Prison Statistics of Batuvia. 273 



walls running parallel with each other at short distances, be- 

 tween which the prisoners, in divisions of from six to ten, are 

 confined in small cells, two occasionally inhabiting the same 

 cell. Those condemned to imprisonment for debt are shut 

 up in a special compartment, apart from the common run of 

 criminals, but in respect of accommodation and general treat- 

 ment are in no respect better off than the latter. The law 

 permits the incarceration of a debtor for three years, but the 

 creditor is compelled to pay 10 guilders a month (£10 per 

 annum), to defray the cost of his maintenance. It is illustra- 

 tive of the Chinese character, and its speculative propensities, 

 that hardly any of that nation are to be found on the crimi- 

 nal side, whereas they furnish the longest quota of those im- 

 prisoned for debt. We saw one Javanese woman, who of her 

 own free will submitted to be imprisoned with her husband 

 who had been condemned to several years' incarceration, al- 

 though she could only communicate with him in the presence 

 of witnesses, and had to live in an entirely different part of 

 the building. 



In the prison where the '' chain-gangers" were confined, 

 there were 170 prisoners.* Owing to the circumstance that 

 those committed in Batavia are draughted off to the prisons in 

 the interior, while those sentenced in the provinces are sent 



* According to official return, the number of criminals, in the year 1857, convicted in 

 the islands of Java and Madura, was 3S64, of whom 198 were females and 955 were 

 sentenced to the chain-gang. In the year 1857 alone, 2525 coloured criminals were 

 sentenced to hard labour, with or without chains. The number of convictions in the 

 Dutch East Indies, exclusive of Java and Madura, amounted in the same year to 4430. 

 VOL. II. T 



