The strong yearning to escape torments more especially the natives of Burmah, a large number of whom are deported to the Andamans. They are a semi-amphibious race, largely brought up to a life on the water, expert boatmen and tireless swimmers. Precise rules are in force at the Andamans that only a limited number of Burmese may be included in any one boat’s crew. More than half the escapes by water were accomplished by Burmese, who boldly ventured out into the open sea, risking all its perils to win across to their dearly loved native land. It is a curious fact that the Burmese Dacoit, who would face the death penalty with fortitude, has always dreaded imprisonment ordeportation with overmastering terror. One explanation of this consuming dread is the not uncommon fear of the unknown. Again, the treatment of prisoners in Burmah under the native régime was merciless; the most excruciating tortures were the rule, and protracted life was worse than a thousand deaths. Exile to the Andaman Islands was anticipated with nameless apprehension. The case of a famous Dacoit may be quoted in proof of this. He had been long in custody; he awaited his trial with patience and resignation, and he would have heard a sentence of death unmoved, but he was quite overcome when a short term of transportation to the Andamans was passed upon him, although it was accompanied by a promise of early conditional liberation. When the time came for his departure, he refused to move off with his escort, kicking and even biting everyone within reach, and eventually he had to be tied with ropes and carried along.
In this connection, Major E. C. Browne, in “The Coming of the Great Queen,” tells the following:
“It was the same with other Dacoits who had been taken red-handed. Two or three were shot, others flogged and released and several were detained for deportation. These were the gloomiest of all and begged to be killed or released. One fellow actually succeeded in evading his sentence. He had got hold of a soldier’s boot-lace and with this he strangled himself during the night. I should scarcely have been able to credit this story if thewitness of the dead man in the morning, with the boot-lace drawn so tight that it had actually penetrated the skin, had not been an officer of my own regiment whose veracity was unimpeachable.”
The best general account of the results obtained in the Andamans is found in the address to the Society of Arts by Colonel Temple, sometime chief commissioner to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Andaman penal system “is the result of the constant attention of the government which created it, and is the outcome of the measures of practical men, devised to meet the difficulties with which they have found themselves face to face, and reduced to order and rule by some of the keenest intellects that have worked in India for many years past.” Repeatedly tinkered and patched and recast and remodelled though it has been, the Andaman system is still inchoate, still on its trial, as it were. It could not well be otherwise, for in dealing with the criminal we are attempting to solve a mighty problem as old as criminality itself.
From the best estimates at hand we may take it that the permanent convict strength of the settlement may be placed at about twelve thousand, of whom about eight hundred are women, and the rule is that only life convicts are sent from India and life and long-term convicts from Burmah. The people received, therefore, are the murderers who have for some reason escaped the death penalty, and the perpetrators of the more heinous offencesagainst person and property, the men of brutal violence, the highwaymen, the robbers, the habitual thieves and the receivers of stolen goods, the worst of the swindlers, forgers, cheats, coiners and, in fact, the most unrestrained temperaments of a continent. These considerations show the scale of the work and the nature of the task. Any one observing the work of the English in the East may possibly be struck with the idea that the reason for the acknowledged capacity of the race for colonial enterprise and the maintenance of empire is the ability and the willingness of the average Englishman to put his hand to any kind of work that may come his way, without any special training, from framing suitable laws and regulations and creating suitable organisations to making roads and ditches, building houses and clearing land and ploughing it. Here in Port Blair, the officers entrusted with the creation and organisation had no training for the work and were without any special guidance and teaching, yet they managed, with the worst possible material to work upon, to create in little more than forty years, upon primeval forest and swamp, situated in an enervating and, until mastered, a deadly climate, a community supporting itself in regard to many of its complicated wants.
They began with the dense forests, the fetid swamps and the pestilential coral banks of tropical islands, and have made out of them many square miles of grass and arable lands, supporting overfifty villages besides convict stations. Miles upon miles of swamp have been reclaimed, the coral banks have been controlled and a place with regard to which the words climate and pestilence were almost synonymous has been turned into one favourably spoken of as to its healthiness. The settlement now grows its own vegetables, tea, coffee, cocoa, tapioca and arrowroot, some of its ordinary food grains and most of its fodder. It supplies itself with the greater part of its animal food and all its fuel and salt. In other lines of work, it makes its own boats and provides from its own resources the bulk of the materials for its buildings which are constructed and erected locally. Among the materials produced are all the timber, stone, bricks, lime and mortar, and most of the iron and metal work are made up there from raw material. In the matter of convict clothing, all that is necessary to be purchased elsewhere is the roughest of cotton hanks and wool in the first raw condition, every other operation being performed on the spot. It provides much of its own leather.
In achieving the results, the officers have had first to learn for themselves as best they could how to turn out the work to hand and then to teach what they had learned to the most unpromising pupils that can be imagined for the work required of them in Port Blair. And they have been hampered all along by the necessities of convict discipline, by the constant release of their men and their punishmentfor misconduct. It is under such conditions that the corps of artificers and other convicts have had to be utilised. Nevertheless, the roads and drains, the buildings and boats, the embankments and reservoirs, are as good and durable as are the same class of structures elsewhere. The manufacturers are sufficient for their purpose, and there are among the taught those who are now skilled in the use of many kinds of machinery. Cultivation is generally fair and some of it very good; the general sanitation is literally second to none.
First of all the industries of the Andamans is that of timber, and to accelerate and increase it a steam tramway has been instituted and there are now some fourteen miles of line connecting the forests with the shores of Port Blair. As a further adjunct steam saw-mills were erected in 1896 and a forest department that employs from five to six hundred men daily under its own officers, not only supplies the settlement with all of its requirements in timber from the local forests, but also exports timber and forest produce to various places in India and Europe. Of these latter exports, rattans and gurjun oil are the chief; other natural products of the islands are trepang, tortoise-shell and edible birds’ nests, but they are collected only in small quantities. The principal cultivations in which convicts and ex-convicts are engaged are paddy, sugar cane, Indian corn and turmeric; cocoanuts have during the past thirty-five years been extensivelyplanted, and besides the agricultural products previously mentioned, vegetables and fruits of various kinds are grown. The larger industries in which the penal community is engaged have already been alluded to, but there are many minor employments, the products from which also go toward making the settlement self-supporting. Among these are to be found the manufacture of all kinds of furniture, cane chairs, baskets, many varieties of bamboo work and ornamental woodcarving, woven articles from serviettes to saddle-girths, and blankets, pottery, rope and mats, silver, tin, brass and iron work, shoes, rickshaws and carts, besides the production of such materials as lime, bricks and tiles. Port Blair is in communication three and often four times a month with Calcutta, Madras and Rangoon by the vessels of the Asiatic Steam Navigation Company. The distances between the settlement and the ports named are 796, 780 and 387 miles respectively.
The earliest penal settlement on the Andamans was in the southern island, where it was founded on the present site of Port Blair in 1792. It was known as the “old harbour.” After three years the establishment was moved to the present Port Cornwallis on the northern island, but this proved to be most unhealthy and it was closed, the convicts, numbering some two hundred and seventy, being removed to Penang, at the extremity of the Malay Peninsula. In the early “fifties” the Straits Settlementssometimes sent their long-term convicts to Bombay, from where they were usually drafted to such moist and congenial climates as Tannah and Ratnagiri. By good behaviour they earned tickets-of-leave to the hill stations, Mahabuleshwar and Matheran, where they became the market-gardeners of the place, many preferring to remain after their time had expired, respected and respectable citizens, often possessed of considerable wealth. At one time the Ratnagiri gaol contained about three hundred and sixty convicts; “at least two-thirds were Chinamen and Malays from the Straits, great ruffians, each with a record of piracy or murder, or both combined. Many of them were heavily fettered and carefully guarded by armed police when at their ordinary work in the ‘laterite’ quarries, for they were mostly powerful men;” the tools they used were formidable weapons and as there were known to be deadly feuds always present among them, serious disturbances and outbreaks were constantly dreaded. Nevertheless, misconduct was exceedingly rare; breaches of gaol discipline were much fewer among these desperadoes than among the milder Hindus in the work-sheds within the gaol. The fact having in due course created much surprise, inquiries were instituted as to why pirates and murderers, usually so insubordinate in other places, were so well-conducted and quiet at Ratnagiri.
The riddle was presently solved. “For someyears one Sheik Kassam had been gaoler. Belonging to the fisherman class and possessed of very little education, he had, nevertheless, worked his way upward through the police by dint of honesty, hard work and a certain shrewdness which had more than once brought him to the front. At last, toward the end of his service, the gaolership falling vacant, he was, with everyone’s cordial approval, nominated to the post.” With comparative rest and improved pay, the old gentleman waxed fatter and jollier and was esteemed one of the most genial companions the country could produce. The cares of state, and the responsibility of three hundred murderous convicts, weighed lightly on Sheik Kassam. He developed a remarkable talent or predilection for gardening, almost from the first. “He laid out the quarry beds, brought water down to irrigate them, produced all the gaol required in the way of green stuff, and made tapioca and arrowroot by the ton. The better plot of land belonging to the gaol lay between Sheik Kassam’s own official residence, a tiny bungalow-fashioned dwelling, and a walled courtyard near to the highroad. The sheik had no difficulty in obtaining permission to erect a high wall of rubble from the quarries along the whole road frontage, so that, as he urged, the convicts at work in the garden would not be gazed at by passers-by, and that forbidden articles, such as tobacco, sweetmeats, liquor, and the like, should not be passed or even thrown over to them.”
Presently this favourite slice of garden was safely boxed in from the public view by an enclosure some eight feet high, extending from the gaol itself round to the gaoler’s house, the only entrance to it being a little wicket-gate by the side of the sheik’s back-yard.
At last the head-superintendent of the Bombay prison heard that Sheik Kassam’s disciplinary system consisted in his bringing the most dangerous of the Chinamen and Malays quietly into his back-yard from the adjoining garden, and there regaling them with plenty of sweetmeats, sugar, drink in moderate quantity, and adding even the joys of female society of a peculiar sort. If any one became unruly or saucy, he was liable to get a dozen lashes, but if they behaved decently they all had their little festivals with regularity. After this discovery, poor old Sheik Kassam’s character as a model gaoler was gone; he was dismissed, but with a full pension which he did not live long to enjoy.
British acquisition of Burmah—Quarrels with the king in 1824—His reprisals—British subjects seized and sent to prison—Mr. Henry Gouger’s narrative—The “Death Prison”—Gigantic stocks—Filthiness of prison—Tortures inflicted—Barbarous trials—Horrible life—Rats and vermin—Smallpox—Tobacco a valuable disinfectant—Another “Black Hole”—Chained to a leper—Released by the advance of British troops—Penal code of Burmah—Ordeals and punishments—Treading to death by elephants—Dacoity the last form of resistance to British rule—Prison life—The Burmese gaol-bird—An outbreak.
The acquisition and annexation of Burmah by Great Britain, first the lower province with three-fourths of the seaboard, and then the entire kingdom, were accomplished between 1824 and 1886, in a little more than half a century, that is to say. Until this took place the country was generally in a state of anarchy, the king was a bloodthirsty despot, and the state council was at his bidding no better than a band of Dacoits who plundered the people and murdered them wholesale. The ruling powers were always anxious to pick a quarrel with their powerful British neighbours, and were so unceasingly aggressive that they brought on a warin 1824, which ended in the capture of Rangoon and the occupation of Pegu and Martaban with the cession of the coast province of Aracan.
The outbreak of hostilities led to cruel retaliation by the king of Burmah upon all Europeans who resided in the country, whether as missionaries or merchants engaged in trade. One of them, an Englishman, Mr. Henry Gouger, was arrested as a spy and arraigned before a court of justice with very little hope of escaping with his life. He was fortunately spared after suffering untold indignities and many positive tortures. Eventually he published his experiences, which remain to this day as a graphic record of the Burmese prisons as they then existed. He was first committed to the safe keeping of the king’s body guard, and confined with his feet in the stocks; then he was transferred to the “death prison,” having been barbarously robbed and deprived of his clothing. He was not entirely stripped, but was led away with his arms tied behind his back, bare-headed and bare-footed to theLet-ma-yoon, the “antechamber of the tomb.”
Let me proceed now in the narrator’s own words:—
“There are four common prisons in Ava, but one of these only was appropriated to criminals likely to suffer death. It derived its remarkably well-selected name,Let-ma-yoon, literally interpreted, ‘Hand, shrink not,’ from the revolting scenes of cruelty practised within its walls. This was theprison to which I was driven. My heart sank within me as I entered the gate of the prison yard which, as it closed behind me, seemed to shut me out forever from all the interests and sympathies of the world beyond it. I was now delivered over to the wretches, seven or eight in number, who guarded this gaol. They were all condemned malefactors, whose lives had been spared on the condition of their becoming executioners; the more hideous the crime for which he had to suffer, the more hardened the criminal, the fitter instrument he was presumed to be for the profession he was henceforth doomed to follow. To render escape without detection impossible, the shape of a ring was indelibly tattooed on each cheek, which gave rise to the name they were commonly known by,pahquet, or ‘ring-cheeked,’ a term detested by themselves as one of reproach and one we never dared to apply in addressing them. The nature of his qualification for the employment was written in a similar manner across the breast. The chief of the gang was a lean, wiry, hard-featured old man whom we taught ourselves to address under the appellationaphe, ‘father,’ as did all his subordinates. Another bearing an appropriate motto had murdered his brother and had hidden his body piecemeal under his house. A third was brandedthoo-kho, ‘thief.’ This troop of wretches were held in such detestation that the law prohibited their entering any person’s house except in execution of their office. It happened, soon afterI entered, that the exigencies of this brotherhood were great from an increase of business, and no brave malefactor (inhumanity was always styled bravery here) being ready to strengthen the force, a young man convicted of a petty offence was selected to fill the vacancy. I beheld this poor youth doomed to the most debasing ignominy for the rest of his life by these fatal rings, his piteous cries at the degradation he was undergoing being drowned by the jeers and ridicule of the confederates. They soon made him as much a child of the devil as themselves.
“The ‘father’ of this interesting family received me at the gate with a smile of welcome like the grin of a tiger, and with the most disgusting imprecations hurried me to a huge block of granite embedded in the centre of the yard. I was made to sit down and place my ankles on the block of stone while three pairs of fetters were struck on with a maul, a false blow of which would have maimed me forever. But they were too expert for this, and it was not a time to care for minor dangers. Thus shackled, I was told, as if in derision, to walk to the entrance of the prison-house not many yards distant; but as the shortness of the chains barely permitted me to advance the heel of one foot to the toe of the other, it was only by shuffling a few inches at a time that the task was accomplished. Practice, however, soon made me more expert.
“It is not easy to give a correct idea of theprison which was destined to be my dwelling place for the first year of my captivity. Although it was between four and five o’clock on a bright sunny afternoon, the rays of light only penetrated through the chinks and cracks of the walls sufficiently to disclose the utter wretchedness of all within. Some time elapsed before I could clearly distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded. As my eyes gradually adapted themselves to the dim light, I ascertained it to be a room about forty feet long by thirty feet wide, the floor and sides made of strong teak-wood planks, the former being raised two feet from the earth on posts, which, according to the usual style of Burmese architecture, ran through the body of the building, and supported the tiled roof as well as the rafters for the floor and the planking of the walls. The height of the walls from the floor was five or six feet, but the roof being a sloping one, the centre might be double that height. It had no window or aperture to admit light or air except a closely woven bamboo wicket used as a door, and this was always kept closed. Fortunately, the builders had not expended much labour on the walls, the planks of which here and there were not very closely united, affording through the chinks the only ventilation the apartment possessed, if we except a hole near the roof where, either by accident or design, nearly a foot in length of decayed plank had been torn off. This formed a safety-valve for the escape of foul air toa certain extent; and, but for this fortuitous circumstance, it is difficult to see how life could have been long sustained.
“The only articles of furniture the place contained were these:—First and most prominent, was a gigantic row of stocks similar in its construction to that formerly used in England, dilapidated specimens of which may still be seen in some of the market places of our country towns. It was capable of accommodating more than a dozen occupants. Several smaller varieties of the same species lay around, each holding by the leg a pair of hapless victims consigned to its custody. These stocks were heavy logs of timber bored with holes to admit the feet and fitted with wooden pins to hold them fast. In the centre of the apartment was placed a tripod holding a large earthen cup filled with earth oil to be used as a lamp during the night watches; and lastly, a simple but suspicious looking piece of machinery, whose painful uses it was my fate to test before many hours had elapsed. It was merely a long bamboo suspended from the roof by a rope at each end and worked by blocks or pulleys to raise or depress it at pleasure.
“The prison had never been washed, nor even swept, since it was built. So I was told, and I have no doubt it was true, for, besides the ocular proof from its present condition, it is certain no attempt was made to cleanse it during my subsequent tenancy of eleven months. This gave a kind of fixednessor permanency to the fetid odours, until the very floors and walls were saturated with them. Putrid remains of castaway animal and vegetable stuff which needed no broom to make it ‘move on’—the stale fumes from thousands of tobacco pipes—the scattered ejections of the pulp and liquid from their everlasting betel, and other nameless abominations still more disgusting, which strewed the floor—and if to this be added the exudation from the bodies of a crowd of never-washed convicts, encouraged by the thermometer at 100 degrees, in a den almost without ventilation—is it possible to say what it smelled like? As might have been expected from such a state of things, the place was teeming with creeping vermin to an extent that very soon reconciled me to the plunder of the greater portion of my dress.
“When night came on, the ‘father’ of the establishment, entering, stalked towards our corner. The meaning of the bamboo now became apparent. It was passed between the legs of each individual and when it had threaded our number, seven in all, a man at each end hoisted it up by the blocks to a height which allowed our shoulders to rest on the ground while our feet depended from the iron rings of the fetters. The adjustment of the height was left to the judgment of our kind-hearted parent, who stood by to see that it was not high enough to endanger life nor low enough to exempt from pain. Having settled this point to his satisfaction, the venerablechief proceeded with a staff to count the number of the captives, bestowing a smart rap on the head to those he disliked, whom he made over to the savage with a significant hint of what he might expect if the agreed tally were not forthcoming when the wicket opened the next morning. He then took his leave, kindly wishing us a good night’s rest, for the old wretch could be facetious; the young savage trimmed his lamp, lighted his pipe, did the same act of courtesy to all who wished to smoke, and the anxious community, one by one, sought a short oblivion to their griefs in sleep.
“In vain, however, did our little party court that blessing; passing by the torment of thought, the sufferings of the body alone were enough to prevent it. I had youth on my side, and my slender frame enabled me to bear the suspension better than my fellow sufferers. The tobacco smoke was a mercy, for it robbed the infliction of half its torment. A year afterward, when we had to undergo a punishment somewhat similar, though in a purer atmosphere, we found the sting of the mosquitos, on the soles of our undefended feet, ‘without the power to scare away’ these venomous little insects, was intolerable; whereas in this well-smoked apartment a mosquito could not live. We were not aware at the time what a happy exemption this was. What a night was that on which we now entered! Death, in its most appalling form, perhaps attended with the agony of unknown tortures, was thought by allto be our certain lot. Kewet-nee, who occupied the next place on the bamboo, excited a horrible interest by the relation of a variety of exquisite tortures which he had known to be perpetrated under that roof.
“The rays of the morning sun now began to struggle through the chinks of the prison walls and told us that day dawned, bringing life and happiness to the world outside, but only the consciousness of misery to all within. The prisoners being counted and found to tally correctly with the reckoning of overnight, symptoms of the routine of the day began to attract attention. Our considerate parent made his appearance and with his customary grin lowered down the bamboo to within a foot of the floor, to the great relief of our benumbed limbs in which the blood slowly began again to circulate. At eight o’clock the inmates were driven out in gangs of ten or twelve at a time, to take the air for five minutes, when they were huddled in again, to make way for others; but no entreaty could secure a repetition of the same favour that day, though a bribe, which few could promise, might effect it. Fresh air, the cheapest of all the gifts of Providence, was a close monopoly in the hands of the ‘sons of the prison,’ who sold it at the highest price, and with a niggard hand.
“After breakfast the business of trying the prisoners began, and each was brought in turn before themyo-serai, or assistant to the governor. Thefirst was a young man accused of being concerned in the robbery of the house of a person of rank. Whether the accusation was well founded or not I had no means of judging except by the result; but certainly the man had not the appearance of a robber. As a matter of course, he denied the crime; but denial was assumed to be obstinacy, and the usual mode of overcoming obstinacy was by some manner of torture. By order of themyo-serai, therefore, he was made to sit upon a low stool, his legs were bound together by a cord above the knees and two poles inserted between them by the executioners, one of whom took the command of each pole, the ground forming the fulcrum. With these the legs were forced upwards and downwards and asunder, and underwent a peculiar kind of grinding, inflicting more or less pain as the judge gave direction. Every moment I expected to hear the thighbone snap. The poor fellow sustained this torture with loud cries but still with firmness until the agony became so intense that he fainted. ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.’ To restore animation they resorted to cold water and shampooing. Thus revived, he was again thrust back into his den with menaces of fresh torture on the morrow, as no confession had yet been wrung from him. I may as well finish the revolting story at once.
“True to his word, themyo-seraireturned the next day to renew his diabolical practices. Thistime the culprit was tied by the wrists behind his back, the rope which bound them being drawn by a pulley just high enough to allow his toes to touch the ground, and in this manner he was left until he should become more reasonable. At length, under the pressure of agonising pain, just in time to save the dislocation of the shoulder, the criminal made his confession and criminated two respectable persons as accomplices. From what followed I presume this was all that was wanted. The man of justice had now two men in his toils who were able to pay. The unfortunate man, who, when relieved from the pain of the torture, acknowledged he had accused innocent people, was returned to gaol fearfully mangled and maimed; but instead of meeting a felon’s fate, when time had been given to fleece the two victims, he was released.
“Within the walls nothing worthy of notice occurred until the hour of three in the afternoon. As this hour approached, we noticed that the talking and jesting of the community gradually died away. All seemed to be under the influence of some powerful restraint, until that fatal hour was announced by the deep tones of a powerful gong suspended in the palace yard, and a deathlike silence prevailed. If a word was spoken it was in a whisper. It seemed as though even breathing were suspended under the control of a panic terror, too deep for expression, which pervaded every bosom. We did not long remain in ignorance of the cause. If any ofthe prisoners were to suffer death that day, the hour of three was that at which they were taken out for execution. The manner of it was the acme of cold-blooded cruelty. The hour was scarcely told by the gong when the wicket opened, and the hideous figure of a spotted man appeared, who, without uttering a word, walked straight to his victim now for the first time probably made acquainted with his doom. As many of these unfortunate people knew no more than ourselves the fate that awaited them, this mystery was terrible and agonising; each one fearing, up to the last moment, that the stride of the Spot might be directed his way. When the culprit disappeared with his conductor and the prison door closed behind them, those who remained began again to breathe more freely; for another day, at least, their lives were safe.
“It is not my intention to make this narrative a chronicle of all the diabolical cruelties in this den of abominations, but the first specimen which greeted our eyes on the morrow may serve as a fair sample of the practices which it was our fate to behold almost daily. The routine was generally this:—The magistrate takes his seat in the front of the shed in which we occupy the background, as though the spot had been selected for our convenience, as spectators to behold an amusing exhibition. A criminal is now summoned from the interior. He hobbles out and squats down in terror before the judge; the crime of which he is accused isstated to him. He denies it; he is urged by various motives to confess his guilt; perhaps he knows that confession is only another word for execution; therefore he still denies. The magistrate assumes an air of indignation at his obstinacy and now begins the work of his tormentor, the man with the ringed cheek who has hitherto stood by waiting the word of command. He has many means at his disposal, but the one selected for the present instance was a short iron maul. It would simply excite disgust were I to enter into detail. Suffice it to say that after writhing and rolling on the ground and screaming with agony for nearly half an hour, the unfortunate wretch was assisted to his den, a mass of wounds and bruises pitiable to behold, leaving his judge not a whit the wiser.
“By degrees we settled down into the habits of the prison and were becoming familiar with such scenes as I have recounted. We began also to speculate on the length of time nature could hold out, if we were left to test it. How long could we live in such a plight without the use of water or other means of cleanliness? Would habit reconcile us to it as it apparently had done many of our fellow prisoners? Some of them had lived there for years. We gradually became acquainted with them and with their crimes, real or imputed. There were many cases in the calendar that were almost incredible and showed that accident, caprice, superstition and even carelessness occasioned their confinement.One grimy, half-starved old man had been kept there three years and neither knew why he was there nor who sent him. The crime of another must have been that of a madman, or more probably it was a false accusation, preferred to gratify private revenge. He was said to have made an image of the king and to have walked over it. The mere imputation of practising necromancy against the sacred person of the king was a fatal charge. The poor fellow was taken from among us at the hour of midnight and despatched by breaking his spine. Why this singular method of slaughter was resorted to, as well as the manner of carrying it into execution, was as mysterious as the crime itself; they were not at all particular as to the mode of depriving their victims of life, but seemed to be guided altogether by caprice.
“The plan of the prison yard shows that there were a number of small cells used by the ringed brotherhood, and the pleading of our amiable protectress secured for us the liberty to occupy them. It is true they were very small, the one I inhabited being about five feet wide with just enough length to lie down in; it was so low that I could not stand upright except in the middle where the roof was highest; but it was Elysium when compared with the suffocating choke of the inner prison. Nor could it be called altogether solitary confinement, for one of our gaolers had a pretty daughter about sixteen years old, who took a wonderful fancy to me andwas a frequent visitor in my cell. She supplied me, too, with an unspeakable luxury, water for ablution. Oh, who can appreciate the gift but those who have been long deprived of it? A scrap of rag, moistened with some of the water given us to drink, only served to smear the grime like a plaster over our bodies. Now, once again I could call myself comparatively clean. My cell had other advantages. My eyes escaped many scenes of revolting cruelty; my ears, many foul anathemas and gross abuse; my lungs and olfactories, all sorts of abominations. The chief loss was the society of my friends. The rats, too, were numerous and troublesome at first; but these, though a disgusting nuisance, I managed to turn to account by the fancy of thepahquetsfor their flesh. The Burmese hold rats in about the same estimation as we do hares, and sell them commonly in their markets for about their own weight in lead. My cell, therefore, might be regarded as a well-stocked preserve for game. The burrows ran in all directions, and hardly a day passed without my bagging a few heads of this novel kind of game and handing them over to my pretty visitor’s father, who willingly lent me his spear for the purpose of destroying them. The bait of a few grains of boiled rice at the entrance of the burrows brought them out in shoals and gave me the opportunity of spearing them. ‘What do you expect will be your fate?’ said this pious Buddhist as he once took the struggling vermin fromthe spear, ‘when the time comes for me to serve you as you are serving that creature?’ They all looked forward to the pleasure of decapitating us, and when in a mild humour would promise me as a favour, to use their greatest skill so that I should scarcely feel it. What a consoling thought!
“Shut up close in my little cell, I thought that at all events my feelings would no longer be harrowed with the sight of deeds of blood. To a certain extent it was so; but even here there was no abiding peace and quietness. One night as I was vainly endeavouring to coax myself asleep, the screams of an unfortunate wretch in the inner prison fell upon my ear, and the door of my cell being at the time unfastened and the prison wall not more than three feet off, curiosity prompted me to peep through a crack to see what fresh mischief was on foot. Never shall I forget the foul assassination I witnessed. The inmates were breathlessly silent, evidently expecting some evil. The cries proceeded from a young man who lay stretched on the floor with his feet in the stocks. The lamp was burning dimly, giving just enough light to show the form of a grimpahquetstriding toward his victim. Without a word, he stamped several times on the mouth of the youth with his heavy wooden shoes with a force which must have broken his teeth and jaws into fragments. From my hiding place, where I stood trembling with terror, I heard the bones crack and crash. Still the cries were not altogethersilenced, when the monster seized the club of the savage, and with repeated blows on the body and head pounded the poor sufferer to death. The corpse was then taken from the stocks and buried in the prison yard.
“Now news came of the defeat of the Burmese troops in the field, and the governor wreaked his vengeance on us. We were all hustled again from our cells into the inner prison, to await any fresh orders that might be issued from the palace. A merciful Providence again averted the danger. For a few days, probably a week, we were kept in the old den of corruption, when time, as before, softened down asperities, the rage of the governor and of our keepers began to evaporate, and a little renewed coaxing, backed by such insignificant bribes as our people could yet afford to pay, regained for us the favour of the cells in which we were once more installed, and my war of extermination against the rats recommenced.
“While we were passing this week in the inner prison, a frightful event took place, which threatened the immediate destruction of the whole community; indeed, it is wonderful that the instinct of self-preservation did not deter our parent of the prison from executing his order. A woman was brought in covered with the pustules of the small-pox. Our doctor looked aghast and so did we all, as well we might. It was a case quite beyond his treatment, though it is strange the versatile doctordid not undertake the cure. Even the Burmese prisoners themselves expressed their astonishment, but remonstrance was useless. The gaolers, however, showed a little common sense by placing the unfortunate creature in a clear spot by herself to avoid contact with the other inmates of the prison, with delicate threats of punishment if she moved from it. We never heard what induced this barbarity, but she was most likely suffering for the misconduct of some relative in the war, and the authority who sent her there could not have been aware of the disease, for she had not been among us more than twenty-four hours when she was again taken away.
“But by what means was infection averted? Inoculation or vaccination was unknown. Here were about fifty persons living in the same confined room without ventilation, and yet not one of them took the disease. The fact seems almost miraculous, and I should have doubted the nature of the malady had it not been acknowledged and dreaded by everyone, the natives as well as ourselves. I can only account for our immunity by the free use of tobacco.
“After an engagement with the British troops, many were taken prisoners and were brought to the prison. Unfortunately, it so happened that one of the freaks, already noticed as common to the gaolers, had at this time consigned all our party to the inner prison, and we beheld with horror about a hundred of these men step one after another throughthe wicket into our already well-filled prison, one of the ringed fraternity remaining inside to see that they were packed as close as possible. The floor was literally paved with human beings, one touching and almost overlapping the other on every side. It soon became evident what must follow. Difficulty in breathing, profuse perspiration and other disagreeables, overcame the natural terror of their tormentors, and the suffering multitude began to cry aloud for air and water. The horrors of the notorious ‘black hole of Calcutta’ must have been reënacted had the building been of brick, but the manner of its construction, before explained, fortunately prevented it. At length the clamour of the captives, working probably on the fears of the gaolers themselves, induced them to open the wicket door for the night, some of their number keeping ward outside as sentinels. By this means a general disaster was avoided.
“This temporary influx of prisoners was the cause of greater anxiety to me than to my companions from a peculiar circumstance. The stock of fetters in the establishment ran short, and to provide for this unexpected demand our three pairs of fetters were taken off for the night, one ring only being left on the ankle, and by this we were chained one to another, two by two, like hounds in couples, only by the leg instead of the neck. Perhaps the reader may think this was, at all events, a slight respite, for which we ought to have been thankful. So itwas, to all except myself, for the luxury of being able once more to stretch the legs apart was, no doubt, a most grateful refreshment. But—my flesh creeps when I think of it—I was chained to a leper. My companion was an unfortunate Greek, whose ankles had by this time broken out into unmistakable open leprous sores, with which a few inches of chain alone prevented contact, while at the same time it kept me in terrible proximity. The chain was kept at its full length all night, as may be supposed, and sundry nervous jerkings from time to time on my part to assure myself that it was so, indicated the nature of my alarm to the poor man, who was not unconscious of his malady, though he would not openly admit it. He grew irritated at my studied avoidance of him, and raised the question himself only to deny it. This voluntary allusion to it by himself, notwithstanding his denial, only tended to confirm the fact. With what joy did I submit myself the next day to the hands of my worthy parent, while he again invested me with my wonted complement of irons. With what anxiety, too, did I watch for weeks, searching diligently my ankles for the first symptoms of the contagion, fearing I might unwittingly have rubbed against the infected man and become inoculated with his loathsome disease. Happily I escaped without accident.”
This horrible imprisonment was protracted into the sultry months of March and April, and the wretched sufferers were left throughout heavilyladen with five pairs of fetters in a gloomy filthy dungeon, without air or light, or even water to wash their fevered bodies, constantly associated with the worst felons and sharing their dreadful expectation to be taken out and executed. Finally, as the relieving army approached, they were removed from Ava further into the country, and the scene changed for the better as regards personal treatment. The prisoners had at least fresh air, freedom from vermin, lighter chains, water to wash in, exercise in the yard when their wounded feet were sufficiently healed to allow them to walk, and as much comfort as possible in a Burmese prison. But fresh terrors were caused by the importation of a huge lioness into the prison enclosure. It was confined in a strong cage, but was kept in a state of constant fury and grew more and more ferocious, being kept continually without food. The luckless prisoners began to believe that they were to be thrown as a prey to the wild beast, but it grew visibly weaker and weaker and presently died of starvation. The reason for shutting up the lioness with the human victims of the terrified king was never explained. Meanwhile the British troops pressed on and threatened shortly to capture the capital by storm. The last and most terrible ordeal of all was now impending. It was openly announced that the white prisoners were to be sacrificed to save the king by being buried alive before the broken and dispirited Burmese army. But another decisive battle intervened,the prisoners were hastily released from gaol and carried to Ava, whence they were borne by water to meet the British flotilla on its way up stream, and the painful captivity was at an end.
The penal code of old Burmah in the pre-English days was primitive and of ancient origin, being based largely upon the laws first promulgated by Menu. Trial by ordeal was a very general rule, and many forms were similar to those obtaining in other parts of the world. One was to plunge a finger wrapped in a thin palm leaf into molten tin; again, accused and accuser were immersed under water and the case was won by the party who could remain the longest time below. Or two candles made of equal portions of wax, carefully weighed, were lighted by the two litigants, and the one which burned longest was adjudged to have won.
“In the Indies,” says one old authority, “when one man accuses another of a crime punishable by death, it is customary to ask the accused if he is willing to go through trial by fire, and if he answers in the affirmative, they heat a piece of iron till it is red hot; then he is told to put his hand on the hot iron, and his hand is afterward wrapped up in a bay leaf, and if at the end of three days he has suffered no hurt he is declared innocent and delivered from the punishment which threatened him. Sometimes they boil water in a cauldron till it is so hot no one may approach it; then an iron ring isthrown into it and the person accused is ordered to thrust in his hand and bring up the ring, and if he does so without injury he is declared innocent. Sometimes an iron chain or ball is used instead of the ring. Sometimes a vessel of oil is heated, and a cocoanut is thrown in to test the temperature, and if it cracks, then the suspected person may prove his innocence by taking copper coins out of the boiling oil.” Another ordeal was to take the accused to the tomb of a Mohammedan saint and walk past, having first loaded him with heavy fetters. If the fetters fall off, he is declared to be clear. “I have heard it said,” is the comment of one authority who had little confidence in the good faith of the tribunal, “that by some artful contrivance the fetters are so applied as to fall off at a particular juncture.”
The rich expiated any offence by the payment of a fine, while the impecunious suffered imprisonment, stripes with a rattan, mutilation, endless slavery, and in the extreme case, death. The sentence to slavery extended to all a man’s belongings and to his descendants forever. Capital punishment was performed by decapitation, and a fiendish executioner often prolonged the agony of the condemned convict. To throw a victim to be devoured by wild beasts or trodden to death by elephants was a practice only surrendered in recent times. In the northern provinces crucifixion was common, but the instrument was not in the shape of an ordinary cross. It was more like a double ladder consisting of threeupright bamboos crossed by three horizontal bars, and upon these two more were laid in the shape of a St. Andrew’s cross. Three scaffolds were commonly erected on river banks or on sand banks in the stream, and were constantly seen on the Irrawady. Sometimes the culprit was killed before he was affixed to the cross; sometimes he was tied up and rendered helpless by a few spear thrusts, or disembowelled by a sword cut across the stomach. In any case, the body was left suspended until the flesh was pecked off by vultures and the bones fell off by decay. When the mouths of the Irrawady were Burmese territory, the criminal was lashed to a tree stump at low water and left to be drowned by the incoming tide. The fishes, more voracious than the vultures, were often more expeditious than the sea and ate their prey alive. The tree, one of the undeveloped growth in the mangrove swamps, was familiarly known as the “stump of hell.”
Imprisonment, as we have seen from the previous pages, was often worse than death. But there might be some relaxation of durance. With money a prisoner might appease his gaolers. He could by payment secure release daily to go home, eat his meals and pass his time in comfortable idleness, provided he came punctually back at night and allowed himself to be again incarcerated. Nevertheless, the friendless and impecunious preferred to suffer a public flogging, inflicted on the culprit at all the street corners. Bribery and corruption, buying easefrom dishonest gaolers, speedily disappeared under the British rule. An equable uniform system has been adopted for all prisoners, and the demeanour of even the worst is outwardly quiet. They are for the most part irreclaimable gaol-birds, with all the traits and characteristics of the congenital criminal.
The predatory instinct predominates in the character of the Burman. He is consumed with a desire to lay violent hands upon his neighbours’ goods and possessions. He is a Dacoit, a thief and highwayman by inheritance. One who knew Burmah intimately was convinced that the evil propensity was inborn in every Burmese child, and was stimulated as he grew up by Dacoit stories. The example of others who had taken to the business and become famous for enterprising raids, was always before the youth of every generation. It was no disgrace to a young fellow to be concerned in a Dacoity attack upon a neighbouring village, but very much the reverse, and the most successful robbers were generally treated with much consideration and respect.
A Dacoit band for the most part numbered five or six; they were not all armed with firearms, but they fired a few shots on making a descent to give warning of their approach, and no resistance was offered as they swooped down with loud shouts and much waving of swords. Ransom was demanded or the village, if deserted, was looted, and the Dacoits fled before the outrage became known to thepolice. Then pursuit was organised, but was generally fruitless. The Dacoits were close at hand, in the very village, and might be easily seized, but no one would give information, as that would be deemed an unpardonable offence. To betray an offender into the hands of justice is a sin against religion much more than against morality. There is the utmost difficulty, therefore, in tracing crime in Burmah. British police officers were driven to death in ceaseless efforts to catch Dacoits, hunting them perpetually for months and months and seldom, if ever, laying hands on a single offender.
Summary vengeance was meted out to “informers.” On one occasion, a well-to-do villager in Lower Burmah had assisted in the capture of a notorious Dacoit. Some of the prisoner’s friends, without waiting for the issue of the trial, visited the traitor’s house and upbraided him with being the cause of the Dacoit’s apprehension. “We mean to punish you for this,” they said. “You shall be burned alive; which do you prefer, that the fire should be lighted here in your own house, or outside the village?” His wife offered a thousand rupees to buy him off, but it was sternly refused, and he was forthwith put to death. In another instance, a man who received a reward for securing the arrest of a band was obliged to surrender the money to other Dacoits, who called him to account, and to prevent his repeating the offence, his head was cut off and exhibited on a pole.
Dacoity, when the complete pacification of Burmah was so long delayed, became the last form of resistance of the people. The one time thieves were promoted into rebels and insurgents. The Burmese did not all accept British rule very willingly, and the government resolved to finally crush opposition by exterminating the dissidents under the name of Dacoity. Many serious encounters, costly in human life, were fought; many leaders of small bands long evaded pursuit and gave much trouble. But vigorous measures persistently carried out gradually put down all opposition, and the most active Dacoits ended on the gallows or found their way to prison or to the penal settlements. A good picture has been preserved of one prominent Dacoit who had long ravaged the country and been guilty of many crimes; and upon whom a sentence of penal servitude for life was at length passed. “A small, spare, thin-visaged man, whose features have nothing in them that would bear out his character of a cruel ruffian and leader of men ... yet such was the power of his name that a sum large enough to be a fortune to any three natives was offered to whoever should kill or capture him, before his career was checked.” Every gaol in Burmah has its complement of such life convicts, reckless desperadoes, a source of constant anxiety to those in charge of them.
To follow this man on his reception and through his treatment will give a good idea of prison lifein Burmah. His clothing was first issued to him; a loin cloth of coarse brown stuff and a strip of sacking to serve as his bed. His hair was close cut and his head was as smooth as the palm of his hand, save for one small tuft left on the crown; his name was registered in the great book, and he was led to the blacksmith’s shop, where his leg irons were riveted on him, anklets in the form of a heavy ring to which a connecting ring with two straight iron bars was attached. At the same time a neck ring of iron as thick as a lead pencil was welded on, with a plate attached, nine inches by five, on which a paper recording the personal description of the individual was pasted. This was called thethimbone, and its adoption became necessary through the frauds practised by the convicts.
At one time every new arrival was given a tin medal stamped with his number, which was hung round his neck with a string. But it was found that these records were frequently exchanged among the prisoners. A prisoner sentenced to a long term often assumed the identity of a short term convict, who accepted the more irksome penalty for a money consideration. At the present time, with the irremovablethimbone, these exchanges are rendered impossible. It is strange that such a simple process of preserving identities is not enforced in Siberia, where Russian convicts have long made a practice of fraudulent exchanges.
“If there is a type of revolting human ugliness,it is the Burmese gaol-bird,” says the same authority, “with his shaven head and the unmistakable stamp of criminal on his vicious face. All convicts seem to acquire that look of low, half-defiant cunning from their associates, and a physiognomist would not hesitate to describe nine-tenths of the men before us as bad characters if he saw them in any society. Many of this gang are Dacoits, and their breasts, arms and necks are picture galleries of tattooed devices, fondly cherished by the owners as charms against death or capture. Some have rows of unsightly warts, like large peas, upon the breast and arms which mark the spots where the charms have been inserted,—scraps of metal and other substances inscribed with spells known only to the wise men who deal in such things. One or two natives of India are amongst the gang, and these are conspicuous by the absence of the tattooing universally found on the Burman’s thighs. A powerfully built convict at the end of the rank, in addition to the usual irons, has his ankle rings connected by a single straight bar, so that he can only stand with his feet twelve inches apart. ‘Look at that fellow,’ says the superintendent; ‘he is in for five years, and his time would have been up in three months. A week ago he was down at the creek with his gang working timber, and must needs try to escape. He was up to his waist in water and dived under a raft, coming to the surface a good fifty yards down the stream. The guard nevermissed him until a shout from another man drew their attention, when they saw him swimming as hard as he could go, irons and all, towards a patch of jungle on the opposite side.’ Amongst a repulsive horde this man would take first place without competition. ‘Reckless scoundrel,’ is written on every line of his scowling face, and such he undoubtedly is. After the severe flogging his attempted escape earned for him, he assaulted and bit his guards and fellow prisoners, and the bar between his anklets was the immediate result.
“Conspiracies to break out are not uncommon, although they are seldom matured, owing to the system of never allowing one batch of men to remain together for more than a night or two in succession. A determined attempt to ‘break gaol’ took place in the great central prison at Rangoon a few years ago, resulting in a stand-up fight between warders and convicts. Some twenty ‘lifers’ confined in a large stone cell, whose gate opened upon their workyard, were the culprits. The hammers and road metal which provided their daily labour were kept in this yard, and the first aim of the convicts was to obtain access to the shed where these weapons lay. About midnight the attention of the sentry was called to the illness of one of the occupants of the cell by another man, who was apparently the only wakeful member of the gang besides the sham invalid. A Madrassee apothecary was called to the grated window of the den, and obtainedsufficient information to enable him to prepare some remedy. On his return with the potion, seeing that all the convicts were sound asleep, he did not attempt to give the medicine to the sick man through the window, but against the rules caused the guard to open the gate intending to take it into the cell himself. The instant the gate was opened, the slumbering convicts sprang to their feet, rushed at the apothecary and knocked him down in such a position that his recumbent form effectually prevented the guard behind from closing it. They quickly made their way into the workshed, and arming themselves with hammers and stones, prepared to resist the warders who had been attracted by the noise and the shouts of a sentry on the wall. A furious conflict now ensued between the warders, big, muscular Punjabees armed with heavy cudgels, and the convicts with their extemporised weapons. The warders were reinforced until both parties were fairly matched, and the rough and tumble fight in the dark progressed amid extraordinary confusion. The workyard was overlooked by two huge wings of the gaol in which a large number of prisoners were confined; these men, roused to a frantic pitch of excitement by the uproar below, dashed about their wards like caged animals with screams and yells of encouragement to their fellows; while the sentries in the watch towers on the main wall kept up a desultory fire in the air to prove to the convicts the impossibility of escaping, even ifthey should succeed in scaling the high spiked iron railing of their yard.
“The combatants fought hand-to-hand for some time, neither side gaining any advantage, whilst above the roar of human voices and the sickening crash of heavy clubs on the convicts’ shaven skulls the alarm bell clashed out warning that military assistance from the distant barracks was required. Warders had been summoned from all parts of the gaol, and a general outbreak seemed imminent when the appearance of the superintendent with a revolver suddenly decided matters. Panic seized the convicts; they dropped their weapons with one accord and crowded back into the cell, leaving two of their number dead in the yard. It would be impossible to conceive a more ghastly sight than that row of naked, trembling convicts as the warders now ranged them in the vault-like den to be counted. The dim light of oil-lanterns fell upon upturned faces, before repulsive enough, but now positively startling in their hideous disfigurement of dust and clotting blood. Every man was streaming with blood from wounds about the head, more or less severe, for the convicts had fought with the desperation of men to whom success meant liberty. They were doomed to drag out their lives in that earthly hell; a flogging was the worst that could happen to them if their attempt failed, possible freedom the reward if it succeeded. Who would not risk the first for the slenderest chance of the second? Theytook the risk and fate had gone against them. The excitement was over, and they huddled together against the wall of the cell in an agony of fear for the consequences their night’s work would bring upon them to-morrow, staring enviously at those whose wounds necessitated their removal to hospital. For them, at least, a few days’ reprieve was certain before they suffered lash and punishment drill.”
PRISONS OF CHINA
Great cruelty in the administration of the law in China—Experience of Lord Loch—Iron collar, chains and creeping vermin—Earth maggot—The “Ling che,” a slow ignominious death—Internal arrangement of prisons—Whole families detained as hostages for fugitive offenders—Mortality large; dead-house always full—Military guard—Public flogging of thieves—The “Cangue” or heavy wooden collar—Six classes of punishment—Method of infliction—Chinese punishment in the seventeenth century—Some cruel practices of to-day.
According to Chinese law, theoretically, no prisoner is punished until he confesses his crime. He is therefore proved guilty and then by torture made to acknowledge the accuracy of the verdict. The cruelty shown to witnesses as well as culprits is a distinct blot on the administration of justice in China. The penal code is ferocious, the punishments inflicted are fiendishly cruel, and the prisons’ pig-stys in which torture is hardly more deadly than the diseases engendered by the most abominable neglect. The commonest notions of justice and fair play are continually ignored. The story is told of a wretched old man who had been detained yearsin the filthy prison of Peking, dragging out a weary existence in the company of criminals of the worst description. According to his own account, he had been living on his land with his wife and family. One night he took out his gun to scare crows and trespassers off his ripening crops, in the execution of which innocent design he let off his weapon two or three times. On the following day a man was found murdered on the far confines of his land. Immediately he was apprehended, not as one might suppose, to give evidence or relate what he knew, but to be made to confess that he himself was the author of the crime. To extort this confession he was cruelly and repeatedly tortured. “Of course,” he said, “I shall never leave this prison alive, for they will keep me here until, reduced to the last extremity by torture, I confess myself guilty of a crime of which I am entirely innocent, and when I do confess they will cut off my head on the strength of that confession.” This is founded on unimpeachable fact, and the case is constantly recurring under different forms. “In China it is not the prosecution who prove a prisoner guilty, but the prisoner who has to prove that he is not guilty.” In this same prison of Peking a visitor once was permitted to enter a chamber in which was a barred cage eight feet by eight, and in it twenty-six human beings were incarcerated, of whom six were dying of gaol fever. He asked that they might be taken out of the cage “in order that he might medicallyexamine and if possible relieve them. The gaoler opened the door of the cage and seizing the six by their pig-tails, or by any other portion of their bodies that happened to present itself, dragged them out one by one over the pavement into the courtyard outside. No doubt several of these men were innocent of the crimes imputed to them and were waiting to be tortured into a confession of guilt.”
Few Europeans have experienced imprisonment in China. One Englishman, Lord Loch, has given an account of the sufferings he endured when treacherously captured during the war of 1860. “The discipline of the prison was not in itself very strict and had it not been for the starvation, the pain arising from the cramped position in which the chains and ropes retained the arms and legs, with the heavy drag of the iron collar on the bones of the spine, and the creeping vermin that infested every place, together with the occasional beatings and tortures which the prisoners were from time to time taken away for a few hours to endure, returning with bleeding legs and bodies and so weak as to be scarcely able to crawl, there was no very great hardship to be endured.... There was a small maggot which appears to infest all Chinese prisons: the earth at a depth of a few inches swarms with them; they are the scourge most dreaded by every poor prisoner. Few enter a Chinese prison who have not on their bodies or limbs some wounds, either inflicted by blows to which they have beensubjected, or caused by the manner in which they have been bound; the instinct of the insect to which I allude appears to lead them direct to these wounds. Bound and helpless, the poor wretch cannot save himself from their approach, although he knows full well that if they once succeed in reaching his lacerated skin, there is the certainty of a fearful lingering and agonising death before him.”
Punishment varies in cruelty and intensity with the crime; for the murder of a father, mother, or several people of one family the sentence is “ignominious and slow death.” This method is known asling che, and the victim is attached to a post and cut to pieces by slow degrees, the pieces being thrown about among the crowd. This cruel death was more than once publicly inflicted in Peking during the year 1903. Some of the most horrible passages in thePeking Gazetteare those which announce the infliction of this awful punishment on madmen and idiots who in sudden outbreaks of mania have committed parricide. For this offence no infirmity is accepted, even as a palliation. A culprit condemned toling cheis tied to a cross, and while he is yet alive gashes are made by the executioner on the fleshy parts of his body, varying in number according to the disposition of the judge. When this part of the sentence has been carried out, a merciful blow severs the head from the body. It is said that the executioner can be bribed to put sufficient opium into the victim’s last meal to makehim practically unconscious, or even to inflict the fatal stab in the heart at first, which should ordinarily be the last. Common cases of capital punishment are comparatively merciful, for the executioners are so skilful that they generally sever the head from the trunk with one swift blow. The Chinese prefer death by strangulation to any other form, because it enables the body to appear unmutilated in the next world. This feeling has such a hold on them that when four victims were decapitated in Peking, their relatives instantly claimed the bodies and sewed on the heads. The permission to do this was regarded by them as a great privilege and a mitigation of the sentence.
The prisons of China are made up of a certain number of wards according to their class. Thus, for example, the prisons of the respective counties of Nam-hoi and Pun-yu in the province of Kwang-tung, which are first-class county prisons, consist (besides chambers in which prisoners on remand are confined) of six large wards in each of which are four large cells, making in all twenty-four cells. The same arrangements may be said to prevail in all county prisons. The walls of the various wards abut one upon another and form a parallelogram. Round the outer wall a paved pathway runs upon which the gates of the various wards open. This pathway is flanked by a large wall which constitutes the boundary wall of the prison. The cells are of considerable size. The four cells in each ward arearranged two on a side so as to form the two sides of a square, and they much resemble cattle sheds, the front of each being enclosed in a strong palisading of wood which extends from the ground to the roof. They are paved with granite, and each is furnished with a raised wooden platform on which the prisoners sit by day and sleep by night. They are polluted with vermin and filth of almost every kind, and the prisoners seldom or never have an opportunity afforded them of washing their bodies or even dressing their hair, as water in Chinese prisons is a scarce commodity and hair-combs are almost unknown. The approach to the prison is a narrow passage at the entrance of which there is an ordinary sized door. Above this entrance door is painted a tiger’s head with large staring eyes and widely extended jaws. Upon entering, the visitor finds an altar on which stands the figure of a tiger hewn in granite. This image is regarded as the tutelary deity of the prison gates. The turnkeys worship it morning and evening, with the view of propitiating it and securing its watchfulness, gaolers in China being held responsible for the safe custody of the miserable beings who are entrusted to their care. At the base of the large wall which forms the prison boundary there are several hovels—for by no other name can they be designated—in some of which all the female felons are lodged and in others whole families who are held as witnesses by the mandarins.
There is a law which admits of the seizure and detention as hostages of entire families, any members of which have broken the laws of the empire and fled from justice. Such hostages are not liberated until the offending relatives have been secured, and consequently they are not unfrequently imprisoned during a period of five, ten or twenty years. Indeed, many of them pass the period of their natural lives in captivity. Thus the mother or aunt of Hung Sow-tsuen, the leader of the Taiping rebellion, died after an imprisonment of several years in the prison of the Nam-hoi magistrate at Canton. The unoffending old woman grievously felt this long detention for no crime or offence of her own. Should the crime of the fugitive be a very aggravated and serious one, such, for example, as an attempt upon the life of the sovereign of the empire, it is not unusual to put the immediate, although perfectly innocent, relations of the offender to death, while those who are not so nearly related to him are sent into exile. In 1803 an attempt was made to assassinate the emperor Ka-hing. The assassin was no sooner apprehended than he was sentenced to be put to death by torture; and his sons who were young children were put to death by strangling. The mortality in Chinese prisons is very great. The bodies of all who die in prison are thrown into the dead-house and remain there until the necessary preliminaries, which are of a very simple kind, have been arranged for their interment.In the prisons of Canton these receptacles may be seen full of corpses and presenting the most revolting and disgusting appearance. Some of the unhappy victims have died from the effects of severe and often repeated floggings. Others have fallen victims to one or other of the various diseases which such dens are only too well fitted to create and foster. In the prison of Pun-yu there were on one occasion in the dead-house five bodies, all with the appearance of death from starvation—a form of capital punishment which in China is frequently inflicted upon kidnappers and other grave offenders. Directly in front of the door of the dead-house and at the base of the outer boundary wall of the prison there is a small door of sufficient size to admit of a corpse being passed through. The corpses of all who die in prison are carried through this aperture into the adjoining street for burial. It would be paying too much reverence to the deceased prisoner to allow the remains to be carried through the gates of theyamunto which the prison is attached.
In point of appearance the unfortunate inmates of Chinese prisons are perhaps of all men the most abject and miserable. Their death-like countenances, emaciated forms and long coarse black hair, which, according to prison rules, they are not allowed to shave, give them the appearance rather of demons than of men, and strike the mind of the beholder with impressions of gloom and sorrow that are not easily forgotten. Prisoners in every wardwith one exception only wear fetters. The exception is the prisoner who is supposed to be more respectable and who conducts himself better than any of his fellows in crime. He is allowed the full freedom of his limbs and as a mark of confidence and trust the privilege is conferred upon him of acting as overseer and guardian of his comrades. The dress worn by Chinese prisoners consists of a coat and trousers of a coarse red fabric. On the back of the coat is printed in large indelible characters the name of the prison in which its wearer is confined so that should he escape from durance he would at once be recognised as a runaway or prison breaker, and his recapture facilitated. Each prison is presided over by a governor who has under him a considerable number of turnkeys. Thus each large prison in Canton has a governor, twenty-four turnkeys, thirty-seven watchmen and fifteen spearmen. In a barrack beyond the doors or gates of each prison is a resident guard of soldiers. The turnkeys, watchmen, spearmen, and so forth, become the most casehardened and incorrigible of the criminals from the great amount of misery which they daily witness. The policemen who are attached to theyamunare also men of vile character, and it is unfortunately too common for them to share the booty with the thief and hoodwink or deceive the magistrate.
The governor of a Chinese prison purchases his appointment from the local government. He receivesno salary from the state and is compelled, therefore, to recoup himself by exacting money from such relatives or friends of prisoners as are in good circumstances and naturally anxious that their unhappy friends should escape as far as possible the sad deprivations and cruelties for which Chinese prisons are so notorious. To each prison a granary is attached in which rice of the cheapest and coarsest kind is stored by the governor. This rice is one of his perquisites, and he retails it to the prisoners at a remunerative price. Vegetables and firewood for culinary purposes, both of which are daily offered for sale to the prisoners, are also supplied by him. As the government daily allowance to each prisoner does not exceed twenty-fivecash, the prisoners who are without friends are not often able to buy even vegetables and firewood.
Besides the prison in which convicts are confined there is also within the precincts of theyamuna house of detention. This is neither so large nor so strongly enclosed as the common gaol. Generally, in such a house of detention there is a large chamber which is set apart for the reception of prisoners on remand, who have friends able and willing to satisfy the demands of the governor. By this arrangement such prisoners avoid the misery of being shut up in the same ward with men of the vilest character and often most loathsome condition, covered with filth or suffering from various kinds of cutaneous diseases. The arrangement is a greatadvantage to the governor of the gaol and to all prisoners who can afford to pay for it, but a great disadvantage to other inmates. The space required for the convenience of prisoners who have friends to look after their wants leaves very little room indeed for the reception of the great majority of the poorer criminals, who are huddled together in a common ward sometimes too crowded to allow its occupants to lie down. In the city of Canton, on the streets adjoining theyamuns, there are other houses of detention, all densely crowded.