Such was the moment chosen for a general stampede. About sixty or seventy convicts agreed to cut and run simultaneously, all toward the shelter of the hills. A few were told off to try conclusions with the armed guards, to wrest away the rifles and thus secure both immunity from fire and the power to use the weapon in self-defence. The attempt appears to have been fairly successful at first. A few rifles were seized, and the fugitives, turning on their pursuers, made some pretty practice, during which a few of the more fortunate got away. But authority finally asserted itself. Many were shot down; the rest were overtaken and immediately surrendered. The absence of “grit,” so characteristic of the race, showed itself at once, and these poor wretches, who had been bold enough to make the first rush under a hail of bullets, now squatted down and with uplifted hands implored for mercy or declared it was all a mistake. “Malesh, it does not matter,” was their cry then. But they no doubt found that it mattered a great deal when a few days later Nemesis overtook them in the shape of corporal punishment; for the lash, a cat of six tails, is used in the Egyptian prisons as a last resort in the maintenance of discipline and good order. It is only inflicted, however, under proper safeguards and by direct sentence of a high official. There is no courbash now in the prisons, and no warder or guard is permitted to raise his hand against a prisoner. Tyranny and ill-usage are strictly forbidden.

Escapes have happened at other places. When military operations were in progress on the frontier leading to the revindication of the Sudan, an immense amount of good work was done by large detachments of convicts at stations high up the river. There were rough and ready “Tourahs” at Assuan, Wady Halfa, Korosko, Suakin, El Teb, points of considerable importance in the service of the campaign, where supplies were constantly being landed, stored or sent forward to the front. The Egyptian prison authorities very wisely and intelligently utilised the labour at their disposal to assist in unloading boats and in reshipping stores and railway plant. Numbers of convicts were employed to construct the railway ahead in the direction of Abu Hamed by which the advance was presently made. The Nile above Merawi flows through the most difficult country in its whole course, the very “worst water,” and no navigation in that length was possible by steamers, little or none by small boats except at high Nile and then only by haulage. It was necessary, therefore, to complete the railway to Abu Hamed, so that gunboats might be sent up in sections over the line, to be put together above the cataracts and then utilised in the final advance, for the river is more or less open to Berber and on to Khartum, and the success of the campaign was greatly facilitated thereby.

Egyptian convicts did much good work of a superior kind. Now and again a trained handicraftsman was found who was willing to put forward his best skill and there was always a smart man ready to act as leader and foreman of the rest, as is very much the case, indeed, with convicts all over the world. One man in particular at Wady Halfa was well known as a most industrious and intelligent worker. He so gained the good-will of the British officers that, not knowing his antecedents, many of them strongly recommended him for release as a reward for his usefulness. But the prison authorities were unable to accede to this seemingly very justifiable request. This best of prisoners (again following experience elsewhere) was the worst of criminals. He had committed no fewer than eight murders, possibly not with malicious motives, or he would hardly have escaped the gallows. The death penalty is not, however, inflicted very frequently in Egypt. In one case worth mentioning as illustrating the almost comical side of Egyptian justice, a man sentenced to death was held to serve a short term of imprisonment for some minor offence before he was considered ripe for execution. When the short sentence was completed, he was incontinently hanged.

At Assuan during war time hundreds of convicts were engaged all day long under the windows of the hotel. Their rattling chains were heard soon after dawn mixed with their unmelodious sing-song as described above. They could be seen constantly and freely approached, as they clustered around the great crane that raised the heaviest weights, locomotives, tender, and boilers, from the boats moored below, or as they passed along in single file backward and forward between the beach and the railway station or storehouses near-by. All were in picturesque rags, except the military prisoners, dressed in a startling uniform of bright orange; all wore the inevitable leg-irons riveted on their spare, shrunken brown ankles. It was the custom once, as in the old French bagnes, to chain the Egyptian convicts in couples, a long-term man newly arrived being chained with one whose sentence had nearly expired.

This practice has now been discontinued, and each unfortunate bears his burden alone. Much ingenuity is exercised to prevent the basils or anklets from chafing the skin. The most effective method, employed no doubt by the most affluent, was a leather pad inserted within the iron ring; others without resources, owning not a single milliem in the world, used any filthy rags or scraps of sacking they could beg or steal. Pads of this kind have been worn from time immemorial by all prisoners and captives; no doubt the galley slaves chained to the oar in classical days invented them, and they were known until quite lately in the French bagnes of Rochefort and Toulon by the name of patarasses, which the old hands manufactured and sold to the newcomers. Another old-fashioned device among the Egyptian convicts is the short hook hanging from a waistband, which catches up one link of the irons, a simple necessity where the chain is of such length that it drags inconveniently along the ground.

The general use of fetters is not now approved by civilised nations. But in Egypt they appear to be nearly indispensable for safe custody. The removal of the leg-irons from convicts has often encouraged them to effect escape. Once sixteen of them at Assuan were astute enough to sham illness. It was during the cholera epidemic, and they knew enough of the symptoms to counterfeit some of them cleverly. The medical officer in charge was compassionate and thought it cruel that his patients should die in their chains, so he had them struck off. Within a few hours the unshackled convicts gave their guardians leg-bail, and escaped from the hospital into the desert, and so down the river. These very men afterward formed the nucleus of the band of harami, the robbers and brigands who terrorised the lower province for some months and were only disposed of at last by summary action. The story of the subsequent burning of the brigands at Belianah became public property and was made the occasion of one of those virulent attacks upon British rule that often found voice under the unrestrained license of the Egyptian press. These out-laws were pursued and overtaken at last by the police in a house where they had barricaded themselves. It was impossible to break in, and the assailants therefore set fire to the thatched roof. The robbers used this as their private arsenal, and the fire soon ignited their cartridges with a terrific explosion in which most of the defenders lost their lives. This practice of concealing explosives in the roof was not uncommon during the days of conflict with the Mahdi. When the sheik of Derowi was arrested on a charge of conveying contraband ammunition into the Sudan, he contrived to send back a message to his wife to make away with all damaging evidence. She thought the safest way to dispose of the gunpowder stored in the house was by fire and at the same time she also disposed, very effectually, of herself.

A striking feature at Tourah was the admirable prison hospital, which would compare favourably with the best in the world. It is a two-storied building with lofty, well-ventilated wards, beds and bedding, all in the most approved style; a well-stocked dispensary and a fully qualified medical man in daily attendance. The patients, unless too ill to rise, sit up on their beds rather like poultry roosting, and suffer from most of the ills to which humanity is heir. The complaints most prevalent are eczema, tuberculosis (the great scourge of the black prisoners from the south), ophthalmia, and dysentery. “Stone” is a malady very prevalent and showing itself in the most aggravated form, due no doubt to the constant drinking of lime-affected water. I saw calculi of almost colossal size, the result of some recent operations, extracted by the prison surgeons, whose skill is evidently remarkable.

Too much praise can hardly be accorded the Egyptian prison administration for its prompt and effective treatment of the cholera epidemic when it appeared in Egypt in 1896. Although the mortality was serious in the general population, the percentage of deaths was relatively small in the prisons. Out of a total of 7,954 prison inmates (this number did not include the convicts at the seat of war or on the Red Sea) there were only one hundred and sixteen cases and seventy deaths. In six of the prisons the disease did not appear; in others, although situated in the heart of infected towns, and prisoners were being constantly received from infected districts, the cases were few. In Tourah, with a total population of thirteen hundred and fifty, there were but twenty-two; at Assiut, a new building with good sanitation, only two; the average was largest at Keneh, Mansourah and Assuan. Not a single female prisoner was attacked; an immunity attributed to the fact that the females in custody receive regular prison diet, while the males, except at Tourah and Ghizeh, are fed, often indifferently, by their friends outside. These excellent results were undoubtedly due to the strict isolation of the inmates of any prison in which the cholera had appeared. Whenever a case showed, the introduction of food or clothing from outside was strictly forbidden, and friends were not admitted when cholera existed in the neighbourhood. Much credit was due also to the unselfish devotion of the Egyptian medical staff, who were unremitting in their care and of whom two died of the disease at their posts.

It was officially stated in 1903 that such crimes as robbery with violence, petty thefts and brigandage had increased materially since 1899. The reason given for this was the failure of the police machinery to bring out the truth and the practice of bribes which was everywhere prevalent. The corruption of magistrates and the terrorism held over witnesses make it exceedingly difficult to bring a man to justice or obtain satisfactory convictions. But we may well conclude that the prison system as established in Egypt to-day is of the most modern and satisfactory character.

PRISONS OF TURKEY