The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-12-03
WHAT SOLITARY
 CONFINEMENT IS Described By One Who Has Experienced It
 In Paris. WORSE THAN DEATH The Italian Cipriani Man. aged to Come Out Alive
 and Sane.
WORSE THAN DEATH


 There has been much talk of late in France and elsewhere of the sup pression of the death penalty. The guiilotine is to go and solitary conflne- mentsi is to take its place. There is man in Paris who knows what the punishment of solitary confinement really means, and 1t will be of interest says the London Evening Standard, to hear what Amilcare Cipriani, who has undergone the punishment in Italy, has to say about it. Cipriani the king hater Is an old man now. He lives in Paris, where his gaunt face and long beard are as well known on the Boulevards as the Theatre des Vari- letes itself He was sentenced when zanardelH was minister of justice to
 25 years solitary confinement, and he recalls the phrase that Sig zanardelli uttered in the Italian parliament to reassure those members of it who thought that the guiliotine should not be done away with We are abolish ing the death penalty" he said, but in its place we shall give criminals a punishment which will make them long for it."
 And he spoke the truth" says M. Cipriani, flor solitary confinement is a thousand times more cruel than a
 blow from an axe and a leap into eternity. Solitary confinement in a cell is a lingering agony, after two
 or three years of which the strongest man must die or must go mad. He is literally buried alive. His food is just enough to keep life in him. He may neither read nor write and gets no news from outside, even of his family. He may receive no visits and have no intercourse with anybody He may not talk, and if he does ask a ques- ton of one of his jailers the jailer does not answer or answers by a sign. He never leaves his cell except for the
 mad house or the cemetery. Hevsees nobody and hears no human voice. He does not even see doctor if he is i'll. If he, breaks into open revolt his jail CTS may do what they like with him. They may kill him If they wish; and in Italy they often do so. No one has ever yet lived and remained sane for ten whole years of this terrific punish ment.
 No one except myself has ever, as I did. remained sane after eight of them. I shall never forget it. I was in mental and physical anguish day and night for eight years, during which time I was chained by one leg to the wall The worst of my torture was the feeling that 8 brain, will, strength and health were disappear ing. a felt death creeping on me and had no power to struggle, There was not human being who would help me with smile or with a friendly word, and death or madness seemed inevitable.
 "The worst feeling of all is the feel ing that one has not a friend in the world q was elected to parliament four times without knowing 1t during my eight years imprisonment) and that, on the contrary, everybody is an enemy, coldly watching the wreck of the prisoners health and brain. rem enber vividly even now--I shall never forget it--the terrible depth of my hatred for humanity. I could feel my own brain running off the track, end could not stem the madness which I felt growing on me, or I thought l could not I remember the terror with which found myself be- ginning to talk to myself aloud. knew that this spelled madness. And l yet I was afraid of sleeping, as I could have slept, through most of the day and most of the night, for I knew that that way lay idiocy, and when solitary prisoners legs begin swelling then death is not far off.
 T often wonder how I came to be spared death or madness. The happi- 1 pst prisoners are certainly those who so go mad. Passanante, who at tempted to murder King Humbert of | italy has been In n1adhouse for 27 years I am the only man who has resisted solitary confinement, the only man who has not died or gone mad in 1t after few years. My 1 method was constant mental strug- gle, sort of intellectual gymnastics, by means of which kept my thoughts off my abominaIble solitude. lost all | notion of time, of course, and [ re- member asking my jailer one day what the year was. He would not tell me- but next day as he was put ting down, my jug of water he nut tered 1SS6.' had been in prison five years and I believed I had twenty more to serve.
 T think I have told you enough" said M. Cipriani, Ito show you how 1, much more terrible solitary conf1ne- ment Is. than one short unpleasant mo- ment on the guillotine. Solitary con f1nement, the torture of utter silence, Is torment worse than any Chinese torturers have ever thought of and is unworthy of any civilized nation"
 M Amilcare Cipriani ought to knnw