A long list might be drawn up of the predatory peoples of India. “These criminal tribes,” says Sleeman, “number hundreds of thousands of persons and present a problem almost unknown in European experience. The gipsies, who are largely of Indian origin, are perhaps the only European example of an hereditary criminal tribe. But they are not sheltered and abetted by the landowners as their brethren in India are.” Most prominent among these peoples were the Meenas, or Meena Rhatores, who were found chiefly in Rajputana, but who practised their infamous trade in many parts of India. The name Rhatore is synonymous with Rajput and signifies “of royal race,” but the blue blood was drawn from a family living by plunder and Dacoity. They were settled in considerable numbers at Shajanpore near Gurgaon, and lived outwardly respectable lives, but their propensities were well known. Although they went far afield to carry out their robberies, they occupied substantial stone houses, cultivated the soil and possessed large flocks and herds with many swift camels, mostly hidden away till the time arrived for an expedition to pilfer and despoil. These Meenas were rich and prosperous and wanted nothing but to be let alone; they habitually lived well, ate flesh, drank much, wore fine raiment, and their women disported many trinkets and gorgeous clothes; their rejoicings and festivals were celebrated with much feasting and revelry. They followed no ostensible occupation; they hiredservants to till the ground, and their villages had often a deserted appearance because most of the men were absent on some raid. The remaining few, wary and watchful, looked out for possible detection and interference; the women, even when drawing water at the well, were ready to give the signal of alarm or send a word of warning to their friends engaged in some illegal pursuit. The Meenas hung closely together, and if any one was by mischance arrested, he might count upon assistance and upon funds raised by subscription to provide bribes to secure his release, if in the native states, or for the payment of fees for his defence.
Another criminal class very formidable in their time were the Moghyas, whose home was in Meywar in and about the direction of Neemuch. They were notorious for the wide range of their depredations, and being of a treacherous character, they inspired great dread in the regions they infested. They did not confine themselves to their own country, but spread far and wide, and their robberies were so repeated that at one time the high road between Indore and Gwalior was patrolled by parties of irregular cavalry in support of the inefficient local police. These Moghyas came from a common stock of tribal thieves, such as the Budhuks and Khunjurs, and were notable for their favourite custom of taking service as village watchmen orchowkeydars, a strange practice very general throughoutIndia and based upon the old idea of setting a thief to catch a thief.
The Budhuks were professional Dacoits who always murdered their victims; the Khunjurs were wanderers who robbed in many widely separated districts both in Madras and Bombay, and in times far back in Jalna, Bolarum near Secunderabad, at Bellary (Madras) and Sholapore. The Mooltani robbers were assiduous in attacks on convoys of cargoes of piece goods, opium and sugar. There were also Bedowreahs, freebooters and desperados of the North-western Provinces, Kaim Khanees, camel postilions, who were also Dacoits, and Khaikarees and Lambanees, much given to crime in the Dharwan district and so determined in their misdeeds that no severity short of perpetual banishment had any effect on them. After a large capture, the native magistrate sentenced every offender to have his right hand chopped off. Yet they at once resumed their depredations when set free and were long recognised as members of the “lop-handed” gang.
The Ooreahs, or men of Orissa, were poisoners by descent, adepts at dissimulation and low cunning, much given to the despoiling of unsuspecting females of the oldest profession in the world, the hereditary dancing girls who were brought up to the business by their mothers. A troupe of these girls were often maintained privately by rajahs and wealthy natives, and for ceremonial purposes atHindu temples. Despite the taint of ill-repute attaching to their trade, they were often modest in manner and of refined tastes, very much like the old Grecian “Hetæræ”; but when living at large in their public capacity, they were often the victims of greedy miscreants who coveted their possessions, their plentiful ornaments and jewelry, for many were personally rich. The Ooreahs worked in gangs and three of them visited the house of some of these women in Dum-Dum and brought with them a present of food, curry cooked by themselves and drugged. This had the usual effect and ended in a great robbery. Again, four Ooreahs took lodgings with a woman in the Sham Bazaar, near Calcutta, and established friendly relations, exchanging sweetmeats. Those given by the Ooreahs soon produced insensibility, and the poisoners cleared out the place.
In 1869 information reached a gang of Dacoits on the look-out for booty that a large consignment of treasure had been received at Agra by railway from Calcutta. It was to be transferred at Agra to camel-back, to be forwarded to its destination at Jeypore. The leader of the Dacoits and many others were lurking around drawn by the scent of rich prey on the skirts of the great Durbar then in progress. They prudently resolved to delay attack until the spoil was upon native territory, and it was watched from stage to stage until the convoy had entered a pass or hilly gorge one march from Jeypore.The party halted for the night to bivouac in the bazaar of a place called Molumpoona, where they were challenged by pretended revenue officers, who were Meena Dacoits disguised, and accused of trying to evade the transit dues. The real character of the officials was soon made manifest when the escort, who were soldiers or policemen, ran off, and the plunder was secured. It consisted of a large amount in rupees and silver in bricks, coral beads and other valuables.
The audacity of these Dacoits reached to greater heights. The royal mails were not safe from their interference. By maintaining spies in the various post-offices, news was always forthcoming of the approaching despatch of a valuable prize by the government mail carts or Dak runners from Agra to the adjacent native states. Almost at the same time as the last named robbery took place, a detachment from the main gang stopped the mail cart and seized its contents, carrying off a quantity of bullion in British sovereigns. A second similar robbery was also effected on the Ajmere frontier, in which the post-office employee was wounded. These treasure Dacoities were no doubt facilitated by the niggardliness of the transmitters, who sought to save the expense of hiring a special escort notwithstanding the enormous amount at stake, as much as thirty lacs of rupees, or £300,000, having been passed at times from Bombay to Indore.
On one occasion in 1864, a police confederategave notice of a consignment of treasure, 30,000 rupees, from Bombay, passing through Berar, which was intercepted and attacked in a ravine near Mulkapore. The mail cart arrived about dusk, when the robbers fell upon it and the drivers, and the small escort of four matchlock men fled. The bullion was loaded quickly on camels, carried away and buried in the jungle before the news of the theft reached Mulkapore. A month later, when the booty was about to be divided among the different gangs engaged, they quarrelled fiercely over the shares and one of the party stole away and brought the police upon the scene. The treasure was thus recovered and many important arrests were made.
This money had been forwarded up country to be employed in the purchase of cotton at a time when the great American War of Secession had paralysed the cotton industry, and great enterprise was being shown in obtaining the scarce commodity. This “cotton hunger” extended to India, and the productive cotton fields there were being despoiled to meet the demand. Heavy remittances in cash were in consequence constantly transmitted up country, and the temptation was great to highway robbers. It was the same with regard to opium, largely produced in the province of Malwa. Not only was the drug itself plundered in transit to Bombay, but the purchase money of the goods was intercepted on its way to pay the cultivators.
Many noted Dacoits rose into prominence whenthe crime was most prevalent. One was Jowahirra Durzee, a thief of the boldest type who wandered through Central India planning and executing robberies. There were thirteen such crimes to his credit in the province of Berar and eight more around Poona. He was a fine-looking man who was caught by the Nizam of Hyderabad and sentenced to be beheaded, but who escaped from gaol with the connivance of the native guard. He renewed his activity and made a great haul in Berar, robbing a couple of country carts conveying cash to the value of 66,000 rupees sent from Bombay for the purchase of cotton. The thieves had only time to bury their plunder and disperse, but returned a month later to dig it up and divide it. After making Poona the centre of operations, he was again arrested and committed to the British lock-up at Jalna, from which he was rescued by a daring comrade, Kishen Sing, who forced an entrance into the prison by climbing the wall and overpowering the sentry.
Afterward Jowahirra, when retaken, described what had occurred. Two steel clasp knives with file blades had been conveyed from Bombay and smuggled into the prison. With these the prisoners cut through their leg-irons in six days, after which their friends came and carried them off to where three swift camels were waiting for them outside the town. The Indian criminals are ingenious in dealing with their fetters to compass escape. They areindependent of files. Thirty of the worst prisoners confined in the central gaol of Agra contrived to cut through their irons by means of threads manufactured from their clothing and thickly coated with pounded glass or emery powder. The threads were first anointed with gum to which the powder adhered, thus forming a sawing instrument equal to a file. Jowahirra’s subsequent depredations were on a large scale. He was often associated with the notorious Dacoit Jeewun Sing, (of whom more directly), and they controlled large numbers of tribal thieves, Meenas and Rhatores and Rohillas, who were at one time computed to amount to nearly four hundred. Jowahirra was in due course tried as a professional Dacoit and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation to the Andaman Islands.
Jeewun Sing was a native of Bikaneer and a camel carrier who conveyed specie and other consignments for the bankers of Berar, and as such he enjoyed a reputation for honesty and fair dealing in the delivery of goods entrusted to him. Yet he was in collusion with Meena Dacoits who came down from the country in quest of plunder, and whom he harboured and hid in two temples near Oomraotee until news came of treasure on the move. Jeewun Sing, who had taken service with the Mypore police for his personal safety, secretly directed these gangs and was concerned in several of the heaviest robberies, receiving always his share of the proceeds,—a fourth or fifth. He did notjoin personally in the work, but sent agents to represent him. He was a general carrier, whose camels travelled to Bombay, Indore, Jeypore, Jubbulpore, and who was true to his employers as a cloak to his proceedings against others. This police inspector, so long the confederate of robbers, lived under a cloud and his arrest was often strongly urged, but he was spared through the protection of his police superiors, and not a little on account of his usefulness in securing the conviction of others. But this double traitor, disloyal to his sect and the betrayer of his confederates, was in the end dismissed from the service.
Kishen Sing, the noted Rhatore leader of Dacoits who rescued Jowahirra Durzee, was one of the chief agents of this same Jeewun Sing. Kishen Sing was informed against by his confederate, Choutmull, for declining to submit to his demands and was supposed to have died in custody at Aboo. The story of this fictitious death so admirably illustrates Eastern duplicity that it deserves mention. Kishen Sing was a desperate character whose crimes were many and atrocious. He murdered one of his associates in a mail cart robbery; he attacked two sepoys going on furlough, and in the fight which ensued slew one while he himself was wounded; and he was in the habit of disguising himself as an officer in the Nizam’s cavalry in order to carry out his robberies. One of his most daring deeds was rifling a treasure convoy on the high-road betweenSholapore and Hyderabad. The money was 30,000 rupees in specie and some chests of bullion, and was carried in the wagons of a transit agency under escort of some Arab mercenaries. A fierce conflict was fought, but the Dacoits got the best of it and carried off the treasure. Later Kishen Sing was arrested and laid by the heels at Mount Aboo to await trial.
He was resolved to escape his fate of certain transportation. First he tried to commit suicide with a piece of glass, then he simulated madness and at last took to malingering. He was seized with a terrible hacking cough and grew visibly worse, so that his release as incurable was all but recommended. Then he apparently died. Leave was sought from the local authorities to bury him and not burn him as was the usual procedure with a Hindu corpse. His body was handed over for interment to four or five low caste men engaged by an old and faithful follower of his who had taken the garb of a mendicant and occupied a small hut just outside the gaol gates. The undertakers were in the secret, and they placed the living corpse in a shallow grave face downward, covering it with thorns and brushwood, on the top of which a thin layer of earth was laid. The defunct made no move, and after dark the faithful Gosaen, who had been on the watch, came and dug up the “dead” Kishen Sing. It was thus clearly proved that burial did not mean death and that, provided a person is placedfaced downwards with no superincumbent weight of earth, life may be safely prolonged for hours. The escape of Kishen Sing was not realised until he was discovered alive and well in his native village. How he imposed upon the medical officer whose duty it was to furnish a certificate of death does not appear upon the record.
A curious feature in Indian Dacoity was that gangs were led in more than one instance by femalejemadarsor captains. One of the most notable was a certain Tumbolin whose husband had met his deserts in the Madras territory and had been executed. After his death, his wife was installed in his place by the universal acclaim of his followers, and she fully justified her appointment. She became a most capable chief, ably managed all the affairs of the gang, sought out the needful information as to the promise of spoil, the best methods of attack, and settled every preliminary. She went with her men to the point of action, but did not join personally in the fray, leaving the actual command to a trusty lieutenant, by name Himtya, chosen by herself, and who became her right hand man.
One of the boldest operations ever attempted by Dacoits was the attack made by Tumbolin’s gang upon a military treasure in the heart of the military cantonments of Sholapore. In quest of booty, she had brought her party down in person from Central India and had encamped at Nuldroog, about fifteen miles from Sholapore, a wild spot within the territoryof the Nizam of Hyderabad. Accompanied by her faithful Himtya and others, disguised as wandering minstrels, she explored the neighbourhood and penetrated the military quarter of Sholapore. They sang their songs before the officers’ bungalows and at last boldly entered the general’s garden in which a sentry was posted. Over the hedge they saw a sentry, and more to the purpose, saw that he was in charge of the treasure chest of the military force. Meanwhile Himtya had gone off independently and had marked down as a hopeful prey the house of a wealthy tobacconist and banker in the town of Sholapore.
The two enterprises were discussed that night on return to camp, and although the banker’s promised to be the easiest job, an attack upon a military force was the most audacious and, if successful, would secure the largest prestige. It was decided to attempt the latter enterprise, pausing for a day or two in order to reconnoitre their ground, the best means of approach, and the surest line of retreat if pursued. The British garrison was large and consisted of a native infantry and a troop of European horse artillery. It was an important station where many high officials resided, judge, collector and magistrate, and a local gaol was established within the fort. It was a hard nut to crack, but Tumbolin did not despair. First removing their encampment to some distance, the rendezvous was fixed on some broken ground near the deposited treasure, whichwas last seen by Himtya when being locked up in the right hand compartment of the tumbril.
At nightfall the sepoy sentry guard retired into their guard room, leaving a double sentry to guard the treasure. Himtya’s first step was to secure the guard by locking them into their quarters; then he and his men crept up under cover of a tall cactus hedge until they reached the tumbril, when two of the Dacoits rushed simultaneously upon the two sentries and speared them, while a third robber broke off the padlock of the tumbril and laid open the right compartment of the treasure chest. It was empty, for the money had been transferred that very day to the other side. By this time, the alarm had been raised. The sentry in the general’s garden adjoining opened fire, and some of the officers ran up with shot-guns, by which one of the robbers was wounded. The attack had failed and the tables were turned. The bugles rang out with a general call to arms and the baffled Dacoits hastily decamped.
Pursuit followed, but the robbers were fleet of foot and arrived safely at their encampment, where all was in readiness for flight, ponies were mounted, Tumbolin astride on her favourite piebald, and they galloped away through the night and the next day until the party reached and crossed the Kistna, after which they were beyond pursuit. Great commotion had been caused in Sholapore. The troops stood to their arms all night and patrols of cavalry scouredthe whole country round. The English general in command reported that Sholapore had been attacked by a numerous and well-organised banditti, but, as a matter of fact, Tumbolin’s whole gang numbered no more than sixteen persons.
Tumbolin long continued her depredations and her success was great. Ten years after the attack on Sholapore, her gang visited the city of Poona at a moment when the chief of police was being married and the entire force was in attendance upon the marriage procession. Himtya seized the occasion to break into the house of a rich Marwaree merchant and rifle his strong room. The attack was made with flaring torches and a great outcry and succeeded, but two of the robbers were captured as they fled through the town, one of them Himtya himself. Tumbolin escaped and was, indeed, never taken, although a large price was put upon her head. She retired at length at a good old age to die peacefully among her own people in the fastnesses of the Oude Terai.
Grassia was a famous leader of Khunjur Dacoits who had become an approver after capture. When he died his widow, a woman of fine presence and masculine gait, consecrated her children by a solemn oath to their father’s profession. She seemed to anticipate that the boys would be worth little at the work, but relied upon her one girl to turn into a capable leader such as Tumbolin. Grassia’s daughter grew up into a fine woman, with no particulargood looks, but of imposing aspect. She never married, bearing in mind her mother’s injunctions to devote herself to the care of her brothers, and to keep Tumbolin before her as a model for imitation, and she no doubt led her gang with much energy and success. In older times there were female Thugs, women who accompanied their husbands on expeditions, and one is mentioned by Sleeman who was thejemadarof a gang of her own.
A horrible story of a Dacoit’s revenge is told by Mr. Arthur Crawford. After an outbreak of the Bheels in October, 1858, which was commenced by one of their number, Bhagoji Naique, shooting the superintendent of the police near Sinnur, the majority of the Bheels took to Dacoity under the leadership of Bhagoji. At this time an old Bheel named Yesoo, a friend of Bhagoji’s, was living in the same neighbourhood in a village which was a favourite camping ground for Europeans on account of the facilities it offered for sport. Yesoo was on very friendly terms with the sportsmen and endeavoured to dissuade Bhagoji from his traitorous designs, but without success. After the murder of the police official, Yesoo refused to join the rebels, and was excused on account of his age and lameness and left to live in peace in his village, Bhagoji little thinking that all the while he was secretly supplying the English with valuable information concerning the plans and whereabouts of the Dacoits. When the disturbance had been quelled and an amnesty proclaimed,one of Bhagoji’s most faithful adherents returned to his home and settled down quietly in his native village not far from Yesoo, who by this time was well known to have been a government informer and was very proud of the fact. This apparently did not affect Hanmant, who tried to be on good terms with the old man, and frequently visited him, inviting him to bring his family over to his (Hanmant’s) village. But Yesoo was wary and kept the young man at arm’s length. Hanmant, finding all attempts to lure the old man away from the security of his own village in vain, conceived a diabolical plot to bring about his revenge. “Taking some fifteen or twenty of his own people and a few more Bheels who had sworn to be revenged on Yesoo, he repaired one night to Yesoo’s village, silently surrounded the Bheel quarter, and then sent one of his men to fire the village stackyard at the other side of the village. Just as he anticipated, the alarm was no sooner given than every male Bheel in the ‘Warra’ (their quarters outside the village proper), including Yesoo and his two sons, went off at best speed to the fire, the women and children collecting outside their huts to view the blaze. In an instant the revengeful gang surrounded the ‘Warra,’ and with his own hand Hanmant cut down and horribly mutilated Yesoo’s two wives and daughters, the other women were gagged and bound, and then Hanmant and a select few, armed with matchlocks, lay in ambush by the pathYesoo and his sons must return by. Yesoo he shot with the muzzle of his gun nearly touching his body, and the sons and one Bheel who showed fight were disposed of by his comrades; the other Bheels dispersed, while Hanmant and his gang quietly returned home. Suspicion, of course, immediately fell upon Hanmant. One of his confederates peached. Hanmant escaped into the jungle, but was caught half-famished about a week afterward. Ultimately he and two accomplices were executed at the scene of the murder, Hanmant exulting up to the last moment in the dreadful deed, which he had been brooding over for nearly five years.”
Extended use of poison—Horrible stories—The Gaekwar of Baroda charged with attempted poison of British resident, Colonel Phayre—Diamond dust—Modern instances in Bombay—Murders numerous—Police practices tending to concealment of evidence—Decapitation—Strangulation—Stinging to death—Crushing to death by an elephant—Leading traits in Indian criminals—Frauds and forging—Story of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
The crime of secret poisoning as a lethal agent has ever largely prevailed among a timid and deceitful people inclined to prefer treachery to open violence. Under the Mussulman dynasty, assassination by poison flourished exceedingly. It was effective in removing a pestilent competitor or a too ambitious minister, a jealous or untrustworthy wife or a hateful husband. The action of poison was often mysterious and its symptoms obscure in countries where the light of medical knowledge burned dimly, and when fatal might easily be attributed to the noxious effect of the narcotics so largely indulged in. The facility with which poison could be administered is constantly indicated in the ancient writings; the Shastras or sacred books of theHindus, illustrating and explaining the Vedas, enlarge upon the precautions that should be taken to protect the life of the rajah or ruler from the subtle attacks of those around him. The danger of death by poisoning lurks commonly in the domestic relations; a great crowd of servants fill the purlieus of the palace, actively engaged in the preparation of food and often at liberty to pass freely to and fro. One Shastra lays down the necessary qualities of a cook as skill, cleanliness, good character and even temper so that neither greed nor revengeful feeling should incite him or her to mix something poisonous in the pot. Another goes further and enlarges thus upon the methods of detecting the personal characteristics of any one likely to give poison,—“He does not answer questions, or only gives evasive answers; he speaks nonsense; rubs the great toe along the ground and shivers; his face is discoloured; he rubs the roots of the hair with his fingers; and he tries by every means to leave the house.”
Execution in India
A common mode of execution in India, for which the elephant is easily trained. In the early times of uprising or rebellion, elephants were also used against the enemy, and would make short work of piling up great pyramids of human heads.
A common mode of execution in India, for which the elephant is easily trained. In the early times of uprising or rebellion, elephants were also used against the enemy, and would make short work of piling up great pyramids of human heads.
Some horrible stories are preserved of the ruthless administration of poison by the Mohammedan sovereigns in India. Thus Tavernier, the French traveller in the seventeenth century, says of the great state prison of Gwalior that the emperor Aurungzeb was so sensitive lest he should be stigmatised as a cruel prince he never suffered any great subject to survive long in prison; at the end of the ninth or tenth day the captive was removed bypoison. No doubt Hyder Ali poisoned a number of his English prisoners, and the inhuman murder of General Mathews by Tippoo Sing is told by James Bristowe, who suffered a long captivity under the same merciless monarch. The general was poisoned under the most abominable circumstances. He was starving himself to death rather than partake of the food issued to him, which he had discovered contained poison. He studiously abstained from food for several days until at length, tortured by overmastering hunger, he devoured a plate of poisoned victuals and expired a few hours later in violent convulsions. Another officer, Captain Romley, who saw himself constrained to swallow poison, preferred to commit suicide by some other means. Yet again, Lieutenant Fraser had poison forcibly poured down his throat.
The traditions of the native states as to poisoning were preserved in at least one till a late date in the last century. In Baroda, a Rajput ruler, the Gaekwar Mulhar Rao, was the centre of a nest of criminal intrigue rivalling anything in the past, as great a miscreant as any one in his depraved court and more guilty than any of his subjects in the use of his despotic power. Crime was the very breath of his princely house; its members hated one another with bitter animosity; assassination, largely by secret poisoning, was the chief avenue to the throne, but all kinds of flagitious means were employed to secure succession; charges backed by elaborate perjurywere as often used to upset a rival aspirant, as powdered arsenic or diamond dust to remove him permanently to another sphere.
In the generation to which Mulhar Rao belonged, violent deaths had constantly paved the way to the throne. One of five sons reigned in 1847. Two of his brothers died suddenly, and the prince himself a few years later. He was succeeded by the fourth brother, Khander Rao, whom the fifth, Mulhar Rao, at once attempted to poison, but he was detected and taken into custody. Then Khander Rao sought to protect himself by appealing to sorcery and black arts, and finding no certain security, consulted a Brahmin who strongly recommended human sacrifices. Whereupon Khander Rao selected thirty-five prisoners in his gaol of Baroda, whom he ordered for execution at the rate of five daily. Twenty-five had suffered before the butchery ceased. Mulhar Rao still lived, and recourse was had to simpler methods; his cook was suborned and provided with powdered arsenic, the most commonly tried drug, but the poison failed in effect because, although the noxious food was consumed, remedies were applied in time.
False testimony was next adduced, and Mulhar Rao was accused by perjured witnesses of plotting to have his brother Khander Rao shot by a European soldier, and on this flimsy pretence he was closely confined in the prison of Cadra. He had sympathisers and they soon felt the weight ofKhander Rao’s hand. Four of them were seized, accused of holding secret communication with the prisoner, and sentenced to various forms of capital punishment. One was hanged, another beheaded, a third blown from the mouth of a gun and the fourth was thrown under the feet of an elephant to be trodden to death. Suddenly Khander Rao himself died, not without suspicion of foul play, and Mulhar Rao walked straight from the gaol to the throne, where he was soon to emulate the misdeeds of his predecessors.
The new Gaekwar had no claims upon the regard of his subjects. Almost wholly uneducated and with no mental gifts, he failed to inspire respect or devotion. He was not without astuteness, but was obstinate as a mule and fierce as a tiger. His person was unattractive; he was undersized, of mean appearance, with a coarse, swarthy complexion; he squinted, and from his large sensual lips black teeth protruded savagely. Unlike his brother Khander Rao, he had no taste for field sports, and he had converted the race course at Baroda into a carriage drive for the ladies of his zenana.
Mulhar Rao’s private life was desperately evil. In his early years he was often thought to be mad on account of his passionate and ungovernable temper. Even as a child he committed crimes, impelled by fierce hatred and lust for revenge. His youth was made up of poisonings and attempts to poison. When he came to power he destroyed hisenemies, real or fancied, wholesale. His gaolers collected victims in a row, and one by one poison was poured forcibly down their throats. One of those he most cordially detested was offered poisonous pills, and when he refused to swallow them he was despatched in a more expeditious fashion by being squeezed to death in a special machine. This man’s chief crime was that he had been a creature of Khander Rao’s.
The new Gaekwar’s victims were so numerous that it was a current phrase in the city, “Has he killed many to-day?” He spared no man in his anger, no woman in his lust. Justice was bought and sold, the claimant who had the longest purse always won his case; public business was neglected; the most unworthy were advanced; bribery and corruption were the rule in every branch of administration. The crown and finish to Mulhar Rao’s offences was his alleged plot to poison the British resident, Colonel Phayre.
There had long been distrust between the Gaekwar and the representative of the British government, whose profound disapproval of the prince’s proceedings was soon made manifest. A more serious difference arose when the Gaekwar insisted that his infant son, born of his latest marriage, should be recognised as the next heir to the throne. There were grave doubts of the child’s legitimacy. His mother, Luxmeebee, had been forcibly abducted from another husband who was still alive at thetime of its birth. Colonel Phayre refused to acknowledge the child and Mulhar Rao vowed vengeance. One of his first dastardly attempts was to poison all the inmates of the residency by causing a pound of arsenic to be mixed with the ice sent in for daily consumption. This device failed, and the next attack was aimed directly at the resident through his own body servants.
Colonel Phayre was in the habit of drinking a glass of sherbet every morning when he came home from an early walk. It was awaiting him on the hall table and was prepared with sugared water and fresh pumelo juice. One day he swallowed only a mouthful of this drink, disliking its taste, and threw the rest out of the window, when he detected a small amount of sediment in the bottom of the glass. When analysed subsequently, this was found to contain arsenic and diamond dust. Suspicion was at once aroused, and the possession of the powder charged with these ingredients was traced to ahavildarof the military guard of the residency, who kept it concealed in his waist belt. It was not believed that any subordinate and impecunious person could have afforded to buy diamond dust, and attention was at once diverted from thehavildarto the prince, whose bitter feeling toward the resident was well known.
Evidence so damnatory against Mulhar Rao was collected that the government of India attached his person and decided to prosecute him. A specialcourt of inquiry was appointed, composed of three English and three native commissioners, the first three leading lights on the Indian bench, the second three Maharajas of the highest rank. The Gaekwar was permitted to engage counsel, and was defended by one of the most eminent of British barristers at that time, Sergeant Ballantine. The arraignment of a reigning prince for the crime of murder by the supreme power to whom he owed allegiance caused a great sensation in India, and the issue of the protracted trial was watched with great interest at home. In the end the three English commissioners were of opinion that the Gaekwar was guilty through his paid agents of an attempt to poison Colonel Phayre, and on the other hand, their three native colleagues considered that the charge was not proved. The result was much criticised and indeed condemned, but the adverse finding was accepted by the then viceroy, Lord Northbrook, who forthwith deposed Mulhar Rao and deprived him and his issue of all rights to the throne. The decision was based upon “his notorious misconduct, his gross misgovernment of the state and his evident incapacity to carry into effect the necessary reforms,” the chief of all being the reform of his own evil nature and personal character.
Sergeant Ballantine dissented from the view taken by the English commissioners and disapproved of Lord Northbrook’s action. Following the old legal axiom that the best course of an advocatewhose case is bad is to abuse the other side, the learned counsel threw the blame chiefly upon Colonel Phayre. “He (Colonel Phayre) was fussy, meddlesome and thoroughly injudicious,” the sergeant wrote in his memoirs. “There were two adverse parties in the state, and instead of holding himself aloof from both, he threw himself into that opposed to the Gaekwar and was greedy to listen to every accusation and complaint that with equal eagerness was gossiped into his ears.” But these last were by no means imaginary. Mulhar Rao’s vile conduct was never in doubt, and it was clear that he had tampered with the resident’s servants.
As regards the diamond dust which played a somewhat exaggerated part in the affair, there is nothing to substantiate the common belief that it is a deadly poison, any more than ground glass, which has an equally bad name. It is an old and exploded superstition. The notorious “succession powder” of the old Italian poisoners was supposed to be diamond dust. Voltaire tells us that Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, died of acute irritant poisoning, the poison being diamond powder mixed with pounded sugar and strewn over strawberries.
It may be noted here that the abominable practice of widow-burning seems to have originated as a check upon the wife’s desire to get rid of her husband. The practice dates back to the time of Strabo, who gives the above origin for it. It was so common, says Mr. William Methold, that a lawwas passed insisting that the wives should accompany their deceased husbands to the funeral pyre. According to one authority, poisoning by wives was so frequent that, in any one year, four men died to every woman. Originating as a deterrent, the burning of widows became in due course an act of pious devotion, a deed of self-immolation acceptable to their bloodthirsty gods. But the original reason is often quoted in the ancient writings, and the remarks of a traveller, Robert Coverte, may be quoted in point. “The cause why this law was first made was for that the women there were so fickle and inconstant that upon any slight occasion of dislike or spleen they would poison their husbands; whereas now the establishing and executing of this law is the cause that moveth the wife to love and cherish her husband and wisheth not to survive him.” It is very much to the credit of the old East India Company that it sternly suppressed the practice ofsutteewith the other iniquitous forms of wrong-doing, such as Thuggee, sacrificial suicide, infanticide and so forth. A crime so largely practised through the ages by rulers and prominent personages was likely to be generally imitated by commoner people.
The general use of drugs to compass murder which still commonly obtains is not a little due to the facilities with which poisons may be procured, not only from the unchecked sale, but because they may be picked up, so to speak, on every hedge. QuotingDr. Cheevers, the varieties of poison used are very limited and may be briefly described. The most common are the preparations of arsenic, aconite, nux vomica, opium, oleander, datura and ganja, or Indian hemp. Many more drugs are, however, procurable in Indian bazaars, and Dr. Cheevers has compiled a list, more or less incomplete, of upwards of ninety, including those already mentioned. Of late years the large increase in dispensaries and the wide importation of chemicals has led to poisoning by sulphate of zinc, Prussic acid, strychnine, cyanide of potassium, belladonna and chlorodyne.
Some remarkable cases of poisoning were brought to light in Bombay a few years ago, chiefly through the strenuous efforts of highly intelligent native detectives. A diabolical plot to destroy a whole family, of which four died and several were nearly killed, was the so-called De Ga conspiracy in 1872. An unknown messenger delivered two confectionery cakes as a gift with the compliments of a near relation. Fatal results ensued with all who partook of the sweets. Suspicion at last fell upon a brother of the De Ga family who hated his relations and who accomplished the deed, assisted by an accomplice and especially by his father who pretended to invoke the aid of sorcery.
Twenty years later a family of five persons was destroyed by one of the sons, Bachoo, a spendthrift and gambler, who wished to expedite his inheritance. Strychnine was the drug used, and it wasadministered by the cook in the food he prepared. Bachoo’s father was the first to succumb, and he was quickly followed by the rest of the family. When the strychnine was found in the exhumed bodies, the police cleverly traced its purchase by Bachoo from the druggists, and he and his confederate were tried, convicted and hanged.
The quick-witted Hindu criminal soon adopted the European method of securing ill-gotten gains by the insurance and murder of unsuspecting victims. Palmer of Rugeley and La Pommerais of Paris had many imitators in the East. A poor creature of weak intellect, Anacleto Duarte by name, was done to death in this way by a friend and patron who pandered to his vices and often lent him small sums to be spent in drink. At last the latter, who was a bailiff in one of the Bombay courts, contrived that Duarte should be insured in the Sun Life Office of Canada for the sum of 10,000 rupees. Fonseca, the bailiff, paid the premiums and was named in the policy as the beneficiary to receive the amount insured if it became payable. After Duarte’s death the agent of the insurance company, suspecting foul play, refused to hand over the amount and the police were called in. It now appeared that Fonseca and Duarte had visited a liquor shop together; that when two glasses of rum were served to them, Duarte complained that his had a bitter taste, caused no doubt by the addition of a pill which he had seen Fonseca put into his glass.When Duarte’s body was exhumed, the existence of strychnine in the viscera was verified, and it was shown that Fonseca had bought it ostensibly as a poison for rats. Fonseca was found guilty and duly hanged.
The criminal operations of the Dacoits who relied upon datura have been already detailed. There were also gangs in Bombay who made it their business to arrange marriages for well-to-do men with suitable spinsters of great attractions supposed to belong to respectable families. After the marriage the happy bridegroom found to his cost that he had been deceived, and he woke up one fine morning without his wife, who had fled with her accomplices, carrying off all his jewels. In these cases datura again had been the drug used. A company of poisoners long flourished in the province Scinde. These villains were in the habit of disguising themselves asfakirswho visited people of known wealth and offered them food in God’s name. It was generally accepted and piously consumed with fatal results, after which their houses were plundered. The impunity with which this crime was everywhere perpetrated was one of the greatest evils from which India has suffered.
It is generally believed that many more brutal murders are committed than are actually brought to light. The police custom of dragging witnesses from their houses for long periods encouraged those dwelling in the neighbourhood of the crime to combinein concealing the circumstances and, if possible, the actual fact. It was the habit of the police at one time to pounce down upon a suspected village, assemble the residents, and harangue, browbeat and threaten them with pains and penalties to extort unwilling confessions. Worse still, these witnesses were dragged great distances, a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, to appear before the courts to give evidence. A great improvement has, however, taken place in recent years. Good roads and railways have greatly facilitated communication, the magistracy is active and efficient and criminal sessions are held monthly even in the most remote districts.
Murder by violence was quite as common in India as by poisoning and committed often by peculiar and unconventional means. Various kinds of weapons were employed. Among them were the bludgeon and the club orlathi, the stout and weighty bamboo staff which, when the thick end is bound with iron, becomes a tremendous weapon of offence. The head is most frequently assailed, and deadly blows result in broken scalps or crushed-in skulls with frightful injuries affecting also the heart, liver and spleen. The club is made of hard wood and in shape is not unlike an exaggerated rolling pin. In one case a stone pestle was used to pound in the victim’s head.
The favourite cutting weapon was thetulwar, or curved sword, which could slash a person almost topieces with clean-cut saucer-shaped wounds. Thetulwarhas a sharp point, but was seldom used to stab. The halberd had a crescent blade set in a heavy wooden handle. A chopper could do terrible mischief, the axe likewise, and the bill or hatchet with a hooked point. Death could be given with a spear head, arrow or dagger, the kris or thearo, a three-pronged striking instrument like a trident. Fatal wounds have been inflicted by a strip of split bamboo long and sharp pointed.
Strangulation has been practised in other ways than by throttling with the handkerchief. It was the custom when killing children for their ornaments to squeeze or compress the throat with the hands, assisting the process with the pressure of the knee or foot, and more violence was often employed than was necessary to cause death. Sometimes one bamboo stick was placed over the throat and another under, so that the compression between became fatal.
Suicide by hanging is common in India, and sometimes murderers, having accomplished their purpose by cruel blows, have been known to suspend their victims by the neck to give the impression of self-destruction. Murder by hanging is not unknown in India. There are several cases on record where persons, after being cruelly misused, were hanged while still alive.
Homicide by exposing the victim to be bitten by poisonous snakes was practised in the olden timesand was known to the penal code as a method of inflicting capital punishment. “Witches were crammed into a small chamber full of cobras, where they first half died of fright and then quite died of snake bites.” A Gentu prisoner in 1709, after inconceivable torture in the scorching sun by day, was cast by night into a dungeon with venomous snakes to keep him company. It is mentioned in history that Hannibal during a naval action with the Romans launched earthen pots filled with snakes into the enemy’s ships.
The high intelligence of the elephant enabled the native to train it to become the executioner of criminals in India. The great beast would obey the orders of hismahout, whether to kill instantly by the pressure of his foot or to protract the culprit’s agony by breaking his bones one by one and leaving him to die by inches. A parricide, bound, was fastened by his heels with a small iron chain to the hind leg of an elephant and dragged two miles across country till all the flesh was worn from his bones. At Baroda, in 1814, a slave who had murdered his master was similarly made fast to the right hind leg of an elephant, and at every step of the beast it jerked the victim forward so that in a few moments every limb was dislocated. He was as much broken as on the wheel after being dragged five hundred yards. The man, covered with mud, still showed signs of life, and was suffering excruciating tortures. In the end the elephant, as he hadbeen trained to do, placed his foot on the criminal’s head and at once killed him.
The criminal records are full of the forgery of banknotes, the coining of false money, of daring robberies committed when houses are broken into, bank premises invaded and iron safes are forced. Sharpers and swindlers, rivalling the most astute in Europe or America, have flourished and defied the pursuit of the police. Some very notable manufacturers of spurious currency notes have spread dismay in financial circles. One of the most active and successful was a certain Vancutta Chellummyab, whose arrest in Madras in 1872 caused a great sensation throughout India. A vast amount of false Madras currency notes were in circulation in the three presidencies, to the total face value, it was said, of four lacs of rupees. The fraud was discovered at Benares, when a pretended agent of a Madras rajah paid for extensive purchases of jewelry with spurious notes. The chief forger, Vancutta Chellummyab, when finally arrested in Madras, had notes in his possession concealed in an old portmanteau to the value of upwards of two hundred thousand rupees. A few years later Bombay was the centre of operations, and a large quantity of the most perfectly imitated notes were fabricated and in circulation. Information was given by one of the principals in the fraud to divert attention from himself, and a descent made by the police secured a quantity of tools and materials for engravingcounterfeit notes and coining bad Australian sovereigns. There were dies, moulds and stamps and a number of coins, foreign and native, manufactured out of the baser metals.
One of the most expert forgers of any age or country was a man named Govind Narayen Davira of Bombay. He came of a family of forgers, the son and grandson of forgers, and did a large business in his nefarious art. A single scrap of handwriting sufficed to enable him to fabricate a whole document. He knew all about the action of chemicals on paper and could erase all traces of original writing to give a clean sheet for a fresh fraudulent statement. He was known to have converted a government promissory note of 5,000 rupees into one of double the amount. His frauds extended over a period of five or six years and were finally exposed by the failure of an attempt to blackmail.
Davira was a popular person because he was liberal to his poorer confederates. But he fell at last into the hands of the police and was lodged in Poona gaol. Here, being resolved to avoid trial, he compassed self-destruction in a very reckless fashion. A kerosene oil lamp was kept constantly burning in his cell, rather rashly. He contrived to saturate his clothing with the oil and then set fire to himself with the result that he was practically burned alive.
One of the cleverest frauds was the forgery of postage stamps in Bombay. A forged stamp came into the possession of a London collector, by whomthe fact was reported to the postmaster-general in Bombay. The forgery was the work of one of Davira’s gang and was traced to a Brahmin, Shrida, who had succeeded in producing an excellent imitation with the clumsiest implements. He first printed the stamp on a lithographer’s stone and then coloured it so exactly that it deceived even experts. Many hundreds of these stamps were seized when Shrida was arrested.
The ingenuity of the cheats and swindlers in planning their frauds was only equalled by the simplicity of their victims. Over and over again the revelation of hidden treasure was made to dupes, who paid for the knowledge of the whereabouts of the secret hoards, said to be the property of dead rajahs, or the proceeds of great robberies which had to be temporarily abandoned. Credulous fools were imposed upon by fictitiousfakirsclaiming the alchemist’s power to transmute the commoner metals into gold and silver, or religious impostors played upon their superstitious disciples to acquire a similar power. There were at one time thirty-five different gangs of swindlers who preyed upon goldsmiths, pawnbrokers and money changers. One of these confederacies was called the “golden gang,” the members of which uttered false money or made large purchases of jewelry for imaginary governors and rajahs, for which they evaded payment, or raised money upon sealed packets, the valuable contents having been spirited away by sleight of hand.
Until the middle of the last century very extensive frauds were practised by the misappropriation of timber in the large forests of India. The natives seemed to have believed in their prescriptive rights to what was really the exclusive property of the state. Thousands of people were engaged in cutting down trees for firewood, when it was within paying distance of removal by road or rail to some neighbouring city. These depredations have now been checked by the establishment of an effective, well-organised forest department, the officers of which control and supervise large tracts of timber, cutting down when desirable and planting afresh to ensure future supply. The reader will remember Rudyard Kipling’s graphic account of the Indian forest officer and his remarkable native assistant, Mowgli, of the story,In the Rukh, in the volume entitled, “Many Inventions.”
Housebreaking is among the minor crimes of India which is especially troublesome. Earthen walls and foundations facilitate the operations of the thieves who are commonly known as “wall-piercers.” These depredators are in the habit of making a hole through the walls, driving a gallery, in fact, into the interior of a house through which they can wriggle into the strong room, generally situated about the centre. As it is always understood that the owner of the house may be on the alert and in waiting to receive the thief, as a matter of precaution he will either emerge feet foremost orpush before him an earthen vessel having something of the shape of a man’s head to receive the first blow of thetulwar, or other defensive weapon. The Indian housebreaker is a slippery customer, difficult to seize, for he is usually naked, and has carefully oiled his person so as to easily slip through the fingers of any one who lays hold of him.
I cannot bring this account of crime in India to a close without mention of an atrocity which is unequalled in the annals of human oppression.
What imprisonment may mean in the East, when inflicted in defiance of the most elementary conditions of health in a tropical climate, has been recorded in letters of blood in the awful story of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The miscreant responsible for the crime was the Nabob of Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, who had gained a fleeting triumph over the early English settlers, and having captured Fort William at the mouth of Hugli, and made all the occupants prisoners, he turned them over to his savage followers. For security they were incarcerated in one small room or chamber some eighteen feet square. The season was the height of summer; the room was closed to the eastward and southward by dead walls and to the northward by a wall and door, so that no fresh air could enter save by two small windows, strongly barred with iron. Into this limited space 146 human beings were crammed, already in a state of exhaustion by a long day spent in fatiguing conflict, and several of them seriouslywounded. Piteous entreaties were made to the guards on duty to diminish the numbers imprisoned by removal elsewhere; large sums were offered as the price of this boon, but with no effect. No step could be taken without the permission of the Nabob, who was asleep, and none dared wake him. After vain attempts to break open the doors and fruitless appeals to the mercy of the sleeping Nabob, “the prisoners went mad with despair.” The rest of the story can best be told in the words of one of the masters of the English language, Lord Macaulay. “They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead bodies, a hundred andtwenty-three in number, were flung into it promiscuously and covered up.
“But these things which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror, awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that anything could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the prince at Moorshedabad.”
It is told in history how the merciless Nabob was eventually called to strict account. The English at Madras vowed vengeance, and an expedition was forthwith fitted out for the Hugli, small in numbers, but full of undaunted spirit, and led by one of the most famous of British soldiers, Lord Clive.The victory of Plassy, which consolidated the British power in India, overthrew Surajah Dowlah, who expiated the crime of the Black Hole when captured and put to death by his successor Meer Jaffier.
Revived as a penal settlement after the Indian Mutiny in 1857—Now holds some twelve thousand convicts—Port Blair system established—Graduated treatment—Well-selected marriages—Lapses from good order—Cases and causes—Assassination of Lord Mayo—The aboriginal Andamanese—The Tarawas—Escapes constantly effected by Burmese prisoners—General results achieved—Development by cultivation—Clearance of forests—Tea plantation—Numerous exports—Deportation from the Straits Settlements to Bombay—Ratnagiri gaol.
The Indian government long practised transportation beyond the seas as a punishment for the most determined criminals. The terrors of crossing the “black water” were very potent to the native mind, although the effect of the penalty as a deterrent was never marked and the practice gradually fell into desuetude. But it was revived in 1857 as a solution of the difficulty in dealing with the great body of rebels and mutineers in custody charged with participation in the great Indian Mutiny, a special commission was despatched to visit the Andaman Islands and report upon their fitness for the establishment of a great penal settlement. To the student of penal science, the results achieved in theIndian Ocean, or more exactly, the Sea of Bengal, must be extremely interesting. The system of transportation has succeeded better there than anywhere else, whether in the Australian colonies, where it resulted in the creation of a great nation at the cost of much human misery, or in the French experiment in New Caledonia. Russia has also tried transportation on a gigantic scale with the most deplorable results in Siberia and on the island of Saghalien.
The settlement on the Andamans, or more precisely upon the northern and principal island, has by this time accomplished a very distinct work in penal colonisation. Many causes, natural and artificial, have contributed to this gratifying result: a fertile soil, a good, albeit tropical climate; an intelligent administration, which has been backed up by the willing efforts of convict labourers, alive generally to their own benefit in making the best of the system in practice. The force available for the cultivation and development of the main island has always been large.
It is an industrious, self-supporting and for the most part peaceable population, where good order and a quiet demeanour are enforced by stringent discipline, although the inherent evil nature of so many criminals cannot be invariably held in check, and ghastly occurrences have from time to time been recorded in almost every nook and corner of Port Blair, the headquarters of the penal settlement.The Andaman convict has committed some heinous offences; he is a murderer in some form or other, deliberate, vindictive, or moved by sudden ungovernable passion; he has been a highway robber or persistent Dacoit; he has forged notes or securities on a great scale. He has betrayed a serious trust, has been a wrecker and desperado, and has more than once deserved the extreme penalty of the law. Beneath the surface the community is a seething mass of depravity, of wickedness, generally latent, but breaking out often in the most violent and bloodthirsty excesses.
To have held the dangerous elements continually in check, to have largely modified and counteracted their evil tendencies, and to have returned the worst characters to their homes cured and reformed is a subject for congratulation by those who achieved it, and some account of the system employed at the Andamans is worth giving here. It is right, however, to admit that this system is not entirely efficacious. All are not amenable to better influences and a certain small percentage remains incorrigible. Some four per cent. of the total population have shown themselves so desperately bad that it has been deemed unsafe to suffer them to leave the precincts of the gaol.
Every convict on first arrival is relegated to the close confinement of the cellular prison by way of breaking him in, and he is detained there under the most irksome conditions for an unbroken period ofsix months. He remains in his cell all day and all night, save for a brief space spent at exercise with others, but in strict silence. His next step is to an associated gaol where gang labour of a severe character is enforced, and is imposed for a year and a half. Then come three years of unremitting toil, the exact counterpart of penal servitude as understood in Great Britain—hard labour under supervision, unpaid, unrewarded, but he is well fed, well housed and cared for, and always closely guarded. Five years have thus elapsed in a painfully monotonous and irksome existence, after which his employment is pleasanter and his personal capacity is studied; the more intelligent are selected for positions of trust and authority.
Comparative freedom comes at the end of ten years, the convict gains his ticket-of-leave and is called in local language a “self-supporter.” He has done, more or less, with prison restraints; he lives in some small village in a house of his own and earns his living his own way; he farms; he keeps cattle; he moves about freely unguarded and unwatched; he sends home to the mainland for his wife and children; or, if single, he may marry a female convict in the same position as himself. His condition is to a certain extent enviable. If industrious, he may make and put by money, but still he is tied and bound by regulation; he has no civil rights, and is in the hands of a paternal authority which prescribes his place of residence and willsuffer him to move to and fro within his village, if well conducted, but he cannot leave the settlement and he must not be idle under pain of the loss of privileges and relegation to enforced labour. Existence nevertheless is tolerable, and in this way he completes ten or fifteen years more until at length the time for absolute release arrives. In the earlier period of this last stage he has received assistance in the shape of free gifts of food and tools and a roof to cover him, but his self-reliance is stimulated by the obligation in later years to fend for himself and accept all the public burdens of the community. He must pay rent and taxes and all charges exacted from the free population. All the disabilities are equally imposed upon female convicts with permission to marry or enter domestic service after five years of conditional liberation.
We see in this system a consistent effort to encourage self-help and self-restraint. Moral improvement is its great aim; good conduct is encouraged; retrogression, or lapse into wrong-doing, is punished by the withdrawal of privileges and a return to irksome restraint. On the other hand, substantial reward is offered to those who have made the best use of their ticket-of-leave, and the old convict, purged of his original offence, emerges, and, backed by the small capital he has saved, has become an orderly and reputable member of society, thoroughly reformed, broken to harness and reasonably certain to continue in the straight road. He isneither pauper nor gaol-bird; he is no unwelcome burden on his relatives, no menace to public security, but a source of strength rather than weakness to the body politic. Penal exile has never before achieved such excellent results. Steady industry, as we have seen, is the general rule, and morality is greatly encouraged. Convict marriages, such a fruitful source of evil elsewhere, as in New Caledonia and Saghalien, where they have fallen largely into disuse, are preceded by so many precautions that the bond when entered into is seldom broken. The fitness of the contracting parties is personally inquired into by the chief authority of the place who must give his sanction or no marriage can take place. Permission is refused in certain cases as when a husband in India declines to divorce his convict wife, or when the applicants are of bad character or the male is an hereditary Dacoit, or when there is a difference in caste. Great care is also taken of the children when any are born. The young are well cared for; primary education is compulsory and technical instruction is free to all. Thrift is steadily inculcated in the rising generation and stimulated by the example of the elders. No institution is more flourishing at Port Blair than the savings bank, and the self-supporting convicts are often considerable depositors from the economies made in their allowance and the profits on their labour. Sanitation receives the very best attention in the islands, and both death and sick rateare, for the East, exceptionally low. The public health is seldom, if ever, affected by malignant epidemic disease; cholera is a rare visitant, and small-pox is constantly kept in check. There is an abundant and most efficient medical staff, and the convicts at large, as well as those actually in durance, can count upon the official doctor’s unremitting care.
Although the general tone of the settlement is excellent, and good order is preserved, there are occasionally lapses among the convicts whose manners and dispositions are by no means mild and submissive, nor can their evil impulses be easily repressed, or still less entirely stamped out. The convict temper is irritable and breaks out often into resistance to authority and bitter quarrels of one with another which sometimes end in murderous affrays. There is a seamy side to Port Blair which is often shown in resistance to authority exercised, as it mostly is, by fellow convicts advanced to positions of trust; for some six per cent. of well-conducted convicts are regularly employed as warders, guards and overseers. This is in accordance with the general practice in India, although entirely condemned by modern penal science. Nevertheless, mutiny and insubordination are uncommon on any large scale, although vindictive feelings are aroused and cherished at real or fancied injustice and oppression, and in the annals of murders committed one or two convict officials killed by comrades figure annually.
The causes of murder in the Andamans hardly differ from those inciting to it elsewhere. Murderous passion is swiftly aroused among men with savage, irritable tempers, quick to quarrel, quicker still to strike; consuming thirst for revenge will be slaked only in blood; and greed and covetousness are easily awakened in people whose self-control is weak. A small reason often suffices for the infliction of death. A convict asked a village woman to be allowed to husk his rice in her mortar and killed her brutally with an axe when she refused. An old Dacoit, who had been refused permission to marry, killed a more fortunate rival to whom the woman of his choice was given. Two convicts, about to be granted tickets as self-supporters, were eager to obtain sufficient funds to give them a good start; they discovered that a convict, who was a notorious miser, had a secret hoard, and his fate was sealed. His body was picked up in a running stream with his head broken in. A somewhat similar case was that of a labouring convict who was in possession of a sum of money lent by a friend; he first was inveigled into a lonely spot and there knocked down by a blow on the eye, after which he was strangled. A convict employed as a petty officer in hospital incurred the deadly enmity of a patient for reporting him to the doctor, and the patient gave vent to his hatred by killing his enemy with a thrust of a pointed bamboo. The same weapon was used by another convict who beatout the brains of a petty officer for slapping him on parade in the presence of a hundred men. One convict had caught another hanging about the barrack room bent upon thieving, and having expressed his intention of denouncing him was murdered while asleep on his bed. A convict warder supervising a party of sail-makers had reason to find fault with one of his charges for idling, and at the first opportunity, before anyone had time to suspect or prevent him, the labourer picked up a knife and stabbed the overseer.
Any weapon would serve to give effect to the homicidal frenzy; sometimes it was a rice pounder, sometimes a wooden crutch, sometimes an axe for cutting firewood, sometimes a heavy mallet used in wool-teasing. The convicts were known to commit the capital offence in order to draw down the death penalty when they were tired of life from long brooding over fancied unjust treatment. Sentence of death by hanging was the invariable requital of murder when clearly proved, and it was passed by a sessions’ judge, subject to subsequent confirmation by a court of reference. Lesser punishments were sometimes imposed, such as prolonged transportation or relegation to the chain gang, while corporal punishment was ordered for lesser offences.
An atrocious murder which echoed through the whole world was that of the viceroy of India, Lord Mayo, who was killed by an Andaman convict in1872. The viceroy had visited Mount Harriet, a finely wooded slope rising above Port Blair and looking out over Viper Island with a glorious view eastward, in order to judge of its suitability as a sanatorium. He had just finished the descent. “The ship’s bells had just rung seven; the launch with steam up was whizzing at the jetty stairs; a group of her seamen were chatting on the pier-end. It was now quite dark, and the black line of the jungle seemed to touch the water’s edge. The viceroy’s party passed some large loose stones to the left of the head of the pier, and advanced along the jetty; two torchbearers in front.” The viceroy, preceding the rest, stepped quickly forward to descend the stairs to the launch. The next moment the people in the rear heard a noise, as of “the rush of some animal” from behind the loose stones; one or two saw a hand raised and a knife blade suddenly glisten in the torchlight. The viceroy’s private secretary heard a thud, and instantly turning round, found a man “fastened like a tiger” on the back of Lord Mayo.
“In a second twelve men were on the assassin; an English officer was pulling them off, and with his sword-hilt keeping back the native guards, who would have killed the assailant on the spot. The torches had gone out; but the viceroy, who had staggered over the pier-side, was dimly seen rising up in the knee-deep water, and clearing the hair off his brow with his hand as if recovering himself.His private secretary was instantly at his side in the surf, helping him up the bank. ‘Burne,’ he said quietly, ‘they’ve hit me.’ Then, in a louder voice, which was heard on the pier, ‘It’s all right, I don’t think I’m much hurt,’ or words to that effect. In another minute he was sitting under the smoky glare of the re-lit torches, on a rude native cart at the side of the jetty, his legs hanging loosely down. Then they lifted him bodily on to the cart, and saw a great dark patch on the back of his light coat. The blood came streaming out, and men tried to staunch it with their handkerchiefs. For a moment or two he sat up on the cart, then he fell heavily backwards. ‘Lift up my head,’ he said faintly, and said no more.”
The assassin, Sher Ali, was a very brave man belonging to one of the Afridi tribes, who had done excellent service to more than one commissioner at Peshawar and distinguished himself as a soldier. He was completely trusted by Colonel Reynolds Taylor, one of the best of our Indian officers, when at Peshawar, and was often in attendance on his family; in fact, he was the confidential servant of the house. This man, however, belonged to a society in which tribal feuds were a hereditary custom. Some such feud existed in his family and he was called upon to take his part in exacting a bloody vengeance for a quarrel. Had he committed the murder on his own side of the frontier, no notice could have been taken of it; and it would have beenesteemed a legitimate deed sanctioned by the religious feelings and customs of the tribe; but his offence was committed within British territory and must be tried by British laws. He was convicted and sentenced to transportation to the Andamans instead of death, which he would greatly have preferred. Continually brooding under a sense of wrong, he took the first opportunity that offered for murderous retaliation and found the death he desired, on the gallows.
Attempts to escape from the islands were at times frequent, encouraged by the easy access to the sea and the facility with which boats could be seized. But recaptures were also constantly made, and there were other chances against the fugitives, especially that of being run down by the aboriginal Andamanese. The natives of these islands are savages of a Nigrito race allied to the Papuans, but who, from having had no connection with the outer world for several centuries, have kept their blood absolutely pure. They are of small stature, the males a little under five feet in height, but finely made and well proportioned. In colour they are a jet black, and are among the darkest hued specimens of mankind. They are inveterate smokers, men, women and children, and are bright and intelligent, somewhat childish, petulant and quick tempered, but merry and light-hearted. They constitute a good unofficial guard, and as they constantly prowl round the convict settlements are a great deterrent to escape.Being well used to jungle life, they are very successful trackers, who frequently bring back fugitives dead or alive. If by chance the evading convicts fall into the hands of the Jarawa tribe, their fate is sealed. These Jarawas are and always have been utterly irreclaimable; neither kindness nor force has had any appreciable effect in overcoming their unconquerable dislike to strangers, even of their own blood belonging to other tribes. Armed with bows and arrows, they show fight whenever encountered, and when pressed and punishment is attempted, they retire into the impenetrable jungle. With the exception of these irreconcilables, the Andamanese have been trained, like other wild animals, by patience and kindness to treat us with entire confidence and trust.