Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 197, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1911 — OLD TRIALS BY WATER [ARTICLE]

OLD TRIALS BY WATER

INNOCENT WOULD SINK WHILE 1 GUILTY WOULD FLOAT. ■ Modern Survival of the Ordeal In Dalmatia—How It Is Employed by the Tibetans. Throwing people into the water to •let it determine their innocence or guilt was widely In use in tbe seventeenth and .eighteenth centuries. A Synod of West Prussia, forbade its use in 1745. Sporadic cases, however, occurred during the whole of the nineteenth century. Fros. E. P, Evans wrote in 1895 of its use in Dalmatia, where in some districts it was still customary to throw all the women into the water on a specified day to see whether they would sink" or swim. A rope was attached to each in order to save from drowning those who proved their innocence by sinking, while those believed to be guilty because they floated were also rescued and made to promise to forsake their evil ways on pain of being stoned. A traveler has described a modern survival of the ordeal used in detecting thieves in southern Russia, says the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette. All the servants of the household where the robbery occurred were assembled and as many balls of bread were made as there were suspected persons. A sorceress then addressed each*, one of the number, saying that the particular ball of bread which she held in her hand would sink or swim as the party addressed was guilty or Innocent. She then flung it into the water. Boiling water was used in ordeals by the Persians and It is referred to in the A vesta. It contained both the sacred elements, water and fire, suggesting the deluge past and the fiery doom of the future. In the simplest form of the hot water test the bare arm was plunged to the wrist in trivial cases, and to the elbow in more seftous trials, usually to bring out rings or coins thrown therein. In Tibet plaintiff and defendant settle their cause judicially by plunging their arms into boiling water containing a black and a white stone, when he who brings up the white, stone wins the verdict. A King of the Goths in the seventh century, with the sanction of the Council of Toledo, recommended the boiling test for crime.