THE LAW IN EGYPT
Penal code in Egypt of Mohammedan origin and derived from the
Koran--The law of talion--Price of blood--Blood feuds and blood
revenge--The courbash freely used to raise taxes--Old police in
Cairo--Extensive reforms--Oppressive governors--Tyrannical rule of
Ismail Pasha--Protection and security guaranteed to the fellaheen
by British occupation--Prison reform--Tourah near Cairo--Labour
at the quarries--Profitable workshops--Assiut prison--Life at
Tourah--Attempts to escape--Convicts employed on the communication
line in the Sudan campaign--Excellent sanitation and good hospital
arrangements.
The land of the Pharaohs has ever been governed by the practices and
influenced by the traditions of the East. From the time of the Arab
conquest, Mohammedan law has generally prevailed, and the old penal
code was derived directly from the Koran. Its provisions were most
severe, but followed the dictates of common sense and were never
outrageously cruel. The law of talion was generally enforced, a life
for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Murder entailed
the punishment of death, but a fine might be paid to the family of the
deceased if they would accept it; this was only permitted when the
homicide was attended by palliating circumstances. The price of blood
varied. It might be the value of a hundred camels; or if the culprit
was the possessor of gold, a sum equal to £500 was demanded, but if he
possessed silver only, the price asked was a sum equal to £300. The
accomplices and accessories were also liable to death. Compensation in
the form of a fine is not now permitted. A man who killed another in
self-defence or to defend his property from a depredator was exempt
from punishment. Unintentional homicide might be expiated by a fine.
The price of blood was incumbent upon the whole tribe or family to
which the murderer belonged. A woman convicted of a capital crime was
generally drowned in the Nile.
Blood-revenge was a common practice among the Egyptian people. The
victim’s relations claimed the right to kill the perpetrator, and
relationship was widely extended, for the blood guiltiness included
the homicide, his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and
great-great-grandfather, and all these were liable to retaliation
from any of the relatives of the deceased, who in times past, killed
with their own hands rather than appeal to the government, and often
did so with disgusting cruelty, even mangling and insulting the
corpse. Animosity frequently survived even after retaliation had
been accomplished, and blood-revenge sometimes subsisted between
neighbouring villages for several years and through many generations.
Revengeful mutilation was allowed by the law in varying degrees.
Cutting off the nose was equivalent to the whole price of blood, or of
any two members,--two arms, two hands, or two legs; the removal of one
was valued at half the price of blood. The fine of a man for maiming or
wounding a woman was just half of that inflicted for injuring a man, if
free; if a slave the fine was fixed according to the commercial value
of the slave. The whole price of blood was demanded if the victim had
been deprived of any of his five senses or when he had been grievously
wounded or disfigured for life.
The Koran prescribed that for a first offence of theft the thief’s
right hand should be cut off, and for a second, his left foot; for
a third, the left hand; and for a fourth, the right foot. Further
offences of this kind were punished by flogging, or beating with the
courbash--a whip of hippopotamus hide hammered into a cylindrical
form--or a stick upon the soles of the feet. The bastinado, in fact,
was the familiar punishment of the East. Religious offences, such as
apostacy and blasphemy, were very rigorously punished. In Cairo a
person accused of thefts, assaults and so forth used to be carried by
a soldier before the kadi, or chief magistrate of the metropolitan
police, and sent on trial before a court of judicature, or if he denied
his offence, or the evidence seemed insufficient for conviction,
although good grounds for suspicion existed, he was bastinadoed to
extort confession. He generally admitted his guilt with the common
formula in the case of theft, “the devil seduced me and I took it.” The
penalties inflicted less than death included hard labour on the public
works, digging canals and the removal of rubbish or compulsory military
service.
The modern traveller in Egypt will bear witness to the admirable
police system introduced under British rule, and to the security
afforded to life and property in town and country by a well organised,
well conducted force. In former days, under the Pashas, the whole
administration of justice was corrupt from the judge in his court
to the police armed with arbitrary powers of oppression. The chief
of police in Cairo was charged with the apprehension of thieves
and criminals and with his myrmidons made constant rounds nightly
through the city. He was accompanied by the public executioner and a
torch-bearer who carried a curious light that burned without flame
unless waved through the air, when it burst suddenly forth; the burning
end was sometimes hidden in a small pot or jar and when exposed served
the purpose of a dark lantern. The smell of the burning torch often
gave timely warning to thieves to make off. The chief of the police
arrogated to himself arbitrary powers, and often put a criminal to
death when caught, even for offences not deserving capital punishment.
A curious custom obtained in old Cairo; it was the rule for the
community of thieves to be controlled by and to obey one of their
number, who was constituted their sheik and who was required by the
authorities to hunt up offenders and surrender them to justice.
In old times the administration of the country districts was in the
hands of governors appointed by the Pasha and charged by him with the
collection of taxes and the regulation of the corvee, or system of
enforced or unremunerated labour, at one time the universal rule in
Egypt. The prompt and excessive use of the stick or courbash was the
stimulus by which the contributions demanded were extorted, and the
sheik, or headman of a village, might be severely bastinadoed when the
sum demanded ran short. Everything was taxed, particularly the land and
its products, wholly or in part, or they were sometimes seized outright
and sold at a fixed price, but impounded to make good the debts of the
cultivators to the government. Taxes were also levied in kind,--butter,
honey, wax, wood, baskets of palm leaves and grain. The government
granaries were kept full by the last named exaction and in this regard
an amazing story is told.
The governor of the district and town of Tanta, when visiting the
granary, saw two fellaheen resting who had just deposited their tale
of corn. One had brought in 130 ardebbs (equivalent to five English
bushels) from a village at a distance, the other only 60 ardebbs from
some land adjoining the town. The governor at once fell foul of the
defaulter, and utterly ignoring the townsman’s protest that his was a
daily and the countryman’s a weekly contribution, ordered the man of
Tanta to be forthwith hanged. The next day the governor paid a second
visit to the granary and saw a peasant delivering a large quantity of
corn. Being much pleased, he inquired who the man was and heard that
it was he who had been summarily executed the day before and who now
produced 160 ardebbs of grain. “What, has he risen from the dead?”
cried the governor, astounded. “No, Sir; I hanged him so that his toes
touched the ground; and when you were gone, I untied the rope; you did
not order me to kill him,” replied his subordinate. “Aha,” answered the
governor, “hanging and killing are different things. Next time I will
say kill.”
“To relate all the oppressions which the peasantry of Egypt endure,”
says Mr. E. W. Lane, the authority for the foregoing, “from the
dishonesty of the officials would require too much space in the present
work. It would be scarcely possible for them to suffer more and live.”
Yet a worse time was approaching, when the notorious Ismail Pasha
became practically supreme ruler and used his unchecked power for
the complete enslavement of Egypt. His methods of misgovernment, his
robbery, spoliation and cruel oppression are now matters of history.
This modern Sardanapalus, as he has been aptly styled, lavishly wasted
the wealth he wrung out of his helpless subjects by the intolerable
rapacity of his ferocious tax gatherers. The fellaheen were stripped to
the skin to fill his coffers and feed the boundless extravagance of
a vain and licentious prince. His private property was enormous; his
estates and factories were valued at sixty millions sterling; he owned
forty-three palaces and was building more when, in a few short years,
he had brought Egypt to the brink of ruin, and the people starved at
his door.
The people of Egypt not only paid taxes, but their possessions were
seized ruthlessly, their lands misappropriated, their cattle and goods
confiscated; they were mere slaves whose right to work on their own
account was forfeited; and the whole population was driven forth from
their villages with whips, hundreds of thousands of men, women and
children, under the iniquitous system of enforced labour, to make
roads through the Khedive’s estates, till the cotton fields and build
embankments to control the distribution of the life-giving Nile. No
escape from these hardships was possible, no relief from this most
grievous Egyptian bondage. The arbitrary despot backed his demands by
a savage system of punishments, and when the courbash was ineffectual,
he banished malcontents to the remote provinces of central Africa,
where, after a terrible journey, they expiated their offences at
Fazoglo or Fashoda. Sometimes the highest officials were arrested and
despatched in chains, without any form of trial, and were detained for
years in this tropical Siberia. To speak of the Nemesis that eventually
overtook Ismail and deprived him with ignominy of a power he so
shamefully misused is beyond the scope of this work. But reference must
be made in some detail to the many merciful changes introduced into
the administration of justice under the British protectorate that has
succeeded to Egyptian rule.
In Egypt, at the present time, every son of the soil is safe from
arbitrary and illegal arrest; the imposition of taxes is regulated
strictly according to law; there is no enforced labour,--the corvee
has been absolutely swept out of existence. Every peaceably disposed
citizen may live sheltered and protected from outrage and in the
undisturbed enjoyment of his possessions, waxing rich by his own
exertion, safe from the attack or interference of evil-doers. It was
not always so, and the great boons of personal security and humane,
equitable treatment now guaranteed to every soul in the land have been
only slowly acquired. Until 1844 the Egyptian police was ineffective,
the law was often a dead letter, and the prisons were a disgrace to
humanity and civilisation. Before that date the country was covered
with zaptiehs, or small district prisons, in which illegal punishment
and every form of cruelty were constantly practised. It was quite
easy for anyone in authority to consign a fellah to custody. One of
the first of the many salutary reforms introduced by the new prison
department established under British predominance was an exact
registration of every individual received at the prison gate, and
the enforcement of the strict rule that no one should be admitted
without an order of committal duly signed by some recognised judicial
authority. To-day, of course, any such outrage as illegal imprisonment
is out of the question. Another form of oppression in the old days
was the unconscionable delay in bringing the accused to trial.
Hundreds were thus detained awaiting gaol delivery for six or nine
months, sometimes for one or two years. At that time, too, there was
no separation of classes; the innocent were herded with the guilty,
children with grown men; only the females, as might be expected in a
Mohammedan country, were kept apart, but their number then and since
has always been exceedingly few.
The first step taken by the new régime was to concentrate prisoners
in a certain number of selected prisons, such as they were, but the
best that could be found. In these, twenty-one in number, strenuous
efforts were made to introduce order; cleanliness was insisted upon and
disinfectants were largely used, while medical men were appointed at
each place, who attended daily to give medicine and move the sick into
hospital. The health of the prisoners was so much improved that they
constituted one per cent. of the daily average of prisoners, and this
ratio has been maintained, so that in the cholera epidemic in 1896 only
a few convicts died.
A good prison system could only be introduced in improved prisons,
and the first created was the great convict establishment at Tourah,
a village about eight miles above Cairo on the banks of the Nile and
at the foot of the great limestone quarries that have supplied the
city with its building material from the earliest days. In 1885 the
old military hospital at Tourah was handed over to be converted into a
public works prison; a few of the wards were converted into cells, and
a draft of 250 convicts was brought from the arsenal at Alexandria to
occupy them. These proved skilful workmen, as the fellaheen, whether
captive or free, invariably are, and with the help of a few paid
stone-masons they restored the half-ruined upper story of the ancient
building and converted it into a satisfactory prison to hold one
hundred and fifty more inmates. The four hundred steadfastly continued
their labours and to such good purpose, demolishing, removing,
cleaning, and constructing new roads and approaches, that in May,
1886, an entirely new prison for five hundred convicts was completed
and occupied. Many forms of industry were carried on with excellent
financial results, as will be seen from the following details.
All the lime for buildings was burned in two lime kilns constructed
for the purpose; all the furniture and woodwork, the tables, beds and
doors were made by convict carpenters; all the ironwork, the bolts
and bars for safe custody, the very leg-irons, their own inalienable
livery under the old Egyptian prison code, were turned out by convict
blacksmiths; and hundreds of baskets for carrying earth and stone
have been manufactured. The industrial labour at Tourah is now of many
useful kinds. New prison clothing, new boots (although these usually
indispensable articles are only issued to a favoured few prisoners
in Egypt), the baking of bread and biscuit for home consumption, or
to be sent to out-stations, plate laying and engine fitting, stone
dressing for prison buildings, both at Tourah and elsewhere,--all
these are constantly in progress at the Tourah prison. The money made
in the prison provides funds for many things necessary for further
development, such as tram lines, locomotives, improved tools and
machinery of all kinds.
A visit to Tourah is both interesting and instructive. The chief
employment of the convicts is in the quarries, a couple of miles from
the prison, to which the gangs proceed every morning at daylight and
where they remain every day of the week but Friday, which is their
Sabbath, until four o’clock in the afternoon. There is no time wasted
in marching to and fro. The dinner, or midday meal, is carried out
to the quarries by the cooks, and after it is eaten the convicts are
allowed an hour’s rest in such shade as can be found in the nearly
blinding heat of the dazzling white quarries. As this midday siesta is
the common hour for trains to pass on to the neighbouring health resort
of Helouan, casual observers might think that rest and refreshment
formed a great part of the Egyptian convict’s daily life. But that
would be a grievous mistake. During the hours of labour, ceaseless
activity is the rule; all around the picks resound upon the unyielding
stone; some are busy with the levers raising huge blocks, stimulated
by the sing-song, monotonous chant, without which Arabs, like sailors,
cannot work with any effect. The burden of the song varies, but it is
generally an appeal for divine or heavenly assistance, “Allahiteek!”
“May God give it,” the phrase used by the initiated to silence the
otherwise too importunate beggar, or “Halimenu,” “Hali Elisa,” ending
in an abrupt “Hah!” or “Hop!” at the moment of supreme effort.
A visitor of kindly disposition is not debarred from encouraging
effort by the gift of a few cigarettes to the convicts. Tobacco is
not forbidden in the prisons of Egypt. It is issued to convicts in
the works prisons in small rations as a reward, according to the
governor’s judgment. The unconvicted and civil prisoners undergoing
merely detention are at liberty to purchase it. I was the witness, the
cause indeed, of a curious and unwonted scene in the small prison at
Assiut when I inspected it in 1898. The sale of tobacco was in progress
in the prison yard, where all of the prisoners, a hundred and more,
were at exercise. An official stood behind a small table on which lay
the little screws of tobacco for disposal, each for a few _milliems_,
the smallest of Egyptian coins, the fractional part of a farthing.
The eagerness with which the poor prisoners eyed the precious weed
excited my generosity, and I bought up the whole table load, then and
there, for a couple of shillings. The prisoners crowding around saw the
deal and understood it. Hardly had I put down the ten piastres when
the whole body “rushed” the table, overset it, threw the screws of
tobacco upon the ground, and all hands pounced down on the scattered
weed in one great struggling, scrambling, combatant medley. The tobacco
was quite wasted, of course, and I have no idea who got the money.
The mêlée was so unmanageable that it was necessary to call out the
guard to drive the prisoners back to their wards. I was aghast at my
indiscretion and ready to admit that I should have known better.
The daily unremitting toil of Tourah must be preferable to all but the
incurably idle. Yet the terror of “Tourah” is now universal up and
down Egypt. It is the great “bogey” of the daily life among the lower
classes, the threat held over the fractious child or the misconducted
donkey boy who claims an exorbitant “bakshish.” To accuse any decent
fellah of having been in Tourah is the worst sort of insult and at once
indignantly denied. When my own connection with the English prisons
became known, I was generally called the pasha of the English Tourah,
and my official position gained me very marked respect among classes
spoiled by many thousands of annual tourists,--the greedy guides and
donkey boys, the shameless vendors of sham curiosities, the importunate
beggars that infest hotel entrances, swarm in the villages and make
hideous the landing stages up the Nile. An old hand will best silence
a persistent cry for alms or the wail of _miski_ (poverty stricken),
of “Halas! finish father, finish mother” (the ornate expression for an
orphan), by talking of the _caracol_, “police station,” and a promise
of “Tourah” to follow.
Life in Tourah must be hard. The monotonous routine from daylight to
sundown, the long nights of thirteen or fourteen hours, from early
evening to morning, caged up with forty or fifty others tainted
with every vice and crime, must be a heavy burden upon all but the
absolutely debased. The evils of association, of herding criminals
together, left to their own wicked devices, without supervision, were
present in the highest degree in Egyptian prisons. At last, however, a
move was made to provide separate cells for a certain number, and a new
prison of 1,200 cells was built by convict labour at Tourah immediately
opposite the new hospitals and at some distance from the old prison.
Much mischievous conspiracy of the worst kind is prevented by keeping
individuals apart during the idle hours of the night, for it was then
that those concerted escapes of large numbers were planned, which have
occurred more than once at Tourah, but have been generally abortive,
ending only in bloodshed; for the black Sudanese, who form the convict
guards, are expert marksmen and surely account for a large part of the
fugitives.
There must be something very tempting to the untutored mind--and many
of these Tourah convicts are half-wild creatures, Bedouins of the
desert or the lowest scum of the cities--in the seeming freedom of
their condition during so many hours of the day. Liberty seems within
easy reach. Not a mile from the quarries are great overhanging cliffs,
honey-combed with caves, deep, cavernous recesses affording secure
hiding places, and it is for these that the rush is made. In August of
1896 there was a serious attempt of this kind, and success was achieved
by some of the runaways. The hour chosen was that of the break-off
from labour, when the gangs, surrounded by their guards, converge on a
central point, very much as may be seen on any working-day at Portland
or Dartmoor, and thence march home in one compact body to the distant
prison. It is a curiously picturesque scene. The convicts, mostly fine,
stalwart men, their ragged, dirty white robes flying in the wind and
their chains rattling, swing past, two by two, in an almost endless
procession. Below, the mighty river, flowing between its belt of palm
and narrow fringe of green, shines like burnished silver under the
declining sun; beyond stretches the wide desert to the foot of the
Pyramids, those of Sakhara at one end of the landscape, those of Cheops
at the other,--colossal monuments of enforced labour very similar to
that now surviving at Tourah.
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