TOMBS FOR LIVING MEN.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8919, 12 September 1907, Page 1

TOMBS FOR LIVING MEN.

$ Writing from St. Petersburg, a Russian correspondent states that the dreadful fortress gaol of Schluesselbnrg lias again been filled with political convicts. For many years this prison on the Neva, twenty miles from St. Petersburg, was a place from which came the most horrible stories of the cruelties of the autocracy. Even Siberia was loss dreaded than Schlucs.sclburg, where only the most dangerous political prisoners were entombed. But the Tsar’s ukase of October 80th, 15)05, abolished it as a political prison, and its inmates, amongst whom was the assassin of Plolive, were removed to Siberia. The constitutional “reformer,” Stolypiu, has, nowover, built it tip again on an enlarged scale, and its dungeons are once more to harbour political prisoners. The new wing is already completed, and it contains now 200 convicts, who know that escape is impossible for them. Tins now part consists of two galleries, containing twenty cells each. The lower gallery is|bolow the level of the water which surrounds the fortress, and is consequently extremely damp and unhealthy. Each cell*is like its fellow. A small window near the ceiling lets in a little light and air. damped to the wall are an iron bedstead and iron table.

In those cold and wet colls the prisoners are secured by chains from the ceiling. But to make assurance doubly sure the authorities have built in IVprison with high ramparts, round which flow the waters of the Neva.

Three times a night the prisoners are roused from their sloop by the mechanical pulling of their chains, which hang down from an 'iron bar passing through all the cells along the coiling. The only medical attendant for all the prisoners is an old chemist, Naus Davidoff, a man of seventy years of ago. The old part of the fortress will; soon be sufficiently restored for the reception of more “politicals.”