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.