Year: 1874

by mutllating children, unhappily was
at one time followed as profession by
a body of villains who had reduced Il to
a system. In the preliminary chapters
OF LHomme Qui Rit, Victor Hugo gives
an account of the process which is full
OF painful interest. They call them
selves "Comprachois," and they labored
to fill the demand which existed a
couple of centuries ago, in almost every
European country, for dwarfs and dis
torted human beings for the royal pala
cies and for the homes of the wealthy
nobility. The King must have his mis-
shapen testers, the fine lady her rfantastic
page or footman; the nobleman his
hunch-back lackey; and even the Sultan
his grotesque buffoon for the serlaoio.
The demand was far greater than the
supply afforded by the freaks of nature.
and the Comprachois undertook to make
up the deficiency. They fabricated
monsters on large scale. The head
quarters OF this infamous fraternity
was in England, but its operations
We're extended to other countries. The
organization had its origin, we believe
in Spain.


The Camprachois procured children
for their purpose in various WAYS.
Sometimes there was an heir to an es-
tate who was in the way of somebody,
and he would be sold to the order to be
mutilated beyond recognition. Some
times pauper and orphan children would
be disposed of by relatives who did not
wish to take care of them; and often,
again, when the raw material was not
offered in sufficient quantities, the
Camprachois would kidnap children for
their purpose. Once in the hands,
there was no possibility that q
child could be rescued without mutila-
ton. Taken when very young, they
were as Victor Hugo expressed it,
touched up so that their parents would
not recognize them" Sometimes the
Camprachois would operate on the
spine in such way that the child would
have a bumped back; or they would
leave the dorsal column straight and
alter the countenance. They would cut
the muscles so that the little one would
wear perpetual and diabolical grin, or
would have its face set permanently in
some fantastic shape. By peculiar
process the growth of another would he
stunted so that the child would be
dwarf; while in other cases the joints and
muscles of the limbs would be so treated
that they would acquire unnatural sup
pleness. These patients would be sold
to showmen who trained them as gym
nasts. Sometimes, also, the throat
would be mutilated for the purpose of
giving the child peculiar vocal powers.
Charles II. had a being thus mutilated
whose Office it was to move around the
palace at night, signaling the hours by
growing like cock. A certain DR..
Conquest, of London, wrote volume
on this kind of surgery, in which he de-
scribes the process as if they had
rightful place among the practices of
science.


The Comprachois were suppressed by
statute'under William and Mary. Their
counterparts are said, however, to exist
at this day in China. The Chinese op-
orators take child two or three years
old, and put it in a porcelain vase of
some odd shape, but without lid or bot
tom, so that the head and feet are ex-
posed. In the day time the vase is
kept upright; at night it is laid on its
side, so that the child may sleep. The
child grows filling up the spaces in the
vase with its compressed flesh and
twisted bones. This growth in the bot
tie lasts for several years. At given
period it is without remedy. When
the mould has taken, and the monster
is made, they break the vase, and the
child comes out of it.-Ib-Day.