St. Paul daily globe., 1890-05-12
man and talks very entertainingly. Rev. s.
G. Smith and several others also talked.
CHINESE TORTURE.
A Few of the Means Used to Com
pei Prisoners to Testify.

Fortn1ghtly Review.
Suspension of the victim by the
thumbs, with the arms bent behind the
back and the toes only touching the
ground, is common practice. There is
used also in the case of great criminals,
and especially in the southern prov
inces, a mode OF torture called ''kneel-
ing on chains" The victim may be
with his arms extended, and a lictor
standing ready to fog him if he lower
them; or he may be suspended from
the ceiling, face downward, by a
cord attached to his thumbs and great
toes, and lowered till the weight
Of the body rests Oh the knees ON the
chain. Quite recently, according to a
Chinese newspaper, two men charged
with belonging to a secret association in
Hupeh were made to kneel on sharp
chains and receive 1000 blows with the
light bamboo to elicit confession, There
had been, apparently, some indications
Of local disturbance. and these men
were arrested as ringieaderS. Suspeu
sion. too, by one wrist and ankle; sus-
pension by pole passed under the arm
pit, with the hands tied under the knees,
and various other crueltieS are said to
be practiced occasionally in southern
yamens. Yet there are in the penal
code stringent provisions against the in
Fiction of illegal punishment, and the
penalty if death ensue is severe.
a mandarin has quite recently, for
instance, come to serious grief for de-
capitating man where law called for
strangulation, the point being that dis
memberment of the body is disgrace,
and was in excess, therefore, of the
legal sentence. But it may easily be
conceived that in the matter of torture
and in all ordinary cases the following
provision in section 413 OF the Chinese
law is sufficiently elastic to shield a
multitude of deiinquencies:
"When it so happens that immedi-
ately after the inf1ictiOn OF punishment
on the upper part of the back of the
thighs, and in lawful manner. the
culprit commits suicide or dies in any
manner in consequence of the punish
ment he had undergone. no person shall
be held responsible for the same"
Unless case had been so glaring as
to excite the whole neighbOrhOod-
the Chinese are not easily moved
means would be found to hush up or
explain away improprieties. The power
and venality Of official underlingS, the
general prevalence OF bribery. the diff
culties attending appeals and the alb
sence Of that publicity which renders
illegality practically impossible i'll Eng
land, makes it very difficult to secure
the correction Of injustice in China.
Cases do, however, occasionally hap
pen, and one such was recorded in the
Pekin Gazette last September. A draper
at small town in Central China found
in the. morning that his shop had
been plundered. Going out to pros
pect. he found some bits of cloth on
the river bank and little further up
junk at anchor. He then seems to have
stretched point, declared that he had
found the cloth Oh the junk, and so pro-
cured the arrest of all on board. The
magistrate forthwith employed torture
tortured the crew into admitting
themselves accessories, and tortured to
death the two men. father and son, who
had chartered the boat. When the case
came before the chief provincial author
tiles OH report, they considered it SO un-
satisfactory that they sentenced the
draper to be strangled for giving ma
liciouS false evidence resulting in the
death of the accused, and the magistrate
to be cashiered and banished for care
lessness and illegal torture.