The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1906-03-27
THUGS OF INDIA
MEN WHO REDUCED MURDER TO
AN ART-vicTIMS SAG
RiFlCED.
Religious DeVotees That Divided
Spoils Of Their Crime With Tenn
ple-How Members of tho
Band Were Initiated.

Devi, the black browed consort of
silva the Destroyer. She is that terri
BILE parsonage who appears in the
Hindu Pantheon as a fierce but beau
tiful woman. riding on a tiger, or as a
bideous, blood stained Idol, garland
ed with skulls Banded together as
caste brothers, the Thugs hunted men
to offer them to the deity of destruc-
ton, and because she required a blood
less sacrifice they killed their victims
by sulfocation.
The Thugs, not being cannibals,
could not live by mere murder. So
they robbed their victims and divided
the spoils between themselves and the
temples OF Kali AS a religious body
they were protected by the Brahmins
and by pious but impecunious Rajas,
who licensed and taxed them. 1t was
an easy way for ruler to increase
his revenue and the victims were trav-
cling merchants who would not be
missed.
During the many centuries of war
and anarchy in India Thuggee -four
ished nightly. Under Aurungzebe, to
whom as a Moslem Kali was an ab-
horred idol, it suffered check.
The Emperor ordered the Thugs to be
strung up by the left hands in the
jungle and left there to die. The Ban
ians, prototypes of the sentimental
lists who present notorious modern
criminals with bouquets, banqueted
the strangers before the execution.
These terrors of the Indian high
way are now extinct, like the sabre
toothed tiger. About sixty years ago
many hundreds were executed and the
remainder transported or put to worl,
at tent making and other peaceful
trades, in strict confinement.
1t was the writer's privilege a few
years ago to visit one of the last of
the world famous strangers. He had
been captured young, and sentenced
to Imprisonment for life in a central
Indian Jail.
Nadhoo, so he was called, had been
SO long prisoner that he was rather
cared for as a curiosity, museum
specimen, than treated as a criminal.
He had become an expert in weaving
and when the looms were idle was by
no means unwilling to talk of his ex-
Ieriences as a Thug. He had been
horn in the caste, and devoted early
to the service of Kali. His father led
him to a secret place in the jungle
and initiated him, by the wierd rite
of the corpse and the dagger, into the
freemasonry of the brotherhood. He
learned their signs, how to interpret
the omen of the OWL the patter of
the 'ramawsi"-the secret language
of the craft Being a precocious youth,
as he said he was selected to play
the part of "talker," or confidence
man. The old man illustrated with
wrist and knuckle the act of tighten
ing the rumai, or handkerchief, round
the neck of the victim. He told how
the travellers were buried while warm
In the graves that had been prepared
fer them. For himself it was his des-
tiny to be a Thug 1T is our Gus
tom,' he said. "The potter's son takes
to the potter's wheel; the copper
smiths to the tinkling of the ham,
mer."
The garrotters who infested London
in the '60s choked, but did not kill the
late returning citizens. When chloro-
form came into use in surgery, the
underworld of crime, or at any rate
its master minds at one appreciated its
value 1t was painless, it was safe
for them; the victim would awake "a
a state of mental contusion-he could
give the police no clew. The drug oe-
came popular with the scientific Grim
tnals who operated on English rail-
road lines, where the closed compart-
ments secure privacy. Sometimes a
subject died under chloroform by mis-
adventure, but that might have hap
pened at the hands of a young med
lcal practitioner.
In Paris, however, the tricks of In
dian Thuggee have been closely fol-
lowed. Look over the files of the
Partisan papers of recent years, you
will find accounts of men found dead
in lonely places with leather cords
around their necks and empty pock-
cts.
robber dressed like a workman
or petit bourgeois would approach
belated clubman and offer him for
sale ring, ostensibly picked up from
the pavement. IL Monsieur did not
take alarm the robbers partner, VINO
had crept behind his victim, shared
his mouth and throat in a moose. Then
with quick jiu-jitsu turn the thug
heayed him off the ground on to his
own back, like sack of coal. and his
partner stepped up and rifed Mon
sieur's pockets. The latter was then
dropped on the pavement with force
enough to stun him and the thugs
made their escape.
To the Grave in a Cab.
The eccentric life of the late Horatio
Bright. wealthy retired manufacturer
of Sheffield England waa M moro 20