the deceased if they would accept it; this was only permitted when the homicide was attended by palliatingcircumstances. The price of blood varied. It might be the value of a hundred camels; or if the culprit was the possessor of gold, a sum equal to £500 was demanded, but if he possessed silver only, the price asked was a sum equal to £300. The accomplices and accessories were also liable to death. Compensation in the form of a fine is not now permitted. A man who killed another in self-defence or to defend his property from a depredator was exempt from punishment. Unintentional homicide might be expiated by a fine. The price of blood was incumbent upon the whole tribe or family to which the murderer belonged. A woman convicted of a capital crime was generally drowned in the Nile.
Blood-revenge was a common practice among the Egyptian people. The victim’s relations claimed the right to kill the perpetrator, and relationship was widely extended, for the blood guiltiness included the homicide, his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, and all these were liable to retaliation from any of the relatives of the deceased, who in times past, killed with their own hands rather than appeal to the government, and often did so with disgusting cruelty, even mangling and insulting the corpse. Animosity frequently survived even after retaliation had been accomplished, and blood-revenge sometimes subsisted between neighbouring villages for several years and through many generations. Revengeful mutilationwas allowed by the law in varying degrees. Cutting off the nose was equivalent to the whole price of blood, or of any two members,—two arms, two hands, or two legs; the removal of one was valued at half the price of blood. The fine of a man for maiming or wounding a woman was just half of that inflicted for injuring a man, if free; if a slave the fine was fixed according to the commercial value of the slave. The whole price of blood was demanded if the victim had been deprived of any of his five senses or when he had been grievously wounded or disfigured for life.
The Koran prescribed that for a first offence of theft the thief’s right hand should be cut off, and for a second, his left foot; for a third, the left hand; and for a fourth, the right foot. Further offences of this kind were punished by flogging, or beating with the courbash—a whip of hippopotamus hide hammered into a cylindrical form—or a stick upon the soles of the feet. The bastinado, in fact, was the familiar punishment of the East. Religious offences, such as apostacy and blasphemy, were very rigorously punished. In Cairo a person accused of thefts, assaults and so forth used to be carried by a soldier before the kadi, or chief magistrate of the metropolitan police, and sent on trial before a court of judicature, or if he denied his offence, or the evidence seemed insufficient for conviction, although good grounds for suspicion existed, he was bastinadoed to extort confession. He generally admittedhis guilt with the common formula in the case of theft, “the devil seduced me and I took it.” The penalties inflicted less than death included hard labour on the public works, digging canals and the removal of rubbish or compulsory military service.
The modern traveller in Egypt will bear witness to the admirable police system introduced under British rule, and to the security afforded to life and property in town and country by a well organised, well conducted force. In former days, under the Pashas, the whole administration of justice was corrupt from the judge in his court to the police armed with arbitrary powers of oppression. The chief of police in Cairo was charged with the apprehension of thieves and criminals and with his myrmidons made constant rounds nightly through the city. He was accompanied by the public executioner and a torch-bearer who carried a curious light that burned without flame unless waved through the air, when it burst suddenly forth; the burning end was sometimes hidden in a small pot or jar and when exposed served the purpose of a dark lantern. The smell of the burning torch often gave timely warning to thieves to make off. The chief of the police arrogated to himself arbitrary powers, and often put a criminal to death when caught, even for offences not deserving capital punishment. A curious custom obtained in old Cairo; it was the rule for the community of thieves to be controlled by and to obey one of their number, who was constituted theirsheik and who was required by the authorities to hunt up offenders and surrender them to justice.
In old times the administration of the country districts was in the hands of governors appointed by the Pasha and charged by him with the collection of taxes and the regulation of the corvee, or system of enforced or unremunerated labour, at one time the universal rule in Egypt. The prompt and excessive use of the stick or courbash was the stimulus by which the contributions demanded were extorted, and the sheik, or headman of a village, might be severely bastinadoed when the sum demanded ran short. Everything was taxed, particularly the land and its products, wholly or in part, or they were sometimes seized outright and sold at a fixed price, but impounded to make good the debts of the cultivators to the government. Taxes were also levied in kind,—butter, honey, wax, wood, baskets of palm leaves and grain. The government granaries were kept full by the last named exaction and in this regard an amazing story is told.
The governor of the district and town of Tanta, when visiting the granary, saw two fellaheen resting who had just deposited their tale of corn. One had brought in 130 ardebbs (equivalent to five English bushels) from a village at a distance, the other only 60 ardebbs from some land adjoining the town. The governor at once fell foul of the defaulter, and utterly ignoring the townsman’s protest that his was a daily and the countryman’s a weekly contribution,ordered the man of Tanta to be forthwith hanged. The next day the governor paid a second visit to the granary and saw a peasant delivering a large quantity of corn. Being much pleased, he inquired who the man was and heard that it was he who had been summarily executed the day before and who now produced 160 ardebbs of grain. “What, has he risen from the dead?” cried the governor, astounded. “No, Sir; I hanged him so that his toes touched the ground; and when you were gone, I untied the rope; you did not order me to kill him,” replied his subordinate. “Aha,” answered the governor, “hanging and killing are different things. Next time I will say kill.”
“To relate all the oppressions which the peasantry of Egypt endure,” says Mr. E. W. Lane, the authority for the foregoing, “from the dishonesty of the officials would require too much space in the present work. It would be scarcely possible for them to suffer more and live.” Yet a worse time was approaching, when the notorious Ismail Pasha became practically supreme ruler and used his unchecked power for the complete enslavement of Egypt. His methods of misgovernment, his robbery, spoliation and cruel oppression are now matters of history. This modern Sardanapalus, as he has been aptly styled, lavishly wasted the wealth he wrung out of his helpless subjects by the intolerable rapacity of his ferocious tax gatherers. The fellaheen were stripped to the skin to fill his coffers andfeed the boundless extravagance of a vain and licentious prince. His private property was enormous; his estates and factories were valued at sixty millions sterling; he owned forty-three palaces and was building more when, in a few short years, he had brought Egypt to the brink of ruin, and the people starved at his door.
The people of Egypt not only paid taxes, but their possessions were seized ruthlessly, their lands misappropriated, their cattle and goods confiscated; they were mere slaves whose right to work on their own account was forfeited; and the whole population was driven forth from their villages with whips, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, under the iniquitous system of enforced labour, to make roads through the Khedive’s estates, till the cotton fields and build embankments to control the distribution of the life-giving Nile. No escape from these hardships was possible, no relief from this most grievous Egyptian bondage. The arbitrary despot backed his demands by a savage system of punishments, and when the courbash was ineffectual, he banished malcontents to the remote provinces of central Africa, where, after a terrible journey, they expiated their offences at Fazoglo or Fashoda. Sometimes the highest officials were arrested and despatched in chains, without any form of trial, and were detained for years in this tropical Siberia. To speak of the Nemesis that eventually overtook Ismail and deprived him with ignominy of a power heso shamefully misused is beyond the scope of this work. But reference must be made in some detail to the many merciful changes introduced into the administration of justice under the British protectorate that has succeeded to Egyptian rule.
In Egypt, at the present time, every son of the soil is safe from arbitrary and illegal arrest; the imposition of taxes is regulated strictly according to law; there is no enforced labour,—the corvee has been absolutely swept out of existence. Every peaceably disposed citizen may live sheltered and protected from outrage and in the undisturbed enjoyment of his possessions, waxing rich by his own exertion, safe from the attack or interference of evil-doers. It was not always so, and the great boons of personal security and humane, equitable treatment now guaranteed to every soul in the land have been only slowly acquired. Until 1844 the Egyptian police was ineffective, the law was often a dead letter, and the prisons were a disgrace to humanity and civilisation. Before that date the country was covered with zaptiehs, or small district prisons, in which illegal punishment and every form of cruelty were constantly practised. It was quite easy for anyone in authority to consign a fellah to custody. One of the first of the many salutary reforms introduced by the new prison department established under British predominance was an exact registration of every individual received at the prison gate, and the enforcement of the strict rulethat no one should be admitted without an order of committal duly signed by some recognised judicial authority. To-day, of course, any such outrage as illegal imprisonment is out of the question. Another form of oppression in the old days was the unconscionable delay in bringing the accused to trial. Hundreds were thus detained awaiting gaol delivery for six or nine months, sometimes for one or two years. At that time, too, there was no separation of classes; the innocent were herded with the guilty, children with grown men; only the females, as might be expected in a Mohammedan country, were kept apart, but their number then and since has always been exceedingly few.
The first step taken by the new régime was to concentrate prisoners in a certain number of selected prisons, such as they were, but the best that could be found. In these, twenty-one in number, strenuous efforts were made to introduce order; cleanliness was insisted upon and disinfectants were largely used, while medical men were appointed at each place, who attended daily to give medicine and move the sick into hospital. The health of the prisoners was so much improved that they constituted one per cent. of the daily average of prisoners, and this ratio has been maintained, so that in the cholera epidemic in 1896 only a few convicts died.
A good prison system could only be introduced in improved prisons, and the first created was the great convict establishment at Tourah, a village abouteight miles above Cairo on the banks of the Nile and at the foot of the great limestone quarries that have supplied the city with its building material from the earliest days. In 1885 the old military hospital at Tourah was handed over to be converted into a public works prison; a few of the wards were converted into cells, and a draft of 250 convicts was brought from the arsenal at Alexandria to occupy them. These proved skilful workmen, as the fellaheen, whether captive or free, invariably are, and with the help of a few paid stone-masons they restored the half-ruined upper story of the ancient building and converted it into a satisfactory prison to hold one hundred and fifty more inmates. The four hundred steadfastly continued their labours and to such good purpose, demolishing, removing, cleaning, and constructing new roads and approaches, that in May, 1886, an entirely new prison for five hundred convicts was completed and occupied. Many forms of industry were carried on with excellent financial results, as will be seen from the following details.
All the lime for buildings was burned in two lime kilns constructed for the purpose; all the furniture and woodwork, the tables, beds and doors were made by convict carpenters; all the ironwork, the bolts and bars for safe custody, the very leg-irons, their own inalienable livery under the old Egyptian prison code, were turned out by convict blacksmiths; and hundreds of baskets for carryingearth and stone have been manufactured. The industrial labour at Tourah is now of many useful kinds. New prison clothing, new boots (although these usually indispensable articles are only issued to a favoured few prisoners in Egypt), the baking of bread and biscuit for home consumption, or to be sent to out-stations, plate laying and engine fitting, stone dressing for prison buildings, both at Tourah and elsewhere,—all these are constantly in progress at the Tourah prison. The money made in the prison provides funds for many things necessary for further development, such as tram lines, locomotives, improved tools and machinery of all kinds.
A visit to Tourah is both interesting and instructive. The chief employment of the convicts is in the quarries, a couple of miles from the prison, to which the gangs proceed every morning at daylight and where they remain every day of the week but Friday, which is their Sabbath, until four o’clock in the afternoon. There is no time wasted in marching to and fro. The dinner, or midday meal, is carried out to the quarries by the cooks, and after it is eaten the convicts are allowed an hour’s rest in such shade as can be found in the nearly blinding heat of the dazzling white quarries. As this midday siesta is the common hour for trains to pass on to the neighbouring health resort of Helouan, casual observers might think that rest and refreshment formed a great part of the Egyptian convict’s dailylife. But that would be a grievous mistake. During the hours of labour, ceaseless activity is the rule; all around the picks resound upon the unyielding stone; some are busy with the levers raising huge blocks, stimulated by the sing-song, monotonous chant, without which Arabs, like sailors, cannot work with any effect. The burden of the song varies, but it is generally an appeal for divine or heavenly assistance, “Allahiteek!” “May God give it,” the phrase used by the initiated to silence the otherwise too importunate beggar, or “Halimenu,” “Hali Elisa,” ending in an abrupt “Hah!” or “Hop!” at the moment of supreme effort.
A visitor of kindly disposition is not debarred from encouraging effort by the gift of a few cigarettes to the convicts. Tobacco is not forbidden in the prisons of Egypt. It is issued to convicts in the works prisons in small rations as a reward, according to the governor’s judgment. The unconvicted and civil prisoners undergoing merely detention are at liberty to purchase it. I was the witness, the cause indeed, of a curious and unwonted scene in the small prison at Assiut when I inspected it in 1898. The sale of tobacco was in progress in the prison yard, where all of the prisoners, a hundred and more, were at exercise. An official stood behind a small table on which lay the little screws of tobacco for disposal, each for a fewmilliems, the smallest of Egyptian coins, the fractional part of afarthing. The eagerness with which the poor prisoners eyed the precious weed excited my generosity, and I bought up the whole table load, then and there, for a couple of shillings. The prisoners crowding around saw the deal and understood it. Hardly had I put down the ten piastres when the whole body “rushed” the table, overset it, threw the screws of tobacco upon the ground, and all hands pounced down on the scattered weed in one great struggling, scrambling, combatant medley. The tobacco was quite wasted, of course, and I have no idea who got the money. The mêlée was so unmanageable that it was necessary to call out the guard to drive the prisoners back to their wards. I was aghast at my indiscretion and ready to admit that I should have known better.
The daily unremitting toil of Tourah must be preferable to all but the incurably idle. Yet the terror of “Tourah” is now universal up and down Egypt. It is the great “bogey” of the daily life among the lower classes, the threat held over the fractious child or the misconducted donkey boy who claims an exorbitant “bakshish.” To accuse any decent fellah of having been in Tourah is the worst sort of insult and at once indignantly denied. When my own connection with the English prisons became known, I was generally called the pasha of the English Tourah, and my official position gained me very marked respect among classes spoiled by many thousands of annual tourists,—the greedy guides anddonkey boys, the shameless vendors of sham curiosities, the importunate beggars that infest hotel entrances, swarm in the villages and make hideous the landing stages up the Nile. An old hand will best silence a persistent cry for alms or the wail ofmiski(poverty stricken), of “Halas! finish father, finish mother” (the ornate expression for an orphan), by talking of thecaracol, “police station,” and a promise of “Tourah” to follow.
Life in Tourah must be hard. The monotonous routine from daylight to sundown, the long nights of thirteen or fourteen hours, from early evening to morning, caged up with forty or fifty others tainted with every vice and crime, must be a heavy burden upon all but the absolutely debased. The evils of association, of herding criminals together, left to their own wicked devices, without supervision, were present in the highest degree in Egyptian prisons. At last, however, a move was made to provide separate cells for a certain number, and a new prison of 1,200 cells was built by convict labour at Tourah immediately opposite the new hospitals and at some distance from the old prison. Much mischievous conspiracy of the worst kind is prevented by keeping individuals apart during the idle hours of the night, for it was then that those concerted escapes of large numbers were planned, which have occurred more than once at Tourah, but have been generally abortive, ending only in bloodshed; for the black Sudanese, who form the convict guards, are expertmarksmen and surely account for a large part of the fugitives.
There must be something very tempting to the untutored mind—and many of these Tourah convicts are half-wild creatures, Bedouins of the desert or the lowest scum of the cities—in the seeming freedom of their condition during so many hours of the day. Liberty seems within easy reach. Not a mile from the quarries are great overhanging cliffs, honey-combed with caves, deep, cavernous recesses affording secure hiding places, and it is for these that the rush is made. In August of 1896 there was a serious attempt of this kind, and success was achieved by some of the runaways. The hour chosen was that of the break-off from labour, when the gangs, surrounded by their guards, converge on a central point, very much as may be seen on any working-day at Portland or Dartmoor, and thence march home in one compact body to the distant prison. It is a curiously picturesque scene. The convicts, mostly fine, stalwart men, their ragged, dirty white robes flying in the wind and their chains rattling, swing past, two by two, in an almost endless procession. Below, the mighty river, flowing between its belt of palm and narrow fringe of green, shines like burnished silver under the declining sun; beyond stretches the wide desert to the foot of the Pyramids, those of Sakhara at one end of the landscape, those of Cheops at the other,—colossal monuments of enforcedlabour very similar to that now surviving at Tourah.
Such was the moment chosen for a general stampede. About sixty or seventy convicts agreed to cut and run simultaneously, all toward the shelter of the hills. A few were told off to try conclusions with the armed guards, to wrest away the rifles and thus secure both immunity from fire and the power to use the weapon in self-defence. The attempt appears to have been fairly successful at first. A few rifles were seized, and the fugitives, turning on their pursuers, made some pretty practice, during which a few of the more fortunate got away. But authority finally asserted itself. Many were shot down; the rest were overtaken and immediately surrendered. The absence of “grit,” so characteristic of the race, showed itself at once, and these poor wretches, who had been bold enough to make the first rush under a hail of bullets, now squatted down and with uplifted hands implored for mercy or declared it was all a mistake. “Malesh, it does not matter,” was their cry then. But they no doubt found that it mattered a great deal when a few days later Nemesis overtook them in the shape of corporal punishment; for the lash, a cat of six tails, is used in the Egyptian prisons as a last resort in the maintenance of discipline and good order. It is only inflicted, however, under proper safeguards and by direct sentence of a high official. There is no courbash now in the prisons, and no warder orguard is permitted to raise his hand against a prisoner. Tyranny and ill-usage are strictly forbidden.
Escapes have happened at other places. When military operations were in progress on the frontier leading to the revindication of the Sudan, an immense amount of good work was done by large detachments of convicts at stations high up the river. There were rough and ready “Tourahs” at Assuan, Wady Halfa, Korosko, Suakin, El Teb, points of considerable importance in the service of the campaign, where supplies were constantly being landed, stored or sent forward to the front. The Egyptian prison authorities very wisely and intelligently utilised the labour at their disposal to assist in unloading boats and in reshipping stores and railway plant. Numbers of convicts were employed to construct the railway ahead in the direction of Abu Hamed by which the advance was presently made. The Nile above Merawi flows through the most difficult country in its whole course, the very “worst water,” and no navigation in that length was possible by steamers, little or none by small boats except at high Nile and then only by haulage. It was necessary, therefore, to complete the railway to Abu Hamed, so that gunboats might be sent up in sections over the line, to be put together above the cataracts and then utilised in the final advance, for the river is more or less open to Berber and on to Khartum, and the success of the campaign was greatly facilitated thereby.
Egyptian convicts did much good work of a superior kind. Now and again a trained handicraftsman was found who was willing to put forward his best skill and there was always a smart man ready to act as leader and foreman of the rest, as is very much the case, indeed, with convicts all over the world. One man in particular at Wady Halfa was well known as a most industrious and intelligent worker. He so gained the good-will of the British officers that, not knowing his antecedents, many of them strongly recommended him for release as a reward for his usefulness. But the prison authorities were unable to accede to this seemingly very justifiable request. This best of prisoners (again following experience elsewhere) was the worst of criminals. He had committed no fewer than eight murders, possibly not with malicious motives, or he would hardly have escaped the gallows. The death penalty is not, however, inflicted very frequently in Egypt. In one case worth mentioning as illustrating the almost comical side of Egyptian justice, a man sentenced to death was held to serve a short term of imprisonment for some minor offence before he was considered ripe for execution. When the short sentence was completed, he was incontinently hanged.
At Assuan during war time hundreds of convicts were engaged all day long under the windows of the hotel. Their rattling chains were heard soon after dawn mixed with their unmelodious sing-songas described above. They could be seen constantly and freely approached, as they clustered around the great crane that raised the heaviest weights, locomotives, tender, and boilers, from the boats moored below, or as they passed along in single file backward and forward between the beach and the railway station or storehouses near-by. All were in picturesque rags, except the military prisoners, dressed in a startling uniform of bright orange; all wore the inevitable leg-irons riveted on their spare, shrunken brown ankles. It was the custom once, as in the old Frenchbagnes, to chain the Egyptian convicts in couples, a long-term man newly arrived being chained with one whose sentence had nearly expired.
This practice has now been discontinued, and each unfortunate bears his burden alone. Much ingenuity is exercised to prevent the basils or anklets from chafing the skin. The most effective method, employed no doubt by the most affluent, was a leather pad inserted within the iron ring; others without resources, owning not a singlemilliemin the world, used any filthy rags or scraps of sacking they could beg or steal. Pads of this kind have been worn from time immemorial by all prisoners and captives; no doubt the galley slaves chained to the oar in classical days invented them, and they were known until quite lately in the Frenchbagnesof Rochefort and Toulon by the name ofpatarasses, which the old hands manufactured and sold to thenewcomers. Another old-fashioned device among the Egyptian convicts is the short hook hanging from a waistband, which catches up one link of the irons, a simple necessity where the chain is of such length that it drags inconveniently along the ground.
The general use of fetters is not now approved by civilised nations. But in Egypt they appear to be nearly indispensable for safe custody. The removal of the leg-irons from convicts has often encouraged them to effect escape. Once sixteen of them at Assuan were astute enough to sham illness. It was during the cholera epidemic, and they knew enough of the symptoms to counterfeit some of them cleverly. The medical officer in charge was compassionate and thought it cruel that his patients should die in their chains, so he had them struck off. Within a few hours the unshackled convicts gave their guardians leg-bail, and escaped from the hospital into the desert, and so down the river. These very men afterward formed the nucleus of the band ofharami, the robbers and brigands who terrorised the lower province for some months and were only disposed of at last by summary action. The story of the subsequent burning of the brigands at Belianah became public property and was made the occasion of one of those virulent attacks upon British rule that often found voice under the unrestrained license of the Egyptian press. These out-laws were pursued and overtaken at last by thepolice in a house where they had barricaded themselves. It was impossible to break in, and the assailants therefore set fire to the thatched roof. The robbers used this as their private arsenal, and the fire soon ignited their cartridges with a terrific explosion in which most of the defenders lost their lives. This practice of concealing explosives in the roof was not uncommon during the days of conflict with the Mahdi. When the sheik of Derowi was arrested on a charge of conveying contraband ammunition into the Sudan, he contrived to send back a message to his wife to make away with all damaging evidence. She thought the safest way to dispose of the gunpowder stored in the house was by fire and at the same time she also disposed, very effectually, of herself.
A striking feature at Tourah was the admirable prison hospital, which would compare favourably with the best in the world. It is a two-storied building with lofty, well-ventilated wards, beds and bedding, all in the most approved style; a well-stocked dispensary and a fully qualified medical man in daily attendance. The patients, unless too ill to rise, sit up on their beds rather like poultry roosting, and suffer from most of the ills to which humanity is heir. The complaints most prevalent are eczema, tuberculosis (the great scourge of the black prisoners from the south), ophthalmia, and dysentery. “Stone” is a malady very prevalent and showing itself in the most aggravated form, due no doubt tothe constant drinking of lime-affected water. I saw calculi of almost colossal size, the result of some recent operations, extracted by the prison surgeons, whose skill is evidently remarkable.
Too much praise can hardly be accorded the Egyptian prison administration for its prompt and effective treatment of the cholera epidemic when it appeared in Egypt in 1896. Although the mortality was serious in the general population, the percentage of deaths was relatively small in the prisons. Out of a total of 7,954 prison inmates (this number did not include the convicts at the seat of war or on the Red Sea) there were only one hundred and sixteen cases and seventy deaths. In six of the prisons the disease did not appear; in others, although situated in the heart of infected towns, and prisoners were being constantly received from infected districts, the cases were few. In Tourah, with a total population of thirteen hundred and fifty, there were but twenty-two; at Assiut, a new building with good sanitation, only two; the average was largest at Keneh, Mansourah and Assuan. Not a single female prisoner was attacked; an immunity attributed to the fact that the females in custody receive regular prison diet, while the males, except at Tourah and Ghizeh, are fed, often indifferently, by their friends outside. These excellent results were undoubtedly due to the strict isolation of the inmates of any prison in which the cholera had appeared. Whenever a case showed, the introductionof food or clothing from outside was strictly forbidden, and friends were not admitted when cholera existed in the neighbourhood. Much credit was due also to the unselfish devotion of the Egyptian medical staff, who were unremitting in their care and of whom two died of the disease at their posts.
It was officially stated in 1903 that such crimes as robbery with violence, petty thefts and brigandage had increased materially since 1899. The reason given for this was the failure of the police machinery to bring out the truth and the practice of bribes which was everywhere prevalent. The corruption of magistrates and the terrorism held over witnesses make it exceedingly difficult to bring a man to justice or obtain satisfactory convictions. But we may well conclude that the prison system as established in Egypt to-day is of the most modern and satisfactory character.
PRISONS OF TURKEY