Turkish Prisons and Prisoners 
occasional brawl, in which the long, forbidden knives, 
hidden away in the bloomers, are used and these 
fights invariably end in murder. 
Morning and evening, meat and bread are furnished 
the prisoners. At six, at noon and at sundown, the 
Moslem divine service is held; while on Sunday a 
priest of the Greek faith comes to visit the Christians. 
Once a year the Patriarch inspects the prisons, in¬ 
terceding where he deems the punishment too severe, 
if he chance to bask in the Sultan’s favor, and obtain¬ 
ing liberty for such prisoners as he may care to. This 
is the only set rou¬ 
tine. The birthday 
of Mohammed is 
celebrated in the 
prisons by giving a 
respite of four years 
from certain ten- 
year sentences, and 
five years off fifteen 
year terms. From 
the life sentence 
(one hund red and 
one years, it is put), 
pardons are usually 
either outright or 
not coming at all. 
Prison punish¬ 
ments vary greatly 
with the jailer. The 
most frequent form 
is the lash, and 
while the Moslem 
will never mistreat a dog or cat, in fact not even harm 
a bit of living vermin, he will beat the prisoners 
brutally, and often on slight provocation. Occa¬ 
sionally, in order to force a Christian to bear false 
witness, jailers will force the men to sit erect on a 
clumsy chair, hour upon hour; sleep being prevented 
by the dashing of cold water in the face. Chains, 
too, will occasionally be put about the neck, and on 
the first nodding from weariness, these are cruelly 
jerked. One man, afterward proven innocent, was 
subjected to such rigors for ten successive days, and 
this without recompense, on release. 
Here and there an especially gracious jailer will see 
to it that the sick reach the prison hospital, a dingy 
room, fitted with four or five beds, running over with 
vermin. Patients of every sort are gathered together: 
sufferers from gun-shot wounds, neighboring patients 
with typhoid and men in the last stages of consump¬ 
tion. While a physician comes daily to this room, the 
medicines prescribed are of the cheapest, pepper¬ 
mint drops, in fact, being the favorite remedy. 
[7 Mail, of course, reaches the prisoners through 
bribery alone, when not brought in by friends. In 
Turkey, the officials open every suspected letter, and 
what is dubious is ruthlessly destroyed Luckily 
for foreigners, in the larger cities the Powers have 
established their own post-offices, and there mail is 
protected by consular seal. 
In Salonica the Torture Tower, as the prison is 
known, is especially forbidding and withal, pictur¬ 
esque. Like some whitewashed ruin on the Rhine, 
it rises, broad and castellated, from the shores of the 
bluefEgean. The prison is interesting on account of 
the Macedonian patriots confined there, but beyond 
the heavy grated windows, the stranger sees but 
little. Despite the work of the Reform Committee 
along that line, con¬ 
suls are unanimous 
in asserting that 
practically nothing 
has been done in 
Salonik vilayet for 
insuring actual 
justice. Honest 
judges are exceed¬ 
ingly few, and ten 
piasters will serve to 
reverse a sentence. 
Even were this not 
the case, locally, ap¬ 
peal to Constanti¬ 
nople is always open 
to him who can pay 
for the same, and 
backsheesh accom¬ 
plishes anything for 
which there is the 
possibility of attain¬ 
ment. In the city of Monistir the writer had a taste of 
I urkish prisons. The hotelier had taken the Turk¬ 
ish passport (giving permission to traverse this 
vilayet or province) at breakfast, to be filed with the 
police, and I sallied forth on a stroll through the 
harem lanes. Suddenly a soldier stopped me and 
demanded the teskeret. Not having it with me, and 
he speaking but Turkish, he called another soldier; 
there was a confab, while the crowd of onlookers 
gathered and it was resolved to lodge me in jail. 
So, with great glee, on the part of my captor, I was 
led into durance vile. This prison, though smaller, 
was much the same as the one described, a great cell, 
with ten or twelve men lounging in its recesses, and a 
portiere to one side, giving access to the office where 
the sub-chief of police had his desk, with a tray of 
coffee beside him. I bore a letter of introduction 
from the Turkish Consul General at Chicago, but 
in order that I, instead of the Turks, might read, this 
had been penned in French and served to no purpose 
until an interpreter could be found. Meanwhile, 
I stayed in jail. Later when the British consul, who 
acted for the Americans when the Austrian represen¬ 
tative was away, complained to the vali, or Province 
Governor, at a foreigner’s being incarcerated for 
THE JAIL AT PLEVLJE 
53 
