We Went Into Three Other Large Wards, Foul With Horror, And Seething With Misery, And Into A Smaller One, Nearly As Bad, Where Fifteen Women Were Incarcerated, Some Of Them With Infants Devoured By Cutaneous Diseases.

Several of them said that they are there for kidnapping, but others are hostages for criminal relations who have not yet been captured.

This imprisonment of hostages is in accordance with a law which authorizes the seizure and detention of persons or families belonging to criminals who have fled or are in concealment. Such are imprisoned till the guilty relative is brought to justice, for months, years, or even for a lifetime. Two of these women told us that they had been there for twenty years.

There are likewise some single cells - hovels clustering under a wall, in which criminals who can afford to pay the jailer for them may enjoy the luxury of solitude. In each ward there is a single unfettered man - always a felon - who by reason either of bribery or good conduct, is appointed to the place of watchman or spy among his fellows in crime. There is a turnkey for each ward, and these men, with the unchained felons who act as watchmen, torture new arrivals in order to force money from them, and under this process some die.

In the outer wall of the prison there is a port-hole, just large enough to allow of a body being pushed through it, for no malefactor's corpse must be carried through the prison entrance, lest it should defile the "Gate of Righteousness." There is also a hovel called a deadhouse, into which these bodies are conveyed till a grave has been dug in some "accursed place," by members of an "accursed" class.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 83 of 437
Words from 22478 to 22770 of 120530