Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1893 — Executions In China. [ARTICLE]

Executions In China.

The correspondent of a Shanghai journal, writing from Paoting Fu,the capital of the province in which Pekin is situated, says that the population of provincial capitals are quite blase in the matter of punishments and executions. It is exceedingly common to 1 hear the sound of clanking fetters in the street, and presently meet several unwashed, unshorn, haggard, and miserable wretches, looking like victims escaped for a moment from Dante’s luferno. The ghastly processions that pass to and fro from the execution ground scarcely excite remark. A few delighted boys run and caper in advance, the bystanders shout out jesting remarks and witty salutations to the proudly self-conscious executioher, and the poor, half-stupefied wretch who peers out from the tattered coverings oi the cart. As they reach the execution ground, marked merely by a post erected where the roadway is a few feet wider than is common, the scattered attendants close in hurriedly, the neighboring cake-sellers and hucksters move up to the center of attraction, and for perhaps three minutes all business within a radius of a.hundred feet or more is suspended. Then the good-natured crowd breaks up laughing, the empty cart with the guard of mounted soldiers returns to the yamsn, and if one passes the spot half an hour later, there will be only the trodden dust by the roadside to mark the tragedy that every dweller in the city holds so lightly.— [London Times.