Bridlington and Quay Gazette. — 1897-09-24 (Bridlington, Humberside, England)

FEMALE CONVICTS FOR SIBERIA.  A RUSSIAN LOVE TRAGEDY.  Within the last few—cia- ;a-yer the Odessa correspondent of the "Daily News," there have arrived here 85 female convicts from the central forwarding prisons at Moscow and Kharkoff, for embarkation to the penal island of Sakhalien. Nearly the whole of these wretched women have been condemned to deportation and hard labour on 3spital charges or other equally heinous crimes. About one-third of them are guilty of child. murder. Infanticide is always so rife in this 3ountry, and so generally condoned by the Russian juries in the oases of unmarried women, that the convicted mothers are seldom severely punished, exoept in such instanoes where the crime is aggravated by some peculiarly cruel and brutal features. There is no more depressing sight than to see these unfortunate creatures clad in coarse gray gaberdines, and in the worst oases their movements constrained by waist and ankle chains, escorted under a strong military guard from the railway prison vans at the quarantine station to the convict ship which is to carry them to the Far East. There are among them women of all ages from 20 to 60; girls with innocent but tad and careworn faces; young women of prepossessing but hardened features and callous iemeanour ; and middle-aged and elderly women A degraded and dejected appearanoe, and apparently utterly indifferent alike to their present , surroundings and their future fate. About a score A these female convicts have been convicted of mur, lering their husbands, some of them no doubt driven to the capital crime by the brutal ill-usage which the Basilian laws permit to the husband's "discretionary 30rrecti0n ; " while others are the heroines—or the victims—of more or less romantic tragedies. Among those of thelatter category whom I saw onWednesday there is a very beautiful woman of about 27 years of tge, a lovely brunette, with dark, liquid eyes, and with a supple and perfect figure, which-even the ansightly and baggy prison garb failed entirely to bonceal. On the convict's handsome face there was not a trace of compunction or remorse; her features wore the 'serene composure and immobility A absolute indifferenoe and fixed resignation. She was forced into a loveless marriage with a anded proprietor, who, failing to win her wifely affections, made her life a burden by his studied brutality, and by occasionally locking her in her apartments until she was well nigh fatuished. In a aeighbouring proprietor the ill-used wife found a sympathetic friend, and the friendship ultimately ripened into a strong mutual affection. An elopement was clandistinely planned between the lovers, and seoretly betrayed by a maid-servant to the hueband. The latter determined to surprise his wife in the act of leaving his house, and, at a midnight rendezvous', she had just entered the carriage provided by her protector when be appeared upon the scene and attempted, with many vile epithets, to forcibly iraw his wife home again. Before her lover had time to intervene the desperate woman drew her revolver and shot her husband through the heart, killing him on the spot. For this crime the wife Ben' tanned to six years forced labour in Saklialien. In outline this MAO is illustrative of very many more for which ill-used but erring wives are every year banished to tho penal horrors of Russia's far east...in island. It is terrible to imagine or contemplate OK awful tragedies of human life and Inman, frailty through whichthose 85 unfortunate women have passed;h some few of them nifty possibly work out their expiation and return to their homey' in Russia, but the great majority of them sink lower and lowet under the demoralising and degrading si'rroundings of their penal life,under their bard labour and Li WIC chastisement, until a premature but merciful death pats an end to their miseries.