Occasionally I would be sent for to attend some one in the women’s prison, which was situated a short distance from the Saier of Idris. The women’s prison consisted of the common cell and a light zareeba, through which the curious might gaze on the women as they lay stretched on the ground during the day in the sun, undergoing their first period of imprisonment. The majority of the women prisoners were slaves locked up on some pretence or other to prevent their escaping. It might be that their master was arranging for some trading trip which would occupy him for weeks and, maybe, months. The simplest way of preventing his property from running away during his absence was to trump up some charge against her, and have her locked up, knowing that her release might not be obtained until he returned and requested it. As in the mean time she would have to be fed at his expense, and gave her services free to the household of one of the gaolers, he was equally sure that the gaoler would not be too anxious to secure her release. |126| Married women were sent to prison on all sorts of charges, ranging from suspected conjugal infidelity to the delivery of a curtain lecture. The women prisoners wore light chains connecting their anklets, but their lot was little better than that of the men. A charge of infidelity “not proven,” as the Scotch have it, was followed by imprisonment and the application of three hundred stripes with the courbag, and when the woman had recovered from these, she would be sent into the house of one of the gaolers to be the maid-of-all-work for every one there; she would have to grind corn, attend to the children, carry water, and be driven as a slave night and day for weeks. A Mrs. Caudle or a termagant received from fifty to eighty lashes, and she too on recovery would be sent into one of the gaolers’ hareems to work as hard as her possibly innocent and more severely punished companion in misery. A few weeks of such treatment sent the women back home completely cured of the faults for which they were sent to prison to be corrected, besides which the relation of their experiences acted as an effective deterrent on budding Mrs. Caudles and others.