Idaho semi-weekly world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1875-1908, 1888-05-15
PENAL SERvITUDE.
THE STORY A CONDEMNED MAN
TOLD AN AMERICAN.

The Miseries of Prolonged Imprisonment
In a Siberian Dungeon-The Growing
Fear of Insanity--Loss of Sslf-controi.
Scuryy-Suicide.
You cannot imagine the misery OF pro-
longed confinement in casemate OF the
fortress under what are known as dungeon
conditions (lartsernoi polozhenie). My case
mate was sometimes cold, generally damp,
and always gloomy. Day after day, week
after week, and month after month, lay
! there in solitude, hearing no sound save that
Of the high pitched, melancholy bells OF the
fortress cathedral, which slowly chimed the
I quarter hours, and which always seemed to
me to half articulate the words, Tee zdais
seedesh-ee seedee tee" Here thou liest-lie
here still. | had absolutely nothing to do
except to pace my cell from corner to corner
and think. For long time used to talk to
myself in whisper; to repeat softly every
thing in the shape of literature that l could
remember, and to compose speeches, which,
under certain imagined conditions would
deliver; but finally ceased to have energy
enough to do even this, and used to sit for
hours in sort of stupor, in which, so far as
l can now remember, was not conscious of
thinking at all.
WEAK, MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY
| Before the end of the first year | grew go
weak mentally and physically that l began
to forget words. l knew what ideas l de-
sired to express, but some of the words that
l needed had gone from me, and it was with
the greatest difficulty that l could recover
them. 1t seemed sometimes as If my own
language were a strange one to me, or one
which, from long disuse, l had forgotten
| greatly feared insanity, and my appre-
hension was increased by the fact that two
| or three of my comrades in cells on the same
| corridor were either insane or subject to hal
| ucinations; and was often reused at night
and thrown into violent chill OF nervous
excitement by their h ysterical weeping, their
cries to the guard 20 come and take away
| somebody, or something, which they i'm
| agiIed they saw, or their groans and en-
| treaties when, in cases Of violent delirium,
they were strapped to their beds by the
gendarmes, My inability to SO what was
happening in the cells from which these
groans, cries and sounds of violence came
gave full play, Of course, to my imagina-
| ton, and thus increased my nervous excite
ment, until was on the verge Of Mysteries
| myself
Several times, when feared that was
losing all self control, summoned the fort
ress surgeon, or the "feldsher," who merely
save me dose of bromide of potassium and
told me that l must not excite myself so;
that nothing serious had happened that two
~ three of the prisoners were sick and deliri-
Gus; but that there was nothing to be
alarmed about. As the fortress contained no
hospital, insane and delirious patients were
treated in their cells, and were rarely re-
moved to an asylum unless they were mani
testify incurable, or the care of them became
.urdensone. The effect of the eternal still
ness, solitude, and lack of occupation on the
mind was greatly heightened by the want of
proper exercise and nourishment for the
body Accused" prisoners awaiting tt ial
in the Trubetskoi bastion were allowed to
have money in the hands of the ''smatritel,"
or warden, and could direct its expenditure
Tor white bread, vegetables, tea, sugar, etc,
60 make up the deficiencies of the prison ra-
5ion; but we, the Condemned had to live
lpon black rye bread, soup which it was
often impossible to eat on account of the
spoiled condition Of the meat from which it
nad been made, and a small quantity of
'kasha," or barley, boiled with little fat
md served without seasoning, and sometimes
nly half cooked.
ATTACKED BY sCURvY.
Such food, in connection with the damp,
;eIvy air of the casemate and the lack of
roper exercise, caused arrangement of the
digestive organs, and this was soon followed
y more or less pronounced symptoms of
curvy. Madame Lebedeva, who was in the
,enal servitude section with me, suffered
rom scurvy to such an extent that her teeth
and 81
md she could not mastcate the prison bread
Without first soaking it in warm water
,curvy, even in an incpient form, intens-
ed, of course, the mental depression due
rimarily to other causes and made it almost
aSupportable. never seriously meditated
uicide-iJ always seemed to me a cowardly
hing to escape suffering by taking ones own
,ife-but | did speculate u;,on the possibility
u suicide, and wondered how l could kill
myself in casemate where there was abso-
utely nothing that could DO used as an I'M
plement of self destruction.
Once | went so far as to see if could hang
myself from the small cylindrical hot air
pipe which projected two or three inches into
my cell from the face of the brick oven. |
did not really intend to take my life, but
felt a morbid curiosity to know whether or
NV Souiu Wv ~ III tHat way. AS soon as
threw my weight on the pipe, it pulled out
the masonry, making as it fell to the floor, a
noise which attracted the attention of the
guard in the corridor. was forthwith re-
moved to another cell, and l never again
tried similar experiment They say that
poor Goldenberg succeeded in committing
suicide in the fortress, but l cannot imagine
how he accomplished it. l became satisfied
that could not kill myself in my casemate
in any other way than by biting into an
artery or dashing my head against the wall,
and ultimately became so weak that doubt
very much whether could have fractured
my skull by the latter method. -George Ken
nan in The Century
The Parisians' Off-haud Manner.