The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1876-05-27 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

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." Whereupon, 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 exceeding 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 deposited little ( fferings or presents of viands and wine; and on the day appointed a tom-tom procession with a sedan chair called at Mrs. Cheng's dwelling-place. Here they found the fair devotee 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 whwere 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 satisfied 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 element 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.