Employment of corporal punishment has for the most part disappeared in Russian and Siberian prisons; its infliction at Kara on Madame Sigida in 1889, and the universal horror inspired throughout the civilised world by this terrible catastrophe, largely led to its abandonment; but the practice is still in force in Saghalien. Until 1902 females were flogged with the _rozgi_, birch rods dipped in salt. The infliction was within the power of the chief of the prison, and although it might be lightly, was ever arbitrarily imposed. It was not an excessively cruel, but a most brutal and disgraceful punishment. But the plet still flourishes, although the leaded ends are said to have been replaced by knots, and may be a very terrible weapon in the hands of a skilful flagellator. Until recently, it was worthy to replace the murderous knout of ancient times. The patient was very much at the mercy of the executioner, the so-called _palach_, a salaried convict-official, to whom his comrades paid tribute in the Saghalien prison in food and tobacco, to curry favour with him and persuade him to lay the leaded ends of the lash so as to catch the wooden flogging bench rather than their bare backs. The _palach_ spared his victim at very considerable risk, and might be flogged for neglect of duty. In one case, an offending executioner, by name Komeleva, was punished and flogged by the hands of his particular enemy. So terrible was the infliction that although it incurred in 1882, a photograph taken of the wounds in 1899, seventeen years afterwards, showed them to be still suppurating. Three strokes of the plet were sufficient to kill, and another story is told of a convict at Saghalien who promised the _palach_ a bottle of vodka if he would not hit him with the leaded ends. The victim was a hardened veteran, and when he had received ninety-five strokes, thinking he had escaped, he called out, “It’s no matter; you can’t hurt me now, you needn’t think you’ll get your vodka.” But he had not reckoned with his man, for after three more strokes he was dead. It was only necessary to draw back the plet as the stroke was spent for the ends to injure the liver and send a clot of blood to the heart. CHAPTER X SAGHALIEN