Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1893-08-26 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

CONVICT PRISONS IN ITALY.  The British Consul at Leghorn in his last report describes the great prison at Orbetello, which has in connection with it two prisons at Port Ercole, on Monte Argentario, both occupying what were in former times fortresses built by the Spaniards to defend the approach to Orbetello. In the three prisons there are about 800 convicts in the custody of an armed guard, similar to the prison warders in England; the exterior of the prison is, moreover, guarded by military sentries. The largest number of convicts is in the Orbetello prison. One of the prisons at Port Ercole. called La Rocca, is used as a prison for invalids; the other, Forte Filippo, from its isolation and greater security as a place of confinement for refractory convicts and the more desperate characters among them. There is no solitary confinement, except in punishment cella, the prisoners living together in wards very much resembling barrack-rooms, except that the entrance is closed by a heavy iron grating, the door of which is always kept locked. Each convict has a wooden bedstead, which is folded up during I the daytime, and he wears a chain which is rivetten to a shackle round the ankle; by night the chain is secured by a padlock to the bedstead or to a ring on the pavement as the case may be. The convicts are clean-shaven and dose-cropped, the barbers being all convicts themselves, but a few of the worst characters may be seen wearing beards, not as a privileee, but because it is not considered prudent to place a razor within their reach. At Forte Filippo, situated on a height above Port Ercole, at one time a very important fortress occupying a position of great natural strength, the worst characters are under confinement. The Consul was shewn there three convicts under punishment who were confined in a vaulted chamber, secured constantly by chains to rings in the pavement and deprived of their beds. The chamber was lighted by a solitary small window, iron-barred, but was well ventilated and spacious. The convicts are clad in a rough woollen material with stripes of a brownish colour. Formerly a red jacket was worn, not unlike that of the British infantry, and even now all the old stagers retain the red jacket. The cap is without a peak, and the duration of the penalty is indicated by a stripe on the cap, green indicating a life sentence. As capital punishment does not exist in Italy many of the convicts are murderers, and green stripes are freatiently  DEATH ole GENERAL GoNZALES.  'Dm death is announced I rom New York of General A. J. Gor:ales, one of the first and most priminent Cuban revolutionists, anti an officer in the Confederate Army during the civil war. He was born at Iflatanas, Cuba, July 10th, 1817, but educated in the United States. He was Lopez's chief assistant in fcmenting the Cuban insurrection of 1851, and was severely wounded at the battle of Cardenar, escaping alter the failure of the insursection to West Florida. He commanded One half of the expedition which sailed for Cuba in the Cleopatra and Painpero. General Lopez, in command of the latter, was captured by the Spanish gunboat and garrotted, while Gonzales fell into the hands of the United States authorities, and so escaped with his life. When the civil war broke out in 1861 he joined the Confederate Army, mainly through the influence of his wife, a native of South Carolina. He was first General Beauregard's chief of st&ff, and later chief of artillery far the district that included South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. In 1870 he was pardoned by the Spanish Government, and took up his residence in Ceba, where his wife, who accompanied him, died of yellow-fever. He then returned to New York, where he has since resided,