§ MR. LEVESON GOWER (Stoke-upon-Trent)I beg to ask the Under Secretary 1908 of State for Foreign Affairs whether British Consuls in the Ottoman dominions enjoy the right or are granted permission to visit State prisons; whether, in that event, they ever do so; whether Her Majesty's Government are in possession of any Consular Reports upon the condition of Turkish prisons; and, should no such Reports be in existence, whether the Government will direct Her Majesty's Representative at Constantinople to request the Porte to give British Consuls facilities to test the accuracy of recent statements as to the horrible state of the prison in Uskup, and the habitual use of torture there and in other prisons of Macedonia?
§ * SIR J. FERGUSSONI am now able to reply to a question put by the hon. Member for Stoke on the 31st July, that inquiries have been made with regard to the reports appearing in the Daily News of the 29th of July; that the manager of the Salonica Railway emphatically contradicts those statements, and states that 10 months ago two Albanian women were run down and killed by an engine, and that, in consequence, some of their relatives a week afterwards fired on a train, but did no injury, and that there has been no repetition of any such outrage. It appears, therefore, that the information furnished by the Daily News correspondent that the stoker and three Mussulman passengers were killed is not correct. Her Majesty's Government have received the further information that the correspondent—a German gentleman named Weitz—who was expelled from Servia last winter for inventing sensational news, did not visit Pristina, as represented by him, but only went to Nievsovitz, and returned the same day to Uskup.