A HORRIBLE DEATH.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XVIII, Issue 959, 14 April 1888, Page 3

A HORRIBLE DEATH.

Yesterday (says a recent issue of the North China Daily News) we visited the Chen-siens Yamen in the city, for the purpose of requiring info the truth of the ; statement that a criminal was exposed in a and was being therein starved and tortured to death. Such an event is of rare occurrence in Shanghai of recent years, and its revival by the new district warden is somewhat surprising. The unfortunate creature stood upright in a bamboo cage about 6ft. high, with his neck through a cage by which .he-would have .been almost suspended—or, at least,'the tips o( his toes would barely have touched the bottom —had it not been that some person had placed a large, stone under the man's; feet. By this his sufferings were : greatly relieved and his chances of death by strangulation reduced. He did not look particularly distressed at his position, amid the raillery and jeers of {he spectators, who displayed an almost fiendish delight in nocking his state, to which he seemed not loth to reply with interest, and ' & perfect fire of abuse was kept up tween the cruel people end the wretched prisoner. We learned that in the morning a friend of his gave him some rice and water, and also prepared a pipe of opium with which t,o soothe his sufferings. If this humane friend, however, were detected in his merciful ministrations by the authorities there is ho doubt that he would be punished oeverely perhaps even capped into a similar cage. It would seem that the Yemen people make no provision for providing the prisoner while in the cage with any kind of food, and that they also direct dire threats against persons who might give him any. The man is described as a desperate thief, and has been in prison 10 years. His last offence was stripping other prisoners of their clothes and stealing everything else that these wretched beings possessed. His legs are weighted with heavy chains, and altogether his tortures in the horrible contrivance give a strong contradiction to the belief that the Chinese are becoming more humane in their judicial system. In no other country of the world boasting of any sort of civilisation would such a thing be tolerated, and the worst of it is that the people generally applaud the cruelty of the Chea-siens, and have no sympathy with the unfortunate men.