Lewistown gazette. [volume] (Lewistown, Pa.) 1843-1944, 1860-12-06
The Horrors of the Papal Prison.

the summary of little work, entitled the
prisons of Paliano.' 1t is the record of
the experience of several political prison
ers, written in the Pontifcal dungeons of
Paliano. These tombs for the living are
now, thanks to recent events, empty. One
prisoner writes:
In the fort of Paliano there are about two
hundred political prisoners, dressed like
the criminals condemned to the galleys,
and, like them, shaved. They are divided
into five sections. Those condemned for
| life are shut up in cells, about nine spans
wide and abou. sixteen long, including the
| little table of brickwork. Other cells about
| three spans wider, contain three prisoners;
and others, not much larger, have seven
teen all huddled together. In the first of
these there is small grating over and
| opposite the door, through which the food is
introduced. The other cells have one win.
dow, and sometimes two, with an opening
of about four spans in breadth and one in
height, and through this the prisoners are
| fired upon if it be necessary to keep them
| quiet. The food and hospital arrangements
were villianous. The patients are neglect
ed and ill-treated. The medical attendants
will hardly ever send patient to the hos
pital, and when they do send him they
always keep him on strict diet.
Perhaps they have a secret understand
ing with those who contract for the food
One day, when some complaints were made
| on account of the bad soup in the hospital,
the person who made the complaint was
taken by two keepers, and by dirt of blows
and kicks, was fo:cibly thrust along into
the darkest dungeons, and there detained
many days by order of the governor
When some prisoner at the point of death
refuses to receive a confessor, he is re
moved into a solitary cell, and there, after
having heaped on him a thousand outrages.
orders are given to one of the lowest turn
keys to kill him by suffocation. The fact
is known from the confession of the turn
key himself, who, on ore occasion, refused
to be party to this barbarity. The corpse
is inferred i'll the interior of the fort, and
the governor is present at the funeral
Sometimes he gives kick to to the head
or the corpse, and commits similar out
RACES.
The following is the testimony of another
victim Of Papal misrule:
''Whilst was an inmate of this den of
horrors, wife with her little boy obtained
permission to see her husband. 1t was ten
years since the Papal government had torn
her husband from her embrace; the boy
had never known his father, for he was
born after the arrest. Neither the prayers
of the afflicted wife, nor the tears of the
tender child, nor the sobbings and despair
of the unhappy father, could induce the
governor to allow them but one embrace
to let them mingle their tears together
Tt would l,a 1ponocgIbIo -
rlgors and the tortures, always new and in |
creasing, which have been invented to aug
ment the sutferings of the prisoners after |
the last fatal attempt at fight. In order to |
prevent the political prisoners from holding |
the slightest communication with the outer |
world, recourse was even had to the very |
strange aud absurd expedient forbidding
the physician (although an Individual COM
pletely subseryient to the government) |
from personally visiting the sick in prison. |
He was to treat them on the report of |
creature who but short time before had |
been in the gaieys, and was transferred |
thence to perform the Office of an hospital |
attendant.
This liberated galIey-slave felt the pulse,
made his diagnosis, drew his conclusions,
and the physician meanwhile waited in the |
room of the governor for the report of the
attendant, and, according to the charac ter
OF that report, prescribed remedies for the
patients whom he had never seen. Rep
reservations representations were neces-
sary before the Papal government could be
induced to abandon this singular mode of
proceeding; and it was only after some time
that the physician obtained permission to
approach the bed OF his patients; but even
then only IN the company of the turnkeys,
who were placed as spies over his move
ments, his words, and the very expression
of pity which his countenance might betray.
One of the patients, certain NJ, of
Bologna, begged to see the governor, to
implore in the name of his companions, the
permission to have the period for exercise
extended for half an hour. The only reply
he received was an order that he should
be put i'll chains weighing eighty pounds,
and thrown into the tower. The tower.
in the centre of the citadel, is the
most horrible of prisons-damp, isolated,
with an opening at the roof, leaving the .
prisoner exposed to all the inclemency of
the weather.
Be it summer or winter, the inmate of |
the tower has no bed save the bare ground
mo covering save his own apparel-no
food save bread and water. When | left
the fort to be conveyed as an exile across
the frontier, poor prisoner had Just died
in consequence of illness caused by the
repetition of this punishment, from which
more than one prisoner had died whom the
government, perhaps, wished to get out of
the way. A certain P, of Ascoli, on
returning from the chapel to his own cell,
when he reached the courtyard
Of the fortress, to salute condemned pris.
oner belonging to another section, who was
looking through the grating. For that
offence the head jaiior, after beating him
had the usual chains put on, and then sent
him to the tower 1t was in March, on an
Easter Sunday. After three days of suffer
ing he was found stretched out, almost
frozen, ON the ground. Then he was re-
moved to the hospital, and, thanks to a
ctr nnrnCtikn,Ain,, q /