Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1884 — EXECUTIONS AT CANTON. [ARTICLE]

EXECUTIONS AT CANTON.

Criminals Beheaded or Djrla| Upon the ' Crow at the Bate at One a Day. Crime does not go unpunished in one part of China. The professional guide of the citt, indeed, shows the execution pound of Canton with an honest pride, u is not a pleasant place to look at on a wet morning, and to a criminal must have a very depressing appearance. Yet, with the exception of three or four wooden crosses leaning up against the wall, there was nothing to indicate that the scene had ever been one of wholesale butchery. Still here it was that, in 1855, nearly 50,000 so-called rebels were beheaded. A short lane, seventyfive feet long by about twenty-five feet wide, narrower at one end than at the other, was nearly filled with earthenware pots put out to dry. Very muddy and sloppy, there was no place marked off' for executions, and I stepped down to a. little hut at the end of a lane to make the acquaintance of the executioner, who, I learned, lived there, before I found out that the beheading was performed wherever there was a vacant space. The functionary was not at home, and his wife was showing me the heavy two-handled, broad-bla‘ded knife With which he operated, offering, in fact, to sell it for $2, when a little crowd appeared in the lane, and a mad bound at the arms was led to an open space among the pots. My idea that an execution was about to take place was now confirmed by the owner of the hut coming for his knife. The culprit wa3 evidently also informed of the nature of the ceremony about to take place, for he looked very melancholy, though I afterward learned that some opium had been given him. As the executioner came up a couple of policemen pushed the victim down upon knees in the mud, and bound his legs to his arms as he knelt, then pulling back the collar of his sliirt forced his head forward, while the executioner, with much care, selected an earthen pot in which" to catch the prisoner’s skull.

These preliminaries having been settled, the headsman stood over the prisoner and with two cuts completely severed the neck—one, indeed, had put the criminal beyond all pain. The .head, which had fallen into the pot, was covered up, the bleeding trunk was picked up by the relatives of the convict, the crowd separated, and after some financial transactions between the officer who superintended the execution and the executioner, the latter walked off to the hut, for all was over, the whole affair not having occupied ten minutes. I was told that just then executions took place at about the rate of one a day. Generally they took the form of beheadings, but occasionally people were submitted to the slow death upon the crosses against the wall, when, of course, the spectacle was more barbarous. A woman was executed the next day for killing her husband, and received eight wounds from the knife of the executioner before she was finally put out of her agony; but I could not fincl that hers was a frequent case, nor did I meet any one iri China who had seen more cruelty practiced than that.' 1 The “cutting into a thousand pieces” now generally resolves itself into some such mods of dispatch.