In Addition To The Large Mortality Arising From Poor Living And Its
Concomitant Diseases, And The Exhaustion Produced By Repeated Torture,
Epidemics Frequently Break Out In The Hot Weather In Those Dark And
Fetid Dens, And Oftentimes Nearly Clear Out The Prison.
On such
occasions as many as four hundred have succumbed in a month.
The number
of criminals who are executed from this prison, either as sentenced to
death, or as unable to bribe the officials any further, is supposed to
be about five hundred annually, and it is further supposed that half
this number die annually from starvation and torture. Sometimes one
hundred criminals are beheaded in an hour, as it is feared may be the
case on the Governor going out of office, when it is not unusual to
make a jail delivery in this fashion.
In numerous cases, when there is a press of business before the
judgment-seat and a dead-lock occurs, accusers and witnesses are
huddled indiscriminately into the Naam-Hoi prison, sometimes for
months; and as the Governor or magistrate takes no measures to provide
for them during the interval, some of the poorer ones who have no
friends to bribe the jailer on their behalf, perish speedily.
At night, in the dens which I have described, the hands of the
prisoners are chained to their necks, and even in the daytime only one
hand is liberated. I thought that many of the faces looked quite
imbecile. The jailer, as we went out, kept holding out his long-clawed,
lean, brown hand, muttering about his promised kum-sha, very fearful
lest the other turnkeys, who were still lying on their beds smoking
opium, should come in for any share of it.
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