The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-03-18
THEIR GRAVES HIDDEN.
Facts from History About Mysterious
Disappearance.
Ingenious Suicides. Political Death
Traps, Professional Kidnapers-
Many Unexplained Cases.
From The cincinnati Enquirer.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The total disappearance of men and
children among nations in a state of bar
barism is generally ascribed to the
ravages Of wild beasts or the cunning of
hostile tribes, but it is a curious fact
that occurrences of that sort
become more frequent aud less explicable
as civilization grows more and more com
pick.
In the domiuious of the British Empire
alone some $ 700 individuals vanish every
year with a completeness which often
would almost seem to disprove the
philosophical axiom that no particle of
matter is ever entirely lost. The in
genuity OF suicides, no doubt, may have
something to do with that result, for
many beings of our species seem to have
inherited a share of that instinct that
teaches our dumb fellow-creatures to die
in well-selected hiding places.
Accidents, such as the drowning of
stray drunkards, might solve many mys-
teries Of large riversid towns, but an
uglier clew was suggested by the reyela-
ton OF a recent Thug trial before the
District Court Of Barrapore, in Southern
HndOstan.
GO ahead and do your worst" yelled
one of the defiant prisoners; but do not
Halter Yourself with the idea that your
lawyers and foreign spies can ever stamp
out Fhuggism. What avail all your little
tricks against the advantage of the five
chances"
The interpreter was unable to specify
the meaning of the latter remark, but a
HindOO. who on a former occasion had
turned flTnaT1 4 avid ppp aCra a of
professional assassins. explained. The
Thugs, he said, believe in the occasional
interCesSiOn of their prOIectress, the
goddess, Kali, but rely on il that even in
the absence of their titular deity they
can trust their safety to the following
five chances of escape form the penalty of
their crimes
THE FIVE CHANCES.
No visit" or that well-hidden grave
of their victim may for Years never be ap-
preached by the foot of man. No
suspicion or that travellers or hunters
may visit the spot without suspecting
that they are walking over a graveyard.
mo discovery or that their suspicious
may be aroused by such signs as the
traces of a life-and-death struggle. but
they may fail to find the tomb itself mo
recognition, - or that the discoyeryof the
buried remains may not be followed by
the recognition, or as we should term it.
the Identification of the victims. No
proof, or in the event of the worst case
of all the above well founded hopes PROV
ing futile, the chance remains that the
agents of the law will fail to fasten the
proof of the crime upon its actual perpe-
traitors.
That programme of systematic murder
suggests a long chapter of disagreeable
possibilities in the labyrinth of our city
slums, but it is enough to remember that
hardly year passes without the discov-
cry of unidentified human remains in
sewers. canals and tenement cellars.
In many instances skeletons unearthed
in the suburbs even of our modern Amre-
lean towns have mouldered away till il
is impossible TO distinguish them
form the Omnipresent remains of
| the aborigines, whose notions OF a good
graveyard place, moreover, conceded
pretty often with the Caucasian idea OF
a fine town site. A convenient phe-
nomenon of graves" has ceased with
the age of miracles and il is worth
nothing that but for the rarest combina-
! tiOn of fOrtuitOuS circumstances the
| Cronin case would have been classed
with the mysteries of unexplained dis
| appearance
The traveller Georgewski describes an
/ interview with a Iakoot chief, whose
/ village
Where is that little girl 1 saw last
/ year, Inquired the traveller.
"Oh, She gone, ~ said the chieftain,
/ knocking the ashes off his homemade
/ pipe. she bawled so much / had to slam
! her brains out
! Such Yakoots are not the exclusive
/ product of Northern Siberia, and in coun-
! tries where the marriage laws are
very strict the subsoil of large cities has
/ become fairly "calcareous with baby
/ Skeletons as DR. Mantegazza expresses
/ it. And that even worse things are pos
! sible north of the Alps may be implied
/ from the statistics quoted by a CORE
/ spondent of the London Times, who
passionately urged the enactment of a
/ law making it unlawful TO insure the life
! OF minors. "itOften insures their death. -
! he says, land the records of the insur-
anCC companies reveal only a fraction OF
the crimes due TO that temptation. fol
in many cases the perpetrators of the
tiendish act get scared and avoid the
I risk of pOst-mortem inquest By pretend
/ ing to share his neighbours surprise al
/ the sudden disappearance Of a
/ youngster, and suggesting the probability
/ that he must have run away to try luck
/ somewhere else
MANY VICTIMS HIDDEN.
BurkerS, 100, may often prefer 10 hide
J their victims rather than trust to the
/ chance of the evidence of an unskillfuI
I Job escaping the keen eye of a medical ex
( aminer.
No wonder you complain ofhard times
/ why don't you charge a little less and get
rich in hurry" said the fellow with
/ cynic frankness, If only the doctors
would not oe so COMPOUNDED particular
about looking for sandbag marks"
Without such handicaps TO a successful
/ career many of the middle ages (espe
cially in italy made a regular business
of concocting poisons warranted to turn
! the young wives of old Bluebeards inc
( widows, and at the widow option would
also undertake to hide the corpse where
/ all the detectives of the district could not
/ find il on this side Of doomsday Ia
/ medieval Russia they had still stranger
/ specialists reliable ruttians who would
save the mother the trouble of making
/ away with superfluous child. and. il
/ desired take their measures in way to
20 make il appear that the infant had
! had been kldnaped.
-Four hundred years ago. when the
| despots Of continental Europe dreaded