The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-02-20
GET WIVES IN PRISON
Curious Practice That Prevails On
Island Of Aldaman.
MATCH MAKING in JAIL
CoNVICTS WHO MARRY ARE SET
UP IN BUSINESS.
Prison Officials Supervise the Court
ships and Do Many Things to En-
courage Them-Married Sent to
Nicoban Islands to Settle - But
One White Man Lives There.
Chicago Inter Ocean.O

81 have known of some queer mar
riages in the twenty years L have
knocked about the world" said a sea
captain the other day, but 1 think the
pairing of the jailbirds at Andaman
was the strangest thing of them all.
For a couple of years 1 commanded
the steamer that runs down monthly
from Calcutta to the penal colony for
British India on the Andaman and Nj
cobar islands. L was a youngster then,
and interested in all sorts of things,
and it didn't take me long TO strike up
an acquaintance with the chief COM
missioner or president of the colony,
who used to let me go all over the
place. The female prison was an OBJ
ject of special interest to me, and l
must have been an object of special
interest to the prisoners, for, except
the gray-haired superintendent, they
didn't see a man from one years end
to another. 1 a a smatterlng of the
language, and enjoyed several harm
less limitations with dusky beauties,
whose eccentricitieS even India had
been unable to put UP with.
THE prison is as inaccessible as any
| sultan's harem. 1t is built on a prom
| ontory and protected on the side
toward the sea by a sheer cliff 200 feet
high, while on the and side the grounds
are surrounded by d ffteen-foot wall.
There are several guards stationed at
the entrance, and in order to get by
the first of these a man has to give a
certain password. In return this guard
gives him a certain password, which
takes him by the second, and so on,
past half a dozen, maybe. These po-
lice, as they are called, are the Oldest
and most hideous women in the jail.
To be eligible a woman must have gray
hair and a face that would stop d
clock, besides a record for sobriety and
obedience.
DISCIPLINING THE WOMEN.
"All the convicts went down from
Calcutta in my boat, and when L saw
them afterward in the prison they al
ways remembered me, n some of
them would have fallen on my neck if
they hadn't been afraid of the super
intendent. who was generally alongside
of me. All the prisoners have TO work.,
and in the female prison they weave
all the 10th for the mems clothes and
their own and a them up, too, l
believe. Ii any of the women refuse to
do their stint of work they are pun
ished. The first punishment is to cut
off their hair. This they don't like
very much, and the threat of it Will
generally bring them to terms. for they
are just as vain as other women and
don't want their long hair cut off. If
this doesn't convince them that it's bet
ter to work in the shop, they are made
to wear mems clothes and work in the
grounds, which are beautifully kept,
entirely by the women prisoners. The
trousers and jackets given to those
who are punished in this way are made
of the ~coarsest material, and are very
unbecoming, and the women have TO
trundle wheelbarrows and dig in the
dirt, just like men. If ven this fails,
they are further punished by being put
to sleep in a cell with the floor covered
by branches laid in rows, and then in