Knives were often provided by the ingenious adaptation of all kinds of material within the walls, such as one-half of a pair of scissors firmly fixed in a handle bound round with cloth; or a piece of tin doubled to form a blade and stiffened by two pieces of wood to keep the point sharp; or the handle of a wooden spoon sharpened and as formidable as an inflexible fish bone.[15] Other arms carried and used on occasion for premeditated or unexpected attack or in set, formal encounters were a razor, a file, a carpenter's adze, a hammer, a cobbler's awl. [15] I have seen a precisely similar weapon in an English convict prison, the product of an evil-minded prisoner who used it in an assault upon his officer. Some surprising figures have been collected by Salillas to show how frequent was the appeal to violence and how fatal the consequences of the bloodthirsty strife so constantly breaking out among the more reckless members of this hot-tempered Latin race. They had often their origin in drunken quarrels, for _aguardiente_, the Spanish equivalent to whiskey or gin, was always plentiful, introduced almost openly by the warders. Ancient feuds were revived when the opportunity of settling them was offered by the chance meeting in the gaol. Occasionally a homicidal lunatic ran loose about the yards and struck blindly at any inoffensive person he met when the furious fit was on him. Salillas tells us that in one year sixteen murderous assaults were committed upon warders,[16] and twenty-four free fights occurred among the prisoners, eleven of whom were killed outright and forty-two seriously wounded. One truculent ruffian fell upon an aged wardsman (a convict also), struck him with a shoemaker's knife and then, brandishing his weapon, defied interference or the rescue of his victim whom he "finished" with repeated blows. A Valencian newspaper describes an encounter between two inmates of the Torres Serranos prison in that city. "Without warning or suggesting the cause of difference the two silently hurried to a large empty room, rushed at each other with their knives, and the only sounds heard were those of blows struck and warded off and of shuffling feet as they circled round each other. Warders headed by the governor (alcaide) strove to separate the combatants and succeeded at last in doing so but at peril of their lives. Both the antagonists were wounded, one had his cheek laid open and the other's face was horribly gashed. At Saragossa an old man who complained that one of his blankets had been stolen was fiercely attacked in the shoemaker's shop by the thief, who had been cutting out sole leather with a heavy iron tool. Deadly wounds were inflicted on the victim, but the infuriated aggressor stood over him, keeping those who would have interposed at bay until it was clearly evident that death had supervened.