Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1908 — JAIL IN THE FAR EAST [ARTICLE]

JAIL IN THE FAR EAST

Life Among Prisoners at Montgomery in the Punjab.

THEY ARE REWARDED.

For Each Live Rat Caught Convicts Gets Ten Good Marks—Grinding Corn and Pumping Water Hardest Tasks—Escape Difficult as Prison Is Center of a Forest.'

The visitor to one of the large jails of India, the great one at Montgomery, in the Punjab, for Instance, where more than two thousand native prisoners are corralled by way of punishment for their misdeeds, would come away with the impression that a far worse fate might befall the inmates than incarceration in such a clean, roomy, busy place. While practically everything in the way of work about the jail, including the gardening, the cleaning, etc., the sweeping, the washing, the tailoring, etc., is done by the prisoners, and occupations are found iD useful arts ror those not otherwise employed, yet the caste prejudices of each are respected. As for food, their diet is as carefully arranged as that for tne training table of a football team. The superintendent aims to keep all his prisoners up to a certain standard of weight and in a perfect state of health. It must be admitted, however, that this is tor the purpose of getting a maximum amount of work out of them, at a minimum of loss by death or sickness. Each prisoner is weighed at regular periods, and when necessary his work and his diet are changed, or he is sent to the hospital and generally looked after as if he were an only child in a delicate state of health. Extra food is supplied to those who are employed on especially hard labor. There are factories in the different jails, in which respect the Indian prisons are like some of those in America. Carpets woven after the manner of Gobelin tapestries, bit by bit, are made at Montgomery. The factory in which these much desired carpets are woven is not a place filled with humming machinery, as the name would suggest. It is an open pavilion, in which the chief sound is that of human voices. It is a veritable Babel The machinery consists of a number of crude looms worked by hand. One of them is wide enough to make a fifty foot carpet. The prisoners at Montgomery have an opportunity to Know their record as they make it. Each one carries around with him a character or “history sheet,” consisting of a number ot leaves stitched together. In this his complete jail record is set down. At the beginning are all particulars regarding his convictions and a full description. His weight is entered once a week, and his punishments and rewards, his changes in labor and the time spent in the hospital or in a solitary cell are all jotted down. The marks are put down as earned. Twenty-four marks mean the remission of one day’s time from the sentence. When paraded, each man squats with his cap on his left knee, his “history sheet” in one hand and his queer mediaeval shoes, plate and bowl laid out in a row in front of him. Catching rats is one of the most curious ways in which marks are earned. Rats carry the plague, so it is important that the jail shall be kept free from them. Every drain and hole is covered with wire netting, and a reward of ten marks is given to every prisoner who captures a rodent ana produces it alive before the superintendent or jailer. It is not unusual to see one of the prisoners approaching a jailer leading one or two live rats at the end of strings and carrying his "history sheet.” i These he presents with a great display of humblenese, holding the snuffing little creatures in leash while the marks are put down in his book. The rats are then ordered dispatched by the jailer. Escape is comparatively difficult at Montgomery, as ths jail is in the canter of a desert, in which a runaway can be easily tracked. The system ot handling the prisoners is so arranged that ten minutes after an alarm suffices to discover whether any one is missing or not, and if so. who it is. Wfien anything wrong is observed by a watchman he beats a gong.' This is the signal for each warder to collect his gang of prisoners. He places them In security and counts them. On one occasion, at evening roll sail, it was discovered that a man was missing. The gong was sounded Immediately. After re-checking tne men two or thre times It was remembered that a certain man had been hanged that day and his name had not been crpssed off. He had sunn beneath the eurfaoe, like many another man does, leaving hardly a bubble to tell where he had sunk.