The Atherstone, Nuneaton, and Warwickshire Times. — 1884-09-20 (Atherstone, Warwickshire, England)

THE HORHOR3 OF • CHINESE PRISON.—As we entered the yard 50 or 60 men swarmed out front the dark doorways which led into their dens, all heavily chained, with long, coarse, matted hair, hanging in wisps, or standing on end round their death-like faces, in filthy rags, with emaciated forms, caked with dirt, and bearing marks of the torture; and nearly all with sore eyes, swelled and bleeding lips, sk:n diseases, and putrefying sores. These surrounded us closely, and as, not without a shudder, I passed through them and entered one of their dens, they prettied upon us, blocking out the light, uttering discordant cries, and clamouring with one voice " Kaui-slar "—i.t., backsheesh ; looking more like demens than living men, as abject and depraved as crime, despair, and cruelty can make them. Within, the blackness, the filth, the stench, overpowering even in this cool reather, the rubbish of rags and potslu rds, cannot be described. Here, in semi-starvation and misery, with nameless cruelties practised on them without restraint, festering in one depraved' mass, are the tried and untried, the condemned, the guilty. and innocent ; the murderer and pirate; the debtor and petty thief, all huddled together; without hope of exit, except to the adjacent judgment seat, with its horrors of " the question by torture," or to " the field of blood " not far away. On earth ran there be seen a spectacle more hideous than that of these abject wretches, with heavy fetters eating into the flesh of their neck and ankles it on their wasted skeletons, covered with vermin and running sores, there is ally flesh left), their thick, matted, bristly, black hair—contrasting with the shaven heads of the free—the long, broken claws of their fingers and toes, the hungry look in their emaciated faces, and their clamorous cry, "Eum-ska duet-s/ma.'" They thronged round us clattering their chains, one man saying that they had so little rice they had to "drink the foul water to fill themselves ; " another shrieked, "Would I were in your prison in Hong Kong," and this was chorused by many voices saying, "In your prison at Hong Kong they have fish and vegetables, and int .re rice than they can eat, and baths, and beds to sleep on: good, good is the prison of your Queen ! btu higher swelled the cry of "Kton-sha ;" and as ice could not give alms to several hundreds, we eluded them, though with difficulty; and, as we squeezed through the narrow door, execrations followed us; and high above the clang of the fetters and tile general din rose the cry, "Foreign devils" (Fenliwai), as we passed out into sunshine and liberty, and the hey was turned upon them and their misery. We went into three other large wards, foul with horror and seething with misery, and into a smaller one nearly as bad, whete fifteen womem were incarcerated, some of them wit'. infants devoured by cutaneous diseases. Several of them said that they are there for kidnapping, but others are hostages for criminal relatives who who have not yet been captured. This imprison. ment of hostages is in accordance with a law which authorisrs the seizure and detention of persons and families belonging to criminals who have fl t or are in ecncealmeut. Such are imprisoned till ::at guilty relative is brought to justice, for months. years, or even for a lifetime. Two of these women told us that they had been there for twenty years. —"The Golden Chersonese and the tray Thither," by Isabella L. Bird.  Oa Tuesday afcerncon, a man named Seymour, a sawyer, committed suicide by cutting his throat. lie ran into a bairdrerser's shop in the Roman road, London, and seizing a razor, indicted a fatrful gash in his throat, and thr:n rushed out into the street, where he fell. He expired in half-an-hour.