# Siberia and the Exile System/Volume 2/Appendix E

Siberia and the Exile System Volume 1
APPENDIX E
THE TOMSK FORWARDING PRISON
Some time after the publication in The Century Magazine of the article bearing the above title, an English traveler—Mr. H. de Windt—visited one or more of the Tomsk prisons, and wrote to the London Pall Mall Gazette a letter in which he said, among other things, that "the Tomsk prison, as graphically described in the pages of The Century Magazine, does not exist." His first letter, and the correspondence to which it gave rise, will be found below.
I
Tomsk, Siberia, September.
I should first mention that permission to visit Tomsk, or any other Siberian prison [criminal or political], was at once granted to me on application to the Russian prison authorities, and without conditions as to time or place. Having at St. Petersburg signified my intention of not arriving at Tomsk until the 3d of October, I this morning presented myself at the prison gates of that city. This being the height of the transportation season, no time was lost on the way. Tomsk is the depot for Eastern Siberia and its prison, consequently, more likely at the present time to be overcrowded and "teeming with horrors" than at any other. I need hardly add that this was not my only reason for arriving unexpectedly.
The city of Tomsk is situated almost in the heart of Siberia, and lies rather more than half-way from St. Petersburg to the gold mines of Nertchinsk—the dreaded mines of which so much has been written of late. As far as Tomsk the journey is made entirely by steam, by way of the Volga and Obi rivers and Ural railway. At Tomsk the march commences, and if [physically] fit, a prisoner proceeds on foot to the prison or penal settlement to which he is sentenced. In case of sickness a score or so of telegas, or wooden carts, accompany each gang. Convicts for the island of Sakhalin are now sent by sea, in the cool season, from Odessa.
On producing the necessary document, signed by the Minister of the Interior at St. Petersburg, I was at once admitted to the Goubernski ​SIBERIA 511 Prison, a large two-storied brick building situated on the outskirts of the town. From the central and principal entrance a flight of stone steps lead to landings on the first and second story. Right and left of these are light, spacious, well-ventilated corridors, 100 by 15 feet, and on either side of these the " kameras," or public cells. There are sixteen in all, eight on each floor. I entered and minutely examined each, and can safely say that so far as regards cleanliness, ventilation, and light, no prison in Europe could have been better. The walls were whitewashed, the wooden flooring scraped and spotlessly clean, while three large barred windows [looking on to a public thoroughfare] let in light and air. Most of the prisoners were employed — some tailoring, some cobbling, others cigarette-making, and a few reading and writing — for a well-behaved convict in Siberia has many privileges. I should mention that the most crowded " kamera " I saw measured eighty feet long by twenty-four broad, and was fifteen feet high. It contained forty-one men, each of whom had his own canvas mattress and linen pillow [marked with the Government stamp] laid out upon the sleeping-platform, seventy feet long by fourteen broad, that ran down the center of the room. The sanitary arrangements were here, as elsewhere, perfect. I could not, throughout the prison, detect an offensive or even disagreeable smell. The infirmary in the upper story consists of two lofty rooms each forty-six feet long by eighteen feet broad. The wards are made to accommodate thirty patients, but there were to-day only six in all. Here, again, the light, cheerful rooms, iron bedsteads, clean white sheets, and scrupulous cleanliness would have done credit to a London or Paris hospital. Convalescents were dressed in warm, white flannel dressing-gowns, striped with blue — the infirmary costume. As I left, broth and white bread were brought to a patient. The prison doctor attends regularly morning and evening. With a passing glance at the pretty chapel, we next visited the ground floor, which consists of cells for political prisoners ; four punishment cells [not dark] ; a stone chamber, bisected by a wire grating, where prisoners are permitted to see their friends ; the kitchen and bakery. I saw but two politicals — one a journalist undergoing a sentence of three months' impris- onment for a seditious article in a local newspaper ; the other, for a greater offense, on his way from Moscow to Nertchinsk. Both wore their own clothes. A table, a chair, books, writing-materials, a lamp, and an iron bedstead, with linen sheets and pillow, comprised the furniture of these cells, which measured twelve feet high and twenty feet long by sixteen feet broad, and looked out through a large barred window on to the prison garden. The punishment cells, which with one exception were empty, measured eight feet high, ten feet long by ten broad. A description of the kitchen, with its clean, white-washed walls, tiled floor, huge caldrons for soup, and bright copper saucepans — of the bakery, with its innumerable ovens and rows upon rows of bread, brown and white, would be superfluous. Suffice it to say that a prisoner actually receives half a pound of meat, ​512 APPENDIX a large bowl of " shtchi " or cabbage soup, one pound of brown bread, and a basin of gruel daily ; a pint of " kvass," or spruce beer. In addition to this a prisoner may purchase, at his own cost, tea and pastry, cheese, butter, tobacco and other luxuries, but not alcohol. As regards clothing, he is allowed from the 1st of May to the 1st of September, three white linen suits, one sleeveless gray mezi great coat, two Glengarry caps of the same material, and every two months a pair of stout leather shoes. If on the march, these are replaced as soon as worn out. Only the most dan- gerous criminals wear chains. A pair of these is now in my possession. They weigh seven pounds and are worn over the trousers ; not, as has been stated, against the skin. Next the " Goubernski," and separated from it by a public road, is a smaller prison (also of brick and two-storied) for women, criminal and political. The matron, a staid, respectable person in black, conducted me round the " kameras." Save that they are some- what smaller, the latter are precisely similar to those of the " Groubernski," as light, clean, well-ventilated, and free from smell. In Siberia female prisoners do not wear prison dress, nor, with the exception of the sentry, are men employed in or about their prisons. The Century Magazine of 1888-89 contains a series of articles on Siberian prisons by a Mr. George Kennan. Space will not permit of my discuss- ing these further than as regards Tomsk prison. This is described, if I remember rightly, as being totally unlit for human habitation, a hot-bed of filth and disease, vice and immorality, engendered by the indiscrim- inate herding together, night and day, of men, women, and children. Upon the same writer's version of the treatment of prisoners I will not comment, having, in this letter, confined myself strictly to facts that have come under my own personal notice. As an Englishman, however, and consequently an unbiased observer, I venture to hope that my evidence will gain [in England at least] the credence that has been given to that of Mr. Kennan, an American journalist. Judging from the present state of things, I can only presume that a radical reform has taken place since that gentleman's visit and subsequent publications. If so, the Russian Government has indeed vindicated its evil reputation for procrastina- tion. Be this as it may, Mr. Kennan will doubtless be glad to hear that the Tomsk prison, as graphically described in the pages of the Centura Magazine, does not exist. Sensational accounts of Siberian atrocities appear almost monthly in the newspapers. The English press, with few exceptions, sides with the "oppressed exile," and publishes with avidity every canard floated at New York or Geneva by the friends of political prisoners. Concerning the latter, I cannot as yet express an opinion ; but in the face of what I have seen to-day, is it fair to believe implicitly all that we hear of the u diabolical cruelties " to criminal prisoners at Tomsk, Nertchinsk and Sakhalin?— Pall Mall Gazette, Sept. 24, 1890. ​SIBERIA 513 II To the Editor op the Pall Mall Gazette. Sir : In the number of the Gazette issued Wednesday, September 24, 1890, there appears a letter from Mr. H. De Windt, the explorer of the desert of Gobi, in which that gentleman describes a visit made by him to the Tomsk prison, in Western Siberia, and in which, referring to my Siberian investigations, he says, " Mr. Kennan will doubtless be glad to hear that the Tomsk prison, as graphically described in the pages of the Century Magazine, does not exist." WU1 you kindly grant me space enough to correct an error into which Mr. de Windt has inadvertently fallen "? If the distinguished explorer will consult the latest report of the Russian prison administration, which is in print, and which may be obtained without difficulty, he will find that there are two prisons in the city of Tomsk, one called the "gubernski," or provincial prison, and the other the "perisilni," or exile-forwarding prison. The former is used almost exclusively as a place of detention or confinement for local offenders, while the latter is the great forwarding depot through which pass all exiles and convicts destined for central and Eastern Siberia. The prison described by me in the Century Magazine is the exile forwarding-prison, which receives and despatches eastward from 10,000 to 12,000 criminals every year. The prison visited and described by Mr. de Windt is a mere place of confinement for local provincial offenders, and does not contain as many hundreds of inmates as the forwarding prison contains thou- sands. It is a remarkable and significant fact that whenever a badly in- formed and credulous traveler arrives in the Siberian city of Tomsk, and expresses a desire to inspect the Tomsk prison, he is conducted by the amiable officials, not to the exile-forwarding prison, which, perhaps, is the thing that he really wishes and means to see, but to the " gubernski," or provincial prison, which is nothing more than a local gaol. This was the course pursued with the Rev. Henry Lansdell, and this seems to be the plan that was adopted by the Tomsk officials in their dealings with Mr. de Windt. If either of these gentlemen, however, had taken the trouble to make even the most superficial inquiry in the city, outside the circle of the officials, he would have been made acquainted with the dis- tinction between the city gaol and the forwarding prison, and would doubtless have asked to see the latter. Mr. de Windt declares positively that the " Tomsk pi-ison, as graphi- cally described in the pages of the Century Magazine, does not exist." His letter bears the somewhat vague date " Tomsk, September," without specification of day or year, but from internal evidence it appears that it was written in September, 1889. On the 3d of that same month and year the Russian Gazette, one of the strongest and most influential news- papers in Moscow, devoted a long editorial to the condition of the Tomsk II 33 ​forwarding prison in August, 1889, as shown by an article then just published in the Tomsk Siberian Messenger. At that time — not more than four weeks before Mr. dé Windt wrote his letter — the Tomsk forwarding prison was not only in existence, but was in even a worse condition than that described in my article in the Century. According to the Tomsk Siberian Messenger — a conservative paper favored by the Government, and edited, moreover, under the strictest local censorship — the number of exiles in the forwarding prison at that time was "more than 4000" with a "prospect of 7000 in the near future"; and this in buildings that, according to the admission of Mr. Petukhóf , the acting-governor of the province, were intended to hold only 1400. "It is evident," the Tomsk newspaper says, "that the prison is threatened with the outbreak of all sorts of diseases, which will spread to the city, and bring terrible suffering upon its inhabitants. What is going on, meanwhile, in this place of confinement can be imagined only by one who has witnessed personally the picture that it presents of overcrowding breathlessness and literal suffocation. [Russian Gazette, No. 231, Moscow, September 3, 1889.] This article from the Tomsk Siberian Messenger must have been in print, and known to every intelligent citizen of Tomsk, at the very time when Mr. de Windt was writing, in that city, a letter declaring positively that the prison described by me, and referred to by the Siberian Messenger, did not exist. Mr. de Windt closes his letter with the inquiry, " Is it fair to believe implicitly all that we hear of the diabolical cruelties to criminal prisoners at Tomsk . . . ?" I would respectfully inquire in turn, "Is it fair to deal with a great subject in this careless, superficial way, and then ask English readers to accept one's statements as based on real knowledge or thorough investigation?"
George Kennan.
Boston, Mass., U. S. A., October 18, 1890. —Pall Mall Gazette, November 4, 1890.
III
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.
Sir: In a letter from Mr. George Kennan, the Siberian traveler, to the Pall Mall Gazette of November 4th, he says: "Kindly grant me space to correct an error into which Mr. de Windt has inadvertently fallen. He will find that there are two prisons in the city of Tomsk — one called the 'gubernski,' or provincial prison, and the other the 'perisylni,' or exile-forwarding prison. The former is used exclusively for local offenders, while the latter is the great forwarding depot through which pass all exiles destined for Central or Eastern Siberia. The prison described by me in the Century Magazine is the exile or forwarding prison; the prison visited and described by Mr. de Windt is a mere place of confinement for ​SIBEEIA 515 local offenders." Mr. Kennan concludes: " When a badly informed or credulous traveler arrives he is conducted, not to the forwarding prison, but to the gubernski," inferring, apparently, that the latter prison is the only one I saw. Allow me to suggest that it is Mr. Kennan who, to quote his own words, has " made superficial inquiries and been badly in- formed." He would otherwise be aware of the fact that there are not two but three prisons in Tomsk — the " Gubernski," the " Perisylni," and the u Arrestantski " ; all of which I visited as lately as last August. The former I have already briefly described in your journal and others. An account of the two latter would have been too voluminous for a news- paper, but will appear in my forthcoming work on the prisons of Western Siberia. I may add that I devoted three whole days to a minute inspec- tion of the " Perisylni," or exile pi'ison (which your correspondent de- scribed, and, somewhat rashly, assumes I did not enter), but entirely failed to recognize it from the ghastly descriptions in the Century Magazine. I can quite understand this gentleman's reluctance to admit any facts but his own (English travelers are unfortunately rare in Tomsk), but that such an authority on Siberia as Mr. George Kennan should have been, up till now, unaware of even the existence of one of its largest prisons seems almost incredible. It may, or may not, interest him to hear that I this year visited the famous Tiumen prison (the horrors of which he has so graphically described), and traveled for nearly a fortnight down the river Obi in a convict barge, containing over six hundred exiles, to whom I was allowed free access, unaccompanied by officials. I will not trespass further upon your valuable space, for this subject has already been discussed ad nauseam in the English press. Let me, how- ever, assure Mr. Kennan that, in so far as he and his allegations against the Russian Government are concerned, I intend, in my work, to deal with this subject in anything but a " careless or superficial" way. I am, Sir, yours faithfully, H. de Windt. Berlin, Nov. 6, 1890. — Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 13, 1890. IV To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. Sir : I beg pardon for trespassing again upon your space and courtesy, but it seems necessary to say a few words in reply to Mr. de Windt's let- ter from Berlin concerning the Tomsk prisons. 1. If, at the time when the distinguished explorer wrote the letter that appeared in the Gazette of September 24, 1890, he was not aware of the existence of the Tomsk Forwarding Prison, his investigation, certainly, was a very careless and superficial one. If, on the other hand, he teas ​aware of its existence, his declaration that the "Tomsk prison, as graphically described in the pages of the Century Magazine, does not exist" was deceptive and misleading, and his whole letter was disingenuous. His apparent attempt to evade this dilemma by retorting that I, myself, was ignorant of the existence of a third prison in Tomsk — namely the "Arrestántski," or "Arrestántski Otdyellénie" — only furnishes another proof of the careless way in which he investigates. If he will do me the honor to read — or perhaps read again — the Century article that he criticizes, he will find, on page 873, a reference to this very same "Arrestántski" prison of whose existence he thinks I have been "up till now" unaware. If he will take the further trouble to consult the last published report of the Russian prison administration, he will find that the "Arrestántski" is not "one of its [Siberia's] largest prisons," as he declares it to be, but rather a prison of the fourth or fifth class, through which there passed, in 1888, only about 200 criminals [Rep. of the Russ. Pris. Adm., p. 43, Ministry of the Interior, St. Petersburg, 1890]. Through each of Siberia's "largest prisons," properly so called, there passed, in the same period, from 14,000 to 19,000 suspects, exiles and convicts. [Same Report, pp. 136-137.] The size of the "Arrestántski" prison is not a matter of much importance, but why not describe it accurately, and why not read with attention the literature of one's subject, or at least the statements that one pretends to criticize?
2. Mr. de Windt makes no reply to the facts that I set forth in my previous letter with regard to the overcrowding of the Tomsk forwarding prison in August, 1889, and I presume, from his silence, that he is reserving them for discussion in the "forthcoming work" which is to deal with me and my "allegations against the Russian Government in anything but a careless and superficial way." While awaiting the appearance of this more thorough and accurate piece of work, I beg to submit, for Mr. de Windt's consideration, a few facts with regard to the sanitary condition of the Tomsk prisons as shown by recent official reports. In the year 1887 there passed through the Tomsk city prisons [not including the forwarding prison] 1089 offenders. Of this number 212, or 19.5 per cent., became so seriously ill while in prison as to require hospital treatment. Typhus fever — a preventable filth-disease — constituted 62 per cent. of the whole aggregate of prison sickness. [Rep. of Russ. Pris. Adm. for 1887, pp. 314 and 317, Ministry of the Interior, St. Petersburg, 1889.] In 1886, which is nearer the time to which my investigations relate, the sick in these same prisons constituted 35.2 per cent. of the whole number of prisoners. [Same Rep., p. 315.] In 1887 the proportion of sick prisoners to the whole number that passed through the six prisons "of general type" in the province of Tomsk was more than 37 per cent. [Same Rep., p. 306.] In 1884, the year before I went to Siberia, there were in the prisons of the province of Tomsk three hospitals with 230 beds. In these three prison hospitals there were treated that year 1514 prisoners, of whom 259, ​SIBERIA 517 or more than 16 per cent., died. [Rep. of Russ. Med. Dept. for 1884. Eastern Beview of St. Petersburg, No. 50, Dec. 17, 1887, p. 3. In 1885, the year of my visit to Siberia, the sick-rate in the prisons of Tomsk was more than 42 per cent. [Rep. of Russ. Pris. Adm. for 1885, Eastern Beview of St. Petersburg, No. 50, Dec. 17, 1887, p. 3.] In 1887, according to the report of the Russian Medical Department for that year, the hos- pital of the Tomsk Forwarding Prison contained 276 beds. As the fall advanced and the prison became more and more overcrowded, the num- ber of the sick, which even before that time had exceeded the capacity of the hospital, rose to 520. The beds were then taken out and the sick were laid on the floor. Still there was not room for them all, and many were left in the overcrowded cells where they spread infection among the well, and especially among the children. [Rep. of Russ. Med. Dept. for 1887, pp. 201-207. Ministry of the Interior, St. Petersburg, 1889.] Perhaps Mr. de Windt, in his " forthcoming work," after dealing suitably with me and my " allegations," will kindly explain how it happens that in prisons which he describes as " clean and well conducted " typhus fever constitutes 62 per cent, of the whole aggregate of disease, and why it is that prisoners who, he says, are " kindly treated and well cared for " un gratefully fall sick at the rate of 19 to 42 per cent., and then die at the rate of 16 per cent. When he has made this explanation, I shall be greatly obliged to him if he will point out to me the page and paragraph where, in describing the prisons he has seen, I used the words " hells upon earth," which he puts into quotation marks and seems to attribute to me. —[Daily Neivs, Nov. 13, 1890.] George Kennan. New York City, U. S. A., Nov. 30, 1890. — Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 16, 1890. My own description of the Tomsk forwarding prison is so com- pletely sustained at every point by the Russian official reports, that it is perhaps unnecessary to append further references and quotations ; but Mr. de Windt seems disposed to make this a test case of trustworthiness, and, so far as I am concerned, I am perfectly willing to treat it as such. At the time of my visit to the prison in question there were in the city of Tomsk two newspapers — one, the Siberian Gazette, a liberal periodical, edited by the well-known Russian anthropologist and archaeologist, Mr. A. Adrianof, and the other, the Siberian Messenger, a more conservative journal, edited and published by Mr. V. Kartamishef. Both of these papers were under the strictest local censorship, and the censor was State Councilor Nathaniel Petukhof, vice-governor of the province. Such being the case, it is obvious that neither of these journals would be ​518 APPENDIX allowed to publish false information with regard to the adminis- tration of provincial affairs, and that the censor, who was at the same time the acting-governor, would unhesitatingly cross out any description of the Tomsk forwarding prison that, in his judgment, was exaggerated, or unduly pessimistic. Let us see, then, what the acting-governor of the province allowed the Tomsk news- papers to say about this great exile-forwarding depot the same fall that I visited it and wrote the "ghastly descriptions," from which Mr. de Windt says he entirely failed to recognize the prison described. Under the heading " City News," the Siberian Gazette referred to the overcrowding of the prison in question as follows : The excessively large number of exiles lately received has compelled the local authorities to put them not only into the forwarding prison, where on the 1st of October there were 2140 prisoners [not couutiug the sick], but also into the prison castle where at the same time there were 1120, aud even into the building of the " convict company" [arrestantski rot], to which were sent 120 families. The sick were housed in the for- warding prison, where there were more than 300, and in the prison castle, where there were 80. During the month of October the number of exiles increased to 3400, of whom 2400 were confined in the forwarding prison. This prison was built to accommodate only 1200 persons, and its capacity is now even less than that, owing to the fact that three out of the eleven prison buildings have been given up to the sick. The overcrowding of the hospital is already so great that the surgeon can receive no more patients, and the sick must be left in the same cells with those that are yet well. This state of things bears very heavily upon the children. — Siberian Gazette, No. 42, Tomsk, Oct. 20, 1885, p. 1114. The editors of the two Tomsk newspapers were so opposed to each other in character, temperament, and journalistic policy, and were, moreover, on such hostile terms personally, that they would not speak to each other when they met accidentally in my room. Nevertheless, in their opinion of the Tomsk forwarding prison they heartily coincided, and the conservative, Government-favored paper, having less to fear, was much more bold and uncompromis- ing in the expression of its views than was the humane and liberal journal of Mr. Adrianof. Four days after the appearance of the above-quoted paragraph in the Gazette, the Messenger, in a leading editorial on the same subject, said, " A month has now elapsed since the suspension of the movement of exile parties from Tomsk into Eastern Siberia. This intermission, which is customary and is due ​SIBEKIA 519 to the breaking- up of the roads by autumnal storms, has caused a particularly large accumulation of exiles this year in the Tomsk forwarding prison, and has had an extremely unfavorable influence upon its sanitary condition. Notwithstanding the removal of 700 exiles to the prison castle, and 200 to the building of the reform section, there are still more than 2400 in the forwarding prison, including 400 sick. It can be imagined how 2000 persons are crowded when they are put into eight one-story buildings, each thirty fathoms long and containing eighty-six cubic fathoms of air space, and all together intended to accommodate only 1200 to 1400 souls. The hospital is still more overcrowded. With a normal capacity of 150 it now contains 400 sick prisoners, who are lying- side by side on the floor, between the beds, and in all the corridors and passages. Many of them are not only without mattresses but without bedding of any kind. To this must be added, moreover, the fact that the surgeon sends to the hospital only prisoners who are so seriously ill that their well comrades have to carry them. Those who are still able to walk — although they may be in the incipient stages of typhus fever or some other disease — are left in their cells, simply because there is no possibility of accommodating all of the sick in the hospital. The overcrowding is already so great that the surgeon, in order to gain room, has been forced to remove all the beds from one ward and put the sick on the floor. The rate of mortality is very high, and Dr. Orzheshko 1 says that the deaths for October will probably reach 100. Typhus is the predominating disease, but it is accompanied by smallpox, diph- theria, measles, and scarlatina. Cases are not rare in which prisoners have typhus fever twice in succession ; and children have been known to take the infection first of typhus, then of smallpox, and finally of diphtheria or scarlatina. Contagion has saturated all the walls of the prison, and the harvest of death is reaped without mercy." In another part of the same paper the feuilletonist said : The Tomsk forwarding prison is a great nursery of contagious dis- eases. Typhus, of all sorts and species, smallpox, scarlet fever, and diph- theria, breed there so abundantly, and in such luxuriant forms, that it is a matter for surprise that we all — citizens of Tomsk — are not lying in the peaceful " God's Acre " that separates the city from this anti-sanitary sta- tion. The prison increases by one hundred per cent, the city's mortality, and gives Tomsk the reputation of killing her people without pity. From i The prison surgeon. ​520 APPENDIX the beginning of May to the end of September, every year, there are sent from Tiumento Tomskfloating prisons known as " barges," or " typhus-car- riers," and they bring to us, with unfailing promptness and regularity, the most perfect specimens of typhus that exist. In a nursery of contagious diseases that was built to accommodate 1600, but that holds, when neces- sary, just twice that number, these typhus specimens develop, of course, most satisfactorily. In the early spring this disease-nursery is not a nursery at all, it is a prison of the most common kind, and empty at that ; but no sooner does spring wave her perfumed wings — no sooner is the whistle of the steamer heard on the river — than the nursery begins to re- ceive the necessary material — the prison becomes reanimated. Week after week its population increases, and week after week its hospital, built to hold 150 patients, fills up. The more people there are in the prison, the more go into the hospital, until, at last, towards the end of September, when the steamers cease to whistle and the season of raw and cold weather comes on, this place of grief and lamentation appears in its true character as an anti-sanitary station and a nursery of contagious diseases. The prisoners' cells, crammed to suffocation, furnish precisely the environment that is needed for the perfect development of the charm- ing little creatures that the microscope has rendered visible. They de- velop without delay, and tens of prisoners go every day to the hospital. The latter contains 150 beds, and there are 400 sick. In order to accom- modate them all it is necessary to remove the beds and lay the patients on the floor. Some of them have to lie there without anything under them, because, for a quarter of them — that is, for 100 persons — there is not even bedding. . . . Imagine if you can this picture : You enter a large log building, through a very small entry or hall, and find yourself , at once, in a room filled with people lying on the floor. The gray mass is sighing, groaning, shrieking in delirium, and slowly suffocating in the oppressive, foul-smelling air. And this is called a hospital ! There are women with little babies — a mother sick with typhus fever and her infant with small- pox or scarlatina. Good God ! is it possible that all this must be so — that it cannot be otherwise ? These little children are not exiled by sentence of a court or " by the will of the commune " — these unfortunate wives are going into exile voluntarily with their unfortunate husbands. For what crime should they bear such suffering, and why should so many of them have to lay their bones in the earth of Tomsk ? Year after year all this is repeated over and over again. In the city of Tomsk 50 persons out of every 1000 die in the course of a year. In the forwarding prison 100 persons out of every 1000 die in the course of four months. For ten years past it has been demonstrated, and admitted, that the forwarding of exiles must be differently managed, or the prison must be enlarged. Hundreds of times it has been said, and written, that such a hospital kills people instead of curing them — and still everything goes on as of old, and the disease-nursery continues to turn out more and more complicated and ​SIBERIA 521 interesting forms of physical disorder. When will all the papers be writ- ten that it is necessary to write, in order that, at last, the thing may be done that it is necessary to do ? — Siberian Messenger, No. 24, Tomsk, Oct. 24, 1885, pp. 1 and 14. Such is the account of the Tomsk forwarding prison that is given by the Tomsk press, and approved for publication by the acting-governor of the province of Tomsk. It seems to me to be much more nearly in harmony with my " ghastly descriptions " than with Mr. de Windt's " light, spacious, well- ventilated corri- dors"; cells equal to those of any prison in Europe; "perfect sanitary arrangements " ; " convalescents in warm, white flannel dressing-gowns"; and "light, cheerful rooms, iron bedsteads, white sheets, and scrupulous cleanliness, that would have done credit to a London or Paris hospital." It may, perhaps, be thought that between the time when I saw this prison and the time when Mr. de Windt " entirely failed to recognize it " from my " ghastly descriptions" something had been done by the authorities to greatly change its aspect, if not wholly to transform it, but I regret to say that such is not the case. Year after year I find in the Siberian newspapers, or in the official reports of the prison administration and the medical department, the same old melancholy story. In October, 1886, — one year later than the time to which the above extracts refer, — the Siberian Gazette, with the approval of the vice-governor of Tomsk, pub- lished, under the heading " City News," the following brief but significant paragraph : Dr. Orzheshko l informs us that the forwarding prison, at the present time, is filled to overflowing with the sick. They number 340, and the majority of them have typhus fever. Dr. Orzheshko's assistant, Dr. Hermanof, has taken the infection and is also down with typhus. Among the children of the exiles diphtheria prevails to a terrible extent, and in its most virulent form. The mortality is enormous. In view of the fact that the forwarding prison has become the home of contagious diseases, and will not soon be free from them, all possible measures should be taken to prevent the spread of such diseases from the prison to the city.— Siberian Gazette, No. 42, Tomsk, Oct. 19, 1886, p. 1172. The next year is 1887, for which we have the report of the Rus- sian medical department on " The Sanitary Condition of Prisons." iThe chief surgeon of the Tomsk forwarding prison. ​522 APPENDIX From this official report it appears that in the fall of 1887 there were 3000 exiles in the Tomsk forwarding prison, with adequate room for less than 1500 ; that 520 of them were sick at one time, with hospital beds for only 276 ; that most of the patients lay on the hospital floor as usual ; and that a large number of sick, for whom there was not even hospital-floor space, remained in the prison kdmeras, spreading iufectiou among the well, and particu- larly among the children. 1 The prison, apparently, was not so changed and improved as to be unrecognizable in 1888, for the chief of the prison administration reported, at the end of that year, that 2059 exiles had gone into the prison hospital, and that 24 per cent, of them were sick with typhus fever. [Rep. of Pris. Adm. for 1888, pp. 55 and 293. Ministry of Interior, St. Petersburg, 1890.] There had evidently been no change in the prison buildings, for the Siberian Messenger declared, at the end of the year, that most of the kdmeras in the forwarding prison . . . are impossibly cold, damp and dark, and are more like stalls in a barn than human habi- tations. It is time, at last, that some attention were paid to this state of things. . . . The bad construction of the kdmeras is one of the princi- pal reasons for the great amount of sickness among the prisoners. It is well known that typhus fever and other diseases prevail there without intermission. — Russian Gazette, No. 28, Moscow, Jan. 28, 1889. There is some uncertainty as to the time when Mr. de Windt first visited the Tomsk forwarding prison and failed to recognize it from my description ; but the exact time does not matter, since there is plenty of evidence to show that, when he wrote his letters to the Pall Mall Gazette, the Tomsk forwarding prison was still the same institution that the Tomsk Messenger called a " nursery of contagious diseases," and that acting- Governor Petukhof de- scribed to me as " the worst prison in Siberia." In my first letter to the Pall Mall Gazette [p. 513 of this appendix] I quoted the state- ments of the Siberian Messenger with regard to the terrible con- dition of affairs in the forwarding prison in August, 1889. In 1890— last year— Mr. Galkine Wrasskoy, chief of the Russian prison administration, published a review of the operations of his department, for the first decade of its existence, and caused it to be translated into French for the information of the dele- iRep. of the Med. Dept., pp. 201-207. Ministry of the Interior, St. Petersburg, 188 J. ​SIBERIA 523 gates to the St. Petersburg meeting of the International Prison Congress. In this review he refers cautiously to the Tomsk for- warding prison as follows: Le depot de transfert de Tomsk contient, a la fin de la periode de navigation 3000 detenus environ, quoique la contenanco de eet etablisse- ment ne lui permette de donner place qu'a 1200 individus. Cela provient du fait que pendant cette periode 500 a GOO detenus sont amenes chaque semaine a Tomsk sur les barques de service tandis que les detenus ex- pedies de cette ville par la route d'etape a pied ne depassent pas le cliift're de 250-400 par semaine pendant l'ete et 150 pendant l'hiver : ces chiffres dependent du nombre des detachements d'escorte de la quantite d'emplace- ments libres dans des batiments d'etape et dans les prisons d'Atchinsk et de Krasnoyarsk. Ainsi, sur cliacun des 18 convois de detenus amenes sur des barques de Tumene a Tomsk, il reste dans le depot de cette derniere ville sans avoir ete expedies a destination, de 100 a 200 individus, ce qui pour la fin de la periode de navigation en represente 3000 a 4000. Pour mettre fin a cet encumbrement excessif du depot de transfert de Tomsk ainsi que des depots de Krasnoyarsk, il a ete elabore a l'administration generale des prisons un projet, consistant a transporter les detenus de Tomsk a Irkoutsk sur des chariots a un cheval, au nombre de 250 indi- vidus par semaine. Avant de soumettre ce projet au conseil de l'Empire il a ete demande l'avis du ministre des Finances qui s'est prononce dans un sens favorable a la combinaison. — Administration Generale des Prisons, Apercu de son Activite pendant la Periode Decennale, 1879-1889, p. 158, St. Petersburg, 1890. The chief of the prison administration could hardly be expected, in a report intended for the International Prison Congress, to illustrate descriptively and pictorially the result of putting 3000 or 4000 prisoners into buildings intended for only 1200 ; but he admits the fact, and it now remains for Mr. de Windt to show in what respect my description of this prison is inconsistent with the facts set forth concurrently in the Siberian periodical press, in the reports of the prison administration, in the reports of the medical department, in the statements of the prison surgeon, and in the review prepared by Mr. Galkine Wrasskoy for the International Prison Congress. I trust that he will also explain why, in his first letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, he described the Tomsk city gaol in such a way as to make it appear to be the exile-forwarding prison, and why he asserted, without hesitation or qualification, that " the Tomsk prison, as graphically described in the pages of the Century Magazine, does not exist."