Morning journal and courier., 1881-07-19

Tuesday Morning, July I9, 1881.
HORRORS oF RUSSIAN PRISONS.

The general opinion concerning the admin
 istration of justice. or injustice, in Russia l and the treatment of the inmates of Russian prisons is not fiattering, and it will not be softened by the revelations made by M.Pavel l Birwanski, an imperial State attorney, who
 was sent on a special mission to Orenburg by l the Minister of Justice with orders to inves- tigate and report upon the practice of the l imperial tribunals in that province.
 r M Birwansh says he lived during the per l formance of his mission in an atmosphere of appalling groans and heart-rending sighs. He liberated innocent persons who had been kept l in prison by the executive for several years after they had been publicly acquitted in open court, and who had been secretly tor tured. He took down the dispositions of peasant women who had been subjected to torment-their flesh pinched with red-hot tongs-by order and in the presence of the Chief Commissary of Police, merely because they had presumed to plead on behalf of their unfortunate husbands. The town jail
 at nezk, not far from Orenburg city, was
 governed by an ex-poice commissary who
 had been expelled from the service for taking
 
 tomary round of the district prisons, when
 he noticed quite abnormal excitement
 among the prisoners at nezk His attention
 was also attracted by the strange bearing of
 the jail-governor, who appeared excited while
 attending upon him during the inspection. He
 made inquiry, and soon learned that just two
 months previously all the prisoners had been
 led out to small open space outside the
 city gates and there, in the presence of the
 governor and large number of the inhabi-
 tants, had been beaten by the wardens with such inhuman cruelty that the populace wit
 nesses of the bestial outrage, had wept bit terly and crossed themselves in utter con- sternation. M. Birwanski's informants as- sured him that ''they had not, so to speak, been beaten, but half hammered to death" First they were logged until they lost con- sciousness; then water was poured over them until they came to themselves then the wardens began knocking them about with whatever came to hand-belt buckles, prison keys, iron chains and the butt-ends of rifles. The ground was stained with blood, like the floor of shambles. Then they were all tied together with ropes by the feet and driven into the great courtyard at the jail, where they fell down from sheer ex- haustion in several bleeding and disfgured heaps scarcely recognizable as human be- ings.
 One of the punishments most commonly practised, says M Birwanski, is the follow ing The delinquent is tied to horses tail and logged with thorny rods that have been -I,.Asa thirty-fve to one hundred and twenty-five blows. This is punishment usually inflicted upon prisoners who, while addressing the 1 jail officials, forget themselves so far as to 1 use the popular and familiar form of Thou ] instead of the You prescribed by law. The | prisoners, one and all, assured him that to 1 be ordered into the jail infirmary was equiya- | lent to being sent to an inevitable grave. It | is the custom of the prison surgeons to com | plain that their patients are only shamming 1 to avoid working; whereupon, after being | cruelty fogged, they are sent back to their 1 heavy tasks. One of these constantly recur- ring cases came under M. Birwanski's immedi- ate cognizance. It was that of en invalid l prisoner named Lebedieff. He was told of 1 to carry water, and in endeavoring to obey his orders dropped down dead under the weight of teeming water cask.
 State Attorney Birwanski seems to have done his duty in trying to put stop to these dreadful abuses, and his reward was what might be expected in Russia. He was dis missed from his office. Moreover, the paper which published his account of what he found has been suspended. His story would seem almost incredible were there not so much other testimony of similar character to support it. It reminds one of chapters of that interesting record of life in Russian prison entitled Buried Alive"