The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-05-27 00:00:00

VIM STOURBRIDGE OBSERVER.

A CHINESE WIDOW.

in most countries it common, if not fashionable, for
widows to seek for consolation in re-marriage. At Foochow,
It, China, however, it appears that bereaved ladies look upon
the loss of their spouses with more serious regret, if the story
which comes to us by the overland China mailicau be taken
as fairly illustrating the habits of the people who dwell in
that part of the Celestial Empire (remarks the Daily
Telegraph, in giving the following) :
A short time since a young woman belonging to the
Cheng family lost her spouse. There were amongst
her friends those who counselled a surcease of sorrow,
and who told the lady that they were intimately
acquainted with a gentleman to whose care she might
safely confide her future. But, unhappily, Mrs. Cheng
had made up her mind, and the decision she had come
to was none other than to hang herself, or. as the
phraseology is in that delightful corner of the globe,
"to ascend to heaven on the back of a stork." Where-
upon, as it was clear that the widow meant what she
said, tha relatives at once made arrangements that all
things should be done decently and in order. An ex-
ceeding tasteful and pretty gallows was erected at the
back of a temple lately built, and to the cross piece,
which overhung a table that could be easily kicked
away, was suspended a piece of red cord fitted with a
sliding knot. All along the road leading from the
lady's house to the place of immolation were de-
posited little ( fferings or presents of viands and
wine; and on the day appointed a tom-tom pro-
cession with a sedan chair called at Mrs. Cheng's
dwelling-place. Here they found the fair de-
votee ready, richly dressed in ornamental papers
like a goddess, and wearing on her head a paper
crown like that of a princess. Mounting the sedan
chair, on which there was placed a rei cloth, she gave
orders to the cortege to move forward, and, as they
went past the houses of her parents and friends to bid
them good-bye, she was "visible," we are told, "to
all the spectators, smoking a pipe and smiling."
Now and then she would stop to taste the offerings
which had been placed on the road for her, bowing to
the peop'e who looked on, and distributing red flowers
amongst them. At last, the scaffold being reached, she
ascended the platform in the presence of over seven
thousand people, about three thousand of whom were
splendidly attired as if attending a wedding, and bowed
to six men who were standing close by her, and wh-
were dressed in Court costume with crystal or gold
buttons. Then in a loud voice she called out,
"Heaven and earth and my friends, I am quite satis-
fied that lam dying in this manner." Having said
this, she jumped up on to the table, put her head in
the noose, and, whi-le a red cloth was being put over
her face, kicked the foot-rest away, and was forthwith
suspended. A quarter of an hour later on her body
was car ried home in the "sedan chair," and a funeral
ceremony, which the local chronicler estimates cost a
thousand dollar, took place. An unsatisfactory ele-
ment in the story is that, so delighted were the lady's
neighbour's at her method of quitting the world, that
a little boy who had witnessed the suicide went away
forthwith to a mill hard by, and most successfully hung
himself also.