Leo Deutsch gives other cases of escape that proved more successful. A student Ivanov was helped to freedom by the officer commanding the guard, Tihonov, who was a member of the _Narodnaya Volya_ society, or the “Will of the People.” Another prisoner disappeared under the most mysterious circumstances which were never explained. But the most important escape was in August, 1902, when eleven noted prisoners, arrested a short time before, broke prison in a body. They exercised every evening in the prison yard which was bounded on one side by an outer wall overlooking fields and which was unguarded on the outside. The prisoners got into the field, taking with them an iron anchor weighing twenty pounds, and a rope ladder. At a given moment some of them had fallen upon their warder, overpowered him, gagged and bound him. Two others, climbing on each other’s shoulders, reached the top of the wall, where they pulled up the anchor, made it fast, and then secured the rope ladder, which served for the ascent of the prisoners on one side and their descent on the other. So much sympathy was felt for them in the town that they were effectually concealed when at large and provided with the necessary funds for leaving the country. Throughout the whole affair no blood was shed and no one was hurt. Many more escaped from Kiev in a different fashion, passing out of its walls to the scaffold. The great central prison of Moscow, locally known as the “Butirki,” served as a general depot for ordinary criminals on the point of departure as exiles about to be transported to Siberia. It is a vast establishment with accommodation for thousands; a mighty stone building which looks like a gigantic well. A great wall with a tower at each of the four corners encloses it, and the various classes of politicals were confined in these towers. In the north tower were the “administrative” exiles; in the “chapel” tower were those still under examination, and in another the female prisoners were kept. All the male political prisoners in Moscow wore chains and the convict dress. It was a degrading costume, made the more humiliating by the method of shaving the right side of the head and leaving the left side with the hair cut close. To Leo Deutsch, who was subjected to the prison barber before leaving Kiev, the ordeal was extremely painful. He says: “When I saw my own face in the glass a cold shudder ran down my spine and I experienced a sensation of personal degradation to something less than human. I thought of the days—in Russia, not so long ago—when criminals were branded with hot irons. “A convict was waiting ready to fasten on my fetters. I was placed on a stool and had to put my foot on an anvil. The blacksmith fitted an iron ring round each ankle, and welded it together. Every stroke of the hammer made my heart sink, as I realised that a new existence was beginning for me.