While she was at liberty, several crimes were committed in Alexandrovsk. The shopkeeper Nikitin was murdered, and the Jewish settler Yurkovsky was robbed of fifty-six thousand rubles. The Golden Hand was suspected and ac- cused of these crimes, as either a direct participant or an accessory. The local investigating authorities have entangled her and themselves in such a thick mesh of incongruities and errors that it is impossible to learn anything definite. Nevertheless, the 56,000 rubles have not been found and the most extraordinary tales are told about the money.
I will describe the kitchen where dinner was prepared in my presence for 900 persons, and I will describe the food and how the prisoners eat, in a separate chapter. I will now devote a few words to the latrines.
As everyone knows, this accommodation is located in full sight of the overwhelming majority of Russian houses. In villages there are no privies. At monasteries, fairs, inns and at all kinds of industries where sanitary inspections have not yet been established, they are absolutely disgust- ing. Disdain for privies has also been carried to Siberia by the Russians. From a study of prison history it is obvious that these latrines were the cause of nauscating stenches and of diseases, and it is equally obvious that the prison- ers and the prison administrators became easily reconciled to this.
In 1872, as Vlasov wrote in his report, one of the prisons at Kara had no latrine whatsoever and the prison- ers were led out to relieve themselves in the square. Furthcrmore, this was not done according to their indi- vidual needs but only when several persons had been gathered together for this purpose. I could cite a hundred such cases.
In Alexandrovsk the latrine is an ordinary cesspool located in the prison yard in a separate outhouse between the prison buildings. During its construction the primary concern, evidently, was to build it as cheaply as possible, but in comparison to the past it represents significant prog- ress. At least it is not disgusting. The latrine is unheated and is ventilated by wooden pipes. The toilets line the side. They cannot be stood upon but must be sat on, which is what saves this outhouse from filth and damp. It is malo- dorous but not too much so, since the odor is masked by the usual treatment of tar and carbolic acid. This latrine is open at night as well as during the day, thus obviating the need for a chamber pot, the latter only being used in The Irons.
Outside the prison there is a well by which the depth of the water level can be ascertained. Owing to the peculiar composition of the local soil, the water level rises in the cemetery, which is located on a mountain overlooking the sea. The water rises so high that during a dry spell I saw graves half filled with water. The soil around the prison and throughout the post is drained by canals which are not sufficiently dcep, and the prison is not at all free of damp.
On sunny warm days, which are rare, the prison is wcll ventilated. The windows and doors are thrown widc open, and the prisoners for the most part spend their timc out- doors or far away from the prison. In winter and in bad weather, which averages ten months of the year, they must be satisfied with only small ventilating windows and stoves. Larch and fir are used in the construction of the prison and its foundations, and these give good but unreliable natural vcntilation. As a resulr of the high humidity of the Sakhalin climate and the abundance of rain as well as of interior evaporation, the water accumulated in the wood freezes during the winter. The prison is poorly ventilated, and there is insufficient air per inmate.
In my diary I noted: "Ward No. 9. Cubic volume of air—187 sazhens [1,309 cubic feet]. Contains 65 prison- ers." This applies to summertime, when only half the pris- oners sleep in the prison. Here are the figures from the 1888 medical report: "The total cubic capacity of air for the prisoners in the Alexandrovsk prison is 970 sazhens [6,790 cubic feet]; the largest number of prisoners is 1,950, the smallest number is 1,623 and the average is 1,785. 740 were in the prison during the night, giving a toral of 1.31 sazhens [9.17 cubic feet] of air per person."
During the summer there are comparatively few prison- ers in the prison, for they are commandeered to work on the roads and in the fields. The largest number is to be found in the fall, when they return from their work and the "volunteer" ship brings new convicts, totaling from 400 to 500 persons. These are always held in the Alexandrovsk prison before being assigned to other prisons. This means that there is less air per inmate when there is the least amount of ventilation.
The convict returns to the prison to sleep after his work, which is most frequently performed in bad weather. His clothing is soaked and his footwear filthy; there is no place to dry anything. He hangs some of his clothing near the plank and uses the rest, when it is still wet, for bedding. His sheepskin coat smells of sheep and his foot- wear smells of leather and tar. His underwear, completely saturated with excretions from his skin, is wet and has not been washed for a long time. The smelly, sweaty rags from his feet are jumbled up with old sacks and rotten old cloth- ing. He has not had a bath for a long time, is full of lice, smokes cheap tobacco and constantly suffers from flatulence. Bread, meat and salted fish—which he often cures right here in the prison—crumbs, bones, oddments and leavings are all piled together in his kettle. He squashes the bugs on the plank bed with his fingers. All this makes the prison air fetid, foul and acid. The air beco^s permeated with a very high degree of water vapor, so that during extreme frosts the windows are covered with ice on the inside and the prison grows warm. Hydrogen sulphide, ammonia and other gases mix in the air with the water vapor and then, as one observer said, "Your soul curdles."
Under the system of communal wards it is impossible to maintain cleanliness in the prison, and hygiene can never break through the bounds set by the Sakhalin climate and the convicts' working conditions. Notwithstanding the fine intentions of the administration, they will always be power- less and they will never be rid of unfavorable criticism. Either we must condemn the communal wards as being obsolete and exchange them for another kind of living space—and this is in fact being partially brought about, since many convicts do not live in prison but in huts—or else we must reconcile ourselves to the unavoidable and necessary evil of filth, and leave the measuring of foul air by cubic sazhens to those who regard hygiene only as an empty formality.
It is very nearly impossible, I believe, to say anything good about the communal system. The people living in a communal ward arc neither a community nor an associa- tion, where the individual members have responsibilities: they are nothing more than a crowd exempt from any responsibility toward their living space, their neighbors or the surrounding objects. It is impossible to order a convict not to bring in dirt and muck on his feet, not to spic on the floor and nat to carry lice. If the cell is smelly and thievery is rampant and they sing filthy songs, then every- body is guilty, or, in other words, nobody is guilty.
I ask a convict, a former respectable citizen, "\X'hy are you so slovenly?" He answers, "Because here it would be useless to be neat." And, indeed, of what value is personal cleanliness to a convict if tomorrow they bring in a new group of prisoners and give him a neighbor smelling to high heaven, with insects crawling out of him in all direc- tions?
The communal ward allows no privacy to the prisoner —that privacy whicb is so necessary for prayer, for reflec- tion and for that self-analysis which is considered obligatory by all the advocates of reform. They play violent card games with the consent of bribed guards, employ foul lan- guage, laugh boisterously, and there is always a clatter and banging of doors, and the night-long clanging of chains from The Irons, and all these things prevent the fatigued prisoner from sleeping and make him irritable. Naturally his stomach and his sou] are not left without any ill effects.