DRIVEN MAD IN GAOL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1011, 17 October 1912, Page 4

DRIVEN MAD IN GAOL.

AMAZING TREATMENT OF PRISONER.

The “Petit Parisien,” of August 23rd, tells a strange story of the Sante prison. East July, a man known as Alfred Durand was arrested and imprisoned at the Saute for theft, carrying of prohibited weapon', and rebellion. A lew days later it was discovered that his real name was Laurent, and that he had recently been in a penitentiary colony in the Lot-et-Garonne, where he was considered a dangerous and incorrigible character.

Eight days after his arrival at the prison, it was found necessary to confine him to a cell for striking one of his fellow prisoners. In a fit ol auger Laurent smashed everything in the cell, and, as he tried to hit the warders, he was put in irons. “Bah ! these are playthings,” he remarked. And, sure enough, the next day when the warders opened his cell they found that he had succeeded somehow in freeing his wrists and ankles.

On August 22nd, three warders went to the cell to put him iu irons again. The prisoner howled and struggled violently. The order was then given for a solution of chloride of lime to be brought. This was spread all over the walls of the cell, aud the window and door hermetically closed. From nine o’clock in the morning to seven at night the cell was not entered on special orders. Then the warders grew anxious at hearing no sound coining from the cell, for as a rule Laurent howled aud cursed from morning till night. They opened the door. The prisoner was lying unconscious on the floor, overcome by the fumes of the disinfectant. With difficulty they brought him back to consciousness, but the chloride ol lime, far from having the calming result desired by the chief warder, had produced the opposite effect. Laurent is now a raving madman. The report of the doctor who examined him bodes trouble for the chief warder.