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By the middle of the 19th century the communes of nurses that spread around Europe started playing
more and more significant role in public life. These communes not only organized hospitals and took care of the
poor and sick, but they also started putting more and more attention to prisons and prisoners. More and more nurses
voluntarily visited prisons in order to provide some support and encouragement for the outcast, to soothe harsh
conditions by providing essential care of the sick. Besides, they also tried to put the criminals on the right
track not only by means of saying prayers and reading the Holy Bible, but involving prisoners in simple works done
voluntary The nurses were sure that proper explanation of the main Christian concepts together with feasible labor
and education might help criminals understand their transgressions, repent and return to the society to start new
life after they were released from prisons.
It seems that the most outstanding example of the nurses' activity in prisons in the 19th century
was demonstrated by a few Austrian communes of nurses that had been commissioned to run prisons, which definitely
was a revolutionary step made by the Austrian government. Although it might sound incredible today, but according
to the descriptions of the Austrian penal system published in Otechestvennye Zapiski 1862 N7 [Sovremennaya Khronika
Rossii. P27], 26 out of 57 prisons in Austrian Empire were handed in to the communes of nurses for management. Here
is a description of two Austrian prisons based on the report written by Dr. Otsolig, a Russian physician who was
commissioned by Russian authorities to study this new experience.
It is very peculiar that the internal administration of prisons, according to Dr. Otsolig, turned out to be the
best and the most humanistic in Austria!! Austrian Minister Duke Golukhovsky admitted that the Pensilvanian method
of imprisonment [obviously the author meant solitary confinement or one-man cell imprisonment] was the most
terrible and described it as “a barbarian method that does not correspond requirements of modern time.” This
Austrian minister put into effect an amazingly original and audacious system that may have genuinely beneficial
consequences. The system works as the following - prisoners are handed in to nurses who not only look after them
but they also provide all the maintenance of the prisons. Dr. Otsolig visited two prisons in Stein and in Neidorf
and said that everything he had seen there looked like a fairy tale. First he visited the Neidorf's Prison for
women sentenced for different terms of imprisonment varying from one to ten years. When Dr. Otsolig came to see
this prison, he found 251 women prisoners and only eight nurses to look after them, including the Senior Nurse and
one door-keeper. The nurses divided the prisoners into departments consisting of 40 to 60 inmates, depending on
their behavior and on the labor that each of the departments performed. These women were working in groups under
the guidance of only one nurse, who was reading aloud selected stories from the Holy Bible. Dr. Otsolig wrote in
his report that the Senior Nurse of Neidorf's Prison assured him that eight nurses performed their duties quite
well and proved capable to keep more than 200 female prisoners under implicit obedience. In case these women commit
any misdeeds, the punishment included rebukes, reprimands, reduction of food ration, and confinement in a solitary
cell. However these measures were applied very rarely. On the contrary, nurses treated the prisoners with ultimate
gentleness, convincing them with the help of the religious thoughts and trying to engage them into different kinds
of labor, handcrafts, and gardening. These means proved to be so efficient that even the unruliest and most
dissolute women were sorry to leave the nurses on their release.
Dr. Otsolig was so impressed by all the activities of nurses and by the neatness and cleanness of the Neidorf's
Prison that he decided to see some other prisons in Austria. Here is his description of the prison for men he
visited in Stein, 12 miles off Vienna. “The prison, which is a three storey building made of brick surrounded by a
stone wall, is situated on the bank of the Danube River. At a distance form the entrance to the prison a military
detachment has its watch-house with a few rifles in cases, while a handful of guards are watching around the wall.
Insides the building there are some corridors with a number of doors leading to the cells for prisoners. We were
brought to a reception room and soon Leocazia, the Senior Nurse in charge of almost one thousand male prisoners
sentenced to different terms varying from one to ten years, joined us. The inmates were engaged in different
activities in rooms and halls. A few rows of looms were placed in one of the halls and a number of weavers were
weaving canvas. In a sewing workshop some other inmates were sewing different kinds of clothes, mostly for the
military purposes. Besides, the prison has a number of other workshops for shoemaking, lathe work, carpentry, etc.
The chambers where the prisoners sleep have 20 to 40 beds in each. There is also a room with a spacious library
where the more educated and well behaved prisoners have an opportunity to read books in their free time. The prison
also has a school in a separate room equipped with long tables and benches, so that illiterate inmates can learn
how to read and write. A quite considerable number of prisoners take part in the prison's choir and there is also a
large group of inmates playing musical instruments, who have rehearsals in the school room when they are free from
other duties. Huge stockrooms are full with linen, clothes, different stuff for workshops, and the products made by
the prisoners. Everything is kept in such a perfect order that one might think he was not in a prison but in a
deluxe shop. Two nurses, who work in a special office, deal with bookkeeping and keep correspondence with the
suppliers of different materials for workshops and the buyers of the goods produced in prison. Although the office
is packed with heaps of different books and papers, everything is performed with ultimate accuracy.
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