A PITEOUS TALE OP SUFFERING.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 395, 26 September 1884, Page 2

A PITEOUS TALE OP SUFFERING.

The Tangier correspondent of the London * Globe ' writes :— Let me give a description of the place where the debtors of English and foreign claimants are confined. Entering a narrow hall which opensd from the street, I looked through a small window into a narrow paved court. This place was about eighteen yards long by twelve wide, and at the far side was a doorway leading into a gloomy stone-built "cellar, lighted and ventilated only by the door and two small grated windows in the root. In the small court were huddled together about 100 wretchedlooking men, their gaunt, ghastly appearance, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes, telling only too plainly many a piteous tale of suffering: careworn and anxious looking, they appeared too depressed even to converse with each .other, and no sound was heard but the clanking of their fetters as they moved listlessy about; fOrmany,it seemed to me the majority, had heavy irons on their legs. Some were occupied in plaiting basket work, which they sold to buy food, as the amoant^ of bread supplied by Government was hardly sufficient to sustain life. There . was a reservoir of water used for ablutions, fbut it was filthy and putrid, so those who could afford it purchased whatthey drank, those who could .not, depended upon the precarious . charity of their fellow-pri-soners. Some were supported by their relations, who brought them food each day, some received scraps of food from their companions in misfortune, some seemed to be dying of consumption or a slow process of starvation, and there was ! a wolfish, famished look upon, the countenances of many of the prisoners which amply sustained their dismal tales. At sunset those charged with serious crimes, as well as debtors, were brought down tothe dark cellar. I have mentioned; here they were fastened together in two rows by heavy chains, which passed through iron collars round their necks ; they were then locked in, the. only ventilation being from the two small grated apertures m the roof, and so they passed the night, unable to move from this position. Innocent men. ahaj&aXLjtcitb- -~ no crime. but that of owing money— in some cases, as 1 am prepared to prove, not owing the sums claimed against them — chained^ together like wild beasts, with thieves, highway robbers, and murderers, suffocated by the heat, oppressed and their blood poisoned by the foul effluvia, and tortured through the long hours of the weary night by inconceivable quantities of most loathsome vermin. One man whose release I procured, and who had been imprisoned on account of a British claim which he did not owe, positively shuddered as he spoke of the sufferings of each horrid night, and the torments caused, by the attacks of swarming myriads of disgusting creeping things, whose foul presence drove sleep from many a heartbroken victim. Never, perhaps, was an inquiry more needed than at present, and investigation will bring to light, much more than I have written above. Incredible as it may seem, when I left Casabianca there were three men, brothers, in the prison I have described on a claim (not an English One) every penny of which had been long paid, and which I can prove had been paid. Just before starting for Tangier, on passing by the prison, I saw a blacksmith takii\£s heavy iron fetters from #\a lsgs of $ wretched natiya who was lying on the ground. On enquiring I was informed that a claim of 18 dols. had been made against the prisoner's brother-in-law by a British subject, but that as the brother-in-law had escaped to Oran, . in French territory, tho man I saw had been arrested, chained, fettered, and detained for fifteen days in the Casasane.a. px^Oll until his sifter depos^ed v^tn i $_'c. l£asi Jiep'Sirftei? 'hr^ceiefcs and ankle rings to secure her brother's release. It is also a fact that within the last eighteen months two native women, a mother and daughter (the latter a- girl of about 19), were most fenamefully' and cruelly tortured in each other's presence by order of an English official, who coolly looked on during the kqraud oud^al , tp whi<?h tha women s^ecJeqV ' '