If Crime, Vice, Despair, Suffering, Filth And Cruelty Can Make A Hell
On Earth, This Is One.
Over its dismal gateway may well be written,
"Whoso enters here leaves hope behind."
This ward is divided into four "apartments," each one having a high
wall at the back. The sides next the court are formed of a double row
of strong wooden bars, black from age and dirt, which reach from the
floor to the roof, and let in light and air through the chinks between
them. The interiors of these cribs or cattle-pens are roughly paved
with slabs of granite, slimy with accumulations of dirt. In the middle
and round the sides are stout platforms of laths, forming a coarse,
black gridiron, on which the prisoners sit and sleep.
In each ward there is a shrine of a deity who is supposed to have the
power of melting the wicked into contrition, and to this accursed
mockery, on his birthday, the prisoners are compelled to give a feast,
which is provided by the jailer out of his peculations from their daily
allowances. No water is allowed for washing, and the tubs containing
the allowance of foul drinking water are placed close to those which
are provided for the accumulation of night soil, etc., the contents of
which are only removed once a fortnight. Two pounds of rice is the
daily allowance of each prisoner, but this is reduced to about one by
the greed of the jailer.
As we entered the yard, fifty or sixty men swarmed out from the dark
doorways which led into their dens, all heavily chained, with long,
coarse, matted hair hanging in wisps, or standing on end round their
death-like faces, in filthy rags, with emaciated forms caked with dirt,
and bearing marks of the torture; and nearly all with sore eyes,
swelled and bleeding lips, skin diseases, and putrefying sores. These
surrounded us closely, and as, not without a shudder, I passed through
them and entered one of their dens, they pressed upon us, blocking out
the light, uttering discordant cries, and clamoring with one voice,
_kum-sha_, i.e., backsheesh, looking more like demons than living men,
as abject and depraved as crime, despair, and cruelty can make them.
Within, the blackness, the filth, the vermin, the stench, overpowering
even in this cool weather, the rubbish of rags and potsherds, cannot be
described. Here in semi-starvation and misery, with nameless cruelties
practised upon them without restraint, festering in one depraved mass,
are the tried and untried, the condemned, the guilty and innocent (?),
the murderer and pirate, the debtor and petty thief, all huddled
together, without hope of exit except to the adjacent judgment-seat,
with its horrors of "the question by torture," or to the "field of
blood" not far away. On earth can there be seen a spectacle more
hideous than these abject wretches, with their heavy fetters eating
into the flesh of their necks and ankles (if on their wasted skeletons,
covered with vermin and running sores, there is any flesh left), their
thick matted, bristly, black hair - contrasting with the shaven heads
of the free - the long, broken claws on their fingers and toes, the
hungry look in their emaciated faces, and their clamorous cry,
_kum-sha!
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