CHARACTERISTIC CRIMES
Extended use of poison--Horrible stories--The Gaekwar of Baroda
charged with attempted poison of British resident, Colonel
Phayre--Diamond dust--Modern instances in Bombay--Murders
numerous--Police practices tending to concealment of
evidence--Decapitation--Strangulation--Stinging to death--Crushing
to death by an elephant--Leading traits in Indian criminals--Frauds
and forging--Story of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
The crime of secret poisoning as a lethal agent has ever largely
prevailed among a timid and deceitful people inclined to prefer
treachery to open violence. Under the Mussulman dynasty, assassination
by poison flourished exceedingly. It was effective in removing a
pestilent competitor or a too ambitious minister, a jealous or
untrustworthy wife or a hateful husband. The action of poison was
often mysterious and its symptoms obscure in countries where the light
of medical knowledge burned dimly, and when fatal might easily be
attributed to the noxious effect of the narcotics so largely indulged
in. The facility with which poison could be administered is constantly
indicated in the ancient writings; the Shastras or sacred books of
the Hindus, illustrating and explaining the Vedas, enlarge upon
the precautions that should be taken to protect the life of the rajah
or ruler from the subtle attacks of those around him. The danger of
death by poisoning lurks commonly in the domestic relations; a great
crowd of servants fill the purlieus of the palace, actively engaged
in the preparation of food and often at liberty to pass freely to and
fro. One Shastra lays down the necessary qualities of a cook as skill,
cleanliness, good character and even temper so that neither greed nor
revengeful feeling should incite him or her to mix something poisonous
in the pot. Another goes further and enlarges thus upon the methods
of detecting the personal characteristics of any one likely to give
poison,--“He does not answer questions, or only gives evasive answers;
he speaks nonsense; rubs the great toe along the ground and shivers;
his face is discoloured; he rubs the roots of the hair with his
fingers; and he tries by every means to leave the house.”
_Execution in India_
A common mode of execution in India, for which the elephant is
easily trained. In the early times of uprising or rebellion,
elephants were also used against the enemy, and would make short
work of piling up great pyramids of human heads.
[Illustration]
Some horrible stories are preserved of the ruthless administration
of poison by the Mohammedan sovereigns in India. Thus Tavernier, the
French traveller in the seventeenth century, says of the great state
prison of Gwalior that the emperor Aurungzeb was so sensitive lest he
should be stigmatised as a cruel prince he never suffered any great
subject to survive long in prison; at the end of the ninth or tenth
day the captive was removed by poison. No doubt Hyder Ali poisoned
a number of his English prisoners, and the inhuman murder of General
Mathews by Tippoo Sing is told by James Bristowe, who suffered a long
captivity under the same merciless monarch. The general was poisoned
under the most abominable circumstances. He was starving himself to
death rather than partake of the food issued to him, which he had
discovered contained poison. He studiously abstained from food for
several days until at length, tortured by overmastering hunger, he
devoured a plate of poisoned victuals and expired a few hours later in
violent convulsions. Another officer, Captain Romley, who saw himself
constrained to swallow poison, preferred to commit suicide by some
other means. Yet again, Lieutenant Fraser had poison forcibly poured
down his throat.
The traditions of the native states as to poisoning were preserved in
at least one till a late date in the last century. In Baroda, a Rajput
ruler, the Gaekwar Mulhar Rao, was the centre of a nest of criminal
intrigue rivalling anything in the past, as great a miscreant as any
one in his depraved court and more guilty than any of his subjects
in the use of his despotic power. Crime was the very breath of his
princely house; its members hated one another with bitter animosity;
assassination, largely by secret poisoning, was the chief avenue to
the throne, but all kinds of flagitious means were employed to secure
succession; charges backed by elaborate perjury were as often used to
upset a rival aspirant, as powdered arsenic or diamond dust to remove
him permanently to another sphere.
In the generation to which Mulhar Rao belonged, violent deaths had
constantly paved the way to the throne. One of five sons reigned in
1847. Two of his brothers died suddenly, and the prince himself a few
years later. He was succeeded by the fourth brother, Khander Rao, whom
the fifth, Mulhar Rao, at once attempted to poison, but he was detected
and taken into custody. Then Khander Rao sought to protect himself by
appealing to sorcery and black arts, and finding no certain security,
consulted a Brahmin who strongly recommended human sacrifices.
Whereupon Khander Rao selected thirty-five prisoners in his gaol of
Baroda, whom he ordered for execution at the rate of five daily.
Twenty-five had suffered before the butchery ceased. Mulhar Rao still
lived, and recourse was had to simpler methods; his cook was suborned
and provided with powdered arsenic, the most commonly tried drug, but
the poison failed in effect because, although the noxious food was
consumed, remedies were applied in time.
False testimony was next adduced, and Mulhar Rao was accused by
perjured witnesses of plotting to have his brother Khander Rao shot
by a European soldier, and on this flimsy pretence he was closely
confined in the prison of Cadra. He had sympathisers and they soon felt
the weight of Khander Rao’s hand. Four of them were seized, accused
of holding secret communication with the prisoner, and sentenced to
various forms of capital punishment. One was hanged, another beheaded,
a third blown from the mouth of a gun and the fourth was thrown under
the feet of an elephant to be trodden to death. Suddenly Khander Rao
himself died, not without suspicion of foul play, and Mulhar Rao walked
straight from the gaol to the throne, where he was soon to emulate the
misdeeds of his predecessors.
The new Gaekwar had no claims upon the regard of his subjects. Almost
wholly uneducated and with no mental gifts, he failed to inspire
respect or devotion. He was not without astuteness, but was obstinate
as a mule and fierce as a tiger. His person was unattractive; he was
undersized, of mean appearance, with a coarse, swarthy complexion;
he squinted, and from his large sensual lips black teeth protruded
savagely. Unlike his brother Khander Rao, he had no taste for field
sports, and he had converted the race course at Baroda into a carriage
drive for the ladies of his zenana.
Mulhar Rao’s private life was desperately evil. In his early years
he was often thought to be mad on account of his passionate and
ungovernable temper. Even as a child he committed crimes, impelled by
fierce hatred and lust for revenge. His youth was made up of poisonings
and attempts to poison. When he came to power he destroyed his
enemies, real or fancied, wholesale. His gaolers collected victims in a
row, and one by one poison was poured forcibly down their throats. One
of those he most cordially detested was offered poisonous pills, and
when he refused to swallow them he was despatched in a more expeditious
fashion by being squeezed to death in a special machine. This man’s
chief crime was that he had been a creature of Khander Rao’s.
The new Gaekwar’s victims were so numerous that it was a current phrase
in the city, “Has he killed many to-day?” He spared no man in his
anger, no woman in his lust. Justice was bought and sold, the claimant
who had the longest purse always won his case; public business was
neglected; the most unworthy were advanced; bribery and corruption
were the rule in every branch of administration. The crown and finish
to Mulhar Rao’s offences was his alleged plot to poison the British
resident, Colonel Phayre.
There had long been distrust between the Gaekwar and the representative
of the British government, whose profound disapproval of the prince’s
proceedings was soon made manifest. A more serious difference arose
when the Gaekwar insisted that his infant son, born of his latest
marriage, should be recognised as the next heir to the throne. There
were grave doubts of the child’s legitimacy. His mother, Luxmeebee, had
been forcibly abducted from another husband who was still alive at the
time of its birth. Colonel Phayre refused to acknowledge the child and
Mulhar Rao vowed vengeance. One of his first dastardly attempts was to
poison all the inmates of the residency by causing a pound of arsenic
to be mixed with the ice sent in for daily consumption. This device
failed, and the next attack was aimed directly at the resident through
his own body servants.
Colonel Phayre was in the habit of drinking a glass of sherbet every
morning when he came home from an early walk. It was awaiting him on
the hall table and was prepared with sugared water and fresh pumelo
juice. One day he swallowed only a mouthful of this drink, disliking
its taste, and threw the rest out of the window, when he detected a
small amount of sediment in the bottom of the glass. When analysed
subsequently, this was found to contain arsenic and diamond dust.
Suspicion was at once aroused, and the possession of the powder charged
with these ingredients was traced to a _havildar_ of the military guard
of the residency, who kept it concealed in his waist belt. It was
not believed that any subordinate and impecunious person could have
afforded to buy diamond dust, and attention was at once diverted from
the _havildar_ to the prince, whose bitter feeling toward the resident
was well known.
Evidence so damnatory against Mulhar Rao was collected that the
government of India attached his person and decided to prosecute him.
A special court of inquiry was appointed, composed of three English
and three native commissioners, the first three leading lights on the
Indian bench, the second three Maharajas of the highest rank. The
Gaekwar was permitted to engage counsel, and was defended by one of the
most eminent of British barristers at that time, Sergeant Ballantine.
The arraignment of a reigning prince for the crime of murder by the
supreme power to whom he owed allegiance caused a great sensation in
India, and the issue of the protracted trial was watched with great
interest at home. In the end the three English commissioners were of
opinion that the Gaekwar was guilty through his paid agents of an
attempt to poison Colonel Phayre, and on the other hand, their three
native colleagues considered that the charge was not proved. The result
was much criticised and indeed condemned, but the adverse finding was
accepted by the then viceroy, Lord Northbrook, who forthwith deposed
Mulhar Rao and deprived him and his issue of all rights to the throne.
The decision was based upon “his notorious misconduct, his gross
misgovernment of the state and his evident incapacity to carry into
effect the necessary reforms,” the chief of all being the reform of his
own evil nature and personal character.
Sergeant Ballantine dissented from the view taken by the English
commissioners and disapproved of Lord Northbrook’s action. Following
the old legal axiom that the best course of an advocate whose case is
bad is to abuse the other side, the learned counsel threw the blame
chiefly upon Colonel Phayre. “He (Colonel Phayre) was fussy, meddlesome
and thoroughly injudicious,” the sergeant wrote in his memoirs. “There
were two adverse parties in the state, and instead of holding himself
aloof from both, he threw himself into that opposed to the Gaekwar and
was greedy to listen to every accusation and complaint that with equal
eagerness was gossiped into his ears.” But these last were by no means
imaginary. Mulhar Rao’s vile conduct was never in doubt, and it was
clear that he had tampered with the resident’s servants.
As regards the diamond dust which played a somewhat exaggerated part
in the affair, there is nothing to substantiate the common belief
that it is a deadly poison, any more than ground glass, which has an
equally bad name. It is an old and exploded superstition. The notorious
“succession powder” of the old Italian poisoners was supposed to be
diamond dust. Voltaire tells us that Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans,
died of acute irritant poisoning, the poison being diamond powder mixed
with pounded sugar and strewn over strawberries.
It may be noted here that the abominable practice of widow-burning
seems to have originated as a check upon the wife’s desire to get rid
of her husband. The practice dates back to the time of Strabo, who
gives the above origin for it. It was so common, says Mr. William
Methold, that a law was passed insisting that the wives should
accompany their deceased husbands to the funeral pyre. According to one
authority, poisoning by wives was so frequent that, in any one year,
four men died to every woman. Originating as a deterrent, the burning
of widows became in due course an act of pious devotion, a deed of
self-immolation acceptable to their bloodthirsty gods. But the original
reason is often quoted in the ancient writings, and the remarks of
a traveller, Robert Coverte, may be quoted in point. “The cause why
this law was first made was for that the women there were so fickle
and inconstant that upon any slight occasion of dislike or spleen they
would poison their husbands; whereas now the establishing and executing
of this law is the cause that moveth the wife to love and cherish her
husband and wisheth not to survive him.” It is very much to the credit
of the old East India Company that it sternly suppressed the practice
of _suttee_ with the other iniquitous forms of wrong-doing, such as
Thuggee, sacrificial suicide, infanticide and so forth. A crime so
largely practised through the ages by rulers and prominent personages
was likely to be generally imitated by commoner people.
The general use of drugs to compass murder which still commonly
obtains is not a little due to the facilities with which poisons may
be procured, not only from the unchecked sale, but because they may
be picked up, so to speak, on every hedge. Quoting Dr. Cheevers, the
varieties of poison used are very limited and may be briefly described.
The most common are the preparations of arsenic, aconite, nux vomica,
opium, oleander, datura and ganja, or Indian hemp. Many more drugs are,
however, procurable in Indian bazaars, and Dr. Cheevers has compiled a
list, more or less incomplete, of upwards of ninety, including those
already mentioned. Of late years the large increase in dispensaries and
the wide importation of chemicals has led to poisoning by sulphate of
zinc, Prussic acid, strychnine, cyanide of potassium, belladonna and
chlorodyne.
Some remarkable cases of poisoning were brought to light in Bombay
a few years ago, chiefly through the strenuous efforts of highly
intelligent native detectives. A diabolical plot to destroy a whole
family, of which four died and several were nearly killed, was the
so-called De Ga conspiracy in 1872. An unknown messenger delivered two
confectionery cakes as a gift with the compliments of a near relation.
Fatal results ensued with all who partook of the sweets. Suspicion at
last fell upon a brother of the De Ga family who hated his relations
and who accomplished the deed, assisted by an accomplice and especially
by his father who pretended to invoke the aid of sorcery.
Twenty years later a family of five persons was destroyed by one of the
sons, Bachoo, a spendthrift and gambler, who wished to expedite his
inheritance. Strychnine was the drug used, and it was administered
by the cook in the food he prepared. Bachoo’s father was the first to
succumb, and he was quickly followed by the rest of the family. When
the strychnine was found in the exhumed bodies, the police cleverly
traced its purchase by Bachoo from the druggists, and he and his
confederate were tried, convicted and hanged.
The quick-witted Hindu criminal soon adopted the European method of
securing ill-gotten gains by the insurance and murder of unsuspecting
victims. Palmer of Rugeley and La Pommerais of Paris had many imitators
in the East. A poor creature of weak intellect, Anacleto Duarte by
name, was done to death in this way by a friend and patron who pandered
to his vices and often lent him small sums to be spent in drink.
At last the latter, who was a bailiff in one of the Bombay courts,
contrived that Duarte should be insured in the Sun Life Office of
Canada for the sum of 10,000 rupees. Fonseca, the bailiff, paid the
premiums and was named in the policy as the beneficiary to receive the
amount insured if it became payable. After Duarte’s death the agent of
the insurance company, suspecting foul play, refused to hand over the
amount and the police were called in. It now appeared that Fonseca and
Duarte had visited a liquor shop together; that when two glasses of rum
were served to them, Duarte complained that his had a bitter taste,
caused no doubt by the addition of a pill which he had seen Fonseca
put into his glass. When Duarte’s body was exhumed, the existence of
strychnine in the viscera was verified, and it was shown that Fonseca
had bought it ostensibly as a poison for rats. Fonseca was found guilty
and duly hanged.
The criminal operations of the Dacoits who relied upon datura have
been already detailed. There were also gangs in Bombay who made it
their business to arrange marriages for well-to-do men with suitable
spinsters of great attractions supposed to belong to respectable
families. After the marriage the happy bridegroom found to his cost
that he had been deceived, and he woke up one fine morning without
his wife, who had fled with her accomplices, carrying off all his
jewels. In these cases datura again had been the drug used. A company
of poisoners long flourished in the province Scinde. These villains
were in the habit of disguising themselves as _fakirs_ who visited
people of known wealth and offered them food in God’s name. It was
generally accepted and piously consumed with fatal results, after which
their houses were plundered. The impunity with which this crime was
everywhere perpetrated was one of the greatest evils from which India
has suffered.
It is generally believed that many more brutal murders are committed
than are actually brought to light. The police custom of dragging
witnesses from their houses for long periods encouraged those dwelling
in the neighbourhood of the crime to combine in concealing the
circumstances and, if possible, the actual fact. It was the habit
of the police at one time to pounce down upon a suspected village,
assemble the residents, and harangue, browbeat and threaten them with
pains and penalties to extort unwilling confessions. Worse still,
these witnesses were dragged great distances, a hundred or a hundred
and fifty miles, to appear before the courts to give evidence. A great
improvement has, however, taken place in recent years. Good roads and
railways have greatly facilitated communication, the magistracy is
active and efficient and criminal sessions are held monthly even in the
most remote districts.
Murder by violence was quite as common in India as by poisoning and
committed often by peculiar and unconventional means. Various kinds of
weapons were employed. Among them were the bludgeon and the club or
_lathi_, the stout and weighty bamboo staff which, when the thick end
is bound with iron, becomes a tremendous weapon of offence. The head
is most frequently assailed, and deadly blows result in broken scalps
or crushed-in skulls with frightful injuries affecting also the heart,
liver and spleen. The club is made of hard wood and in shape is not
unlike an exaggerated rolling pin. In one case a stone pestle was used
to pound in the victim’s head.
The favourite cutting weapon was the _tulwar_, or curved sword, which
could slash a person almost to pieces with clean-cut saucer-shaped
wounds. The _tulwar_ has a sharp point, but was seldom used to stab.
The halberd had a crescent blade set in a heavy wooden handle. A
chopper could do terrible mischief, the axe likewise, and the bill or
hatchet with a hooked point. Death could be given with a spear head,
arrow or dagger, the kris or the _aro_, a three-pronged striking
instrument like a trident. Fatal wounds have been inflicted by a strip
of split bamboo long and sharp pointed.
Strangulation has been practised in other ways than by throttling with
the handkerchief. It was the custom when killing children for their
ornaments to squeeze or compress the throat with the hands, assisting
the process with the pressure of the knee or foot, and more violence
was often employed than was necessary to cause death. Sometimes one
bamboo stick was placed over the throat and another under, so that the
compression between became fatal.
Suicide by hanging is common in India, and sometimes murderers, having
accomplished their purpose by cruel blows, have been known to suspend
their victims by the neck to give the impression of self-destruction.
Murder by hanging is not unknown in India. There are several cases on
record where persons, after being cruelly misused, were hanged while
still alive.
Homicide by exposing the victim to be bitten by poisonous snakes
was practised in the olden times and was known to the penal code
as a method of inflicting capital punishment. “Witches were crammed
into a small chamber full of cobras, where they first half died of
fright and then quite died of snake bites.” A Gentu prisoner in 1709,
after inconceivable torture in the scorching sun by day, was cast by
night into a dungeon with venomous snakes to keep him company. It is
mentioned in history that Hannibal during a naval action with the
Romans launched earthen pots filled with snakes into the enemy’s ships.
The high intelligence of the elephant enabled the native to train it
to become the executioner of criminals in India. The great beast would
obey the orders of his _mahout_, whether to kill instantly by the
pressure of his foot or to protract the culprit’s agony by breaking his
bones one by one and leaving him to die by inches. A parricide, bound,
was fastened by his heels with a small iron chain to the hind leg of an
elephant and dragged two miles across country till all the flesh was
worn from his bones. At Baroda, in 1814, a slave who had murdered his
master was similarly made fast to the right hind leg of an elephant,
and at every step of the beast it jerked the victim forward so that
in a few moments every limb was dislocated. He was as much broken as
on the wheel after being dragged five hundred yards. The man, covered
with mud, still showed signs of life, and was suffering excruciating
tortures. In the end the elephant, as he had been trained to do,
placed his foot on the criminal’s head and at once killed him.
The criminal records are full of the forgery of banknotes, the coining
of false money, of daring robberies committed when houses are broken
into, bank premises invaded and iron safes are forced. Sharpers and
swindlers, rivalling the most astute in Europe or America, have
flourished and defied the pursuit of the police. Some very notable
manufacturers of spurious currency notes have spread dismay in
financial circles. One of the most active and successful was a certain
Vancutta Chellummyab, whose arrest in Madras in 1872 caused a great
sensation throughout India. A vast amount of false Madras currency
notes were in circulation in the three presidencies, to the total face
value, it was said, of four lacs of rupees. The fraud was discovered at
Benares, when a pretended agent of a Madras rajah paid for extensive
purchases of jewelry with spurious notes. The chief forger, Vancutta
Chellummyab, when finally arrested in Madras, had notes in his
possession concealed in an old portmanteau to the value of upwards of
two hundred thousand rupees. A few years later Bombay was the centre of
operations, and a large quantity of the most perfectly imitated notes
were fabricated and in circulation. Information was given by one of
the principals in the fraud to divert attention from himself, and a
descent made by the police secured a quantity of tools and materials
for engraving counterfeit notes and coining bad Australian sovereigns.
There were dies, moulds and stamps and a number of coins, foreign and
native, manufactured out of the baser metals.
One of the most expert forgers of any age or country was a man named
Govind Narayen Davira of Bombay. He came of a family of forgers, the
son and grandson of forgers, and did a large business in his nefarious
art. A single scrap of handwriting sufficed to enable him to fabricate
a whole document. He knew all about the action of chemicals on paper
and could erase all traces of original writing to give a clean sheet
for a fresh fraudulent statement. He was known to have converted a
government promissory note of 5,000 rupees into one of double the
amount. His frauds extended over a period of five or six years and were
finally exposed by the failure of an attempt to blackmail.
Davira was a popular person because he was liberal to his poorer
confederates. But he fell at last into the hands of the police and was
lodged in Poona gaol. Here, being resolved to avoid trial, he compassed
self-destruction in a very reckless fashion. A kerosene oil lamp was
kept constantly burning in his cell, rather rashly. He contrived to
saturate his clothing with the oil and then set fire to himself with
the result that he was practically burned alive.
One of the cleverest frauds was the forgery of postage stamps in
Bombay. A forged stamp came into the possession of a London collector,
by whom the fact was reported to the postmaster-general in Bombay.
The forgery was the work of one of Davira’s gang and was traced to a
Brahmin, Shrida, who had succeeded in producing an excellent imitation
with the clumsiest implements. He first printed the stamp on a
lithographer’s stone and then coloured it so exactly that it deceived
even experts. Many hundreds of these stamps were seized when Shrida was
arrested.
The ingenuity of the cheats and swindlers in planning their frauds
was only equalled by the simplicity of their victims. Over and over
again the revelation of hidden treasure was made to dupes, who paid
for the knowledge of the whereabouts of the secret hoards, said to be
the property of dead rajahs, or the proceeds of great robberies which
had to be temporarily abandoned. Credulous fools were imposed upon
by fictitious _fakirs_ claiming the alchemist’s power to transmute
the commoner metals into gold and silver, or religious impostors
played upon their superstitious disciples to acquire a similar power.
There were at one time thirty-five different gangs of swindlers who
preyed upon goldsmiths, pawnbrokers and money changers. One of these
confederacies was called the “golden gang,” the members of which
uttered false money or made large purchases of jewelry for imaginary
governors and rajahs, for which they evaded payment, or raised money
upon sealed packets, the valuable contents having been spirited away by
sleight of hand.
Until the middle of the last century very extensive frauds were
practised by the misappropriation of timber in the large forests of
India. The natives seemed to have believed in their prescriptive rights
to what was really the exclusive property of the state. Thousands of
people were engaged in cutting down trees for firewood, when it was
within paying distance of removal by road or rail to some neighbouring
city. These depredations have now been checked by the establishment
of an effective, well-organised forest department, the officers of
which control and supervise large tracts of timber, cutting down when
desirable and planting afresh to ensure future supply. The reader will
remember Rudyard Kipling’s graphic account of the Indian forest officer
and his remarkable native assistant, Mowgli, of the story, _In the
Rukh_, in the volume entitled, “Many Inventions.”
Housebreaking is among the minor crimes of India which is especially
troublesome. Earthen walls and foundations facilitate the operations
of the thieves who are commonly known as “wall-piercers.” These
depredators are in the habit of making a hole through the walls,
driving a gallery, in fact, into the interior of a house through which
they can wriggle into the strong room, generally situated about the
centre. As it is always understood that the owner of the house may
be on the alert and in waiting to receive the thief, as a matter of
precaution he will either emerge feet foremost or push before him an
earthen vessel having something of the shape of a man’s head to receive
the first blow of the _tulwar_, or other defensive weapon. The Indian
housebreaker is a slippery customer, difficult to seize, for he is
usually naked, and has carefully oiled his person so as to easily slip
through the fingers of any one who lays hold of him.
I cannot bring this account of crime in India to a close without
mention of an atrocity which is unequalled in the annals of human
oppression.
What imprisonment may mean in the East, when inflicted in defiance of
the most elementary conditions of health in a tropical climate, has
been recorded in letters of blood in the awful story of the Black Hole
of Calcutta. The miscreant responsible for the crime was the Nabob of
Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, who had gained a fleeting triumph over the
early English settlers, and having captured Fort William at the mouth
of Hugli, and made all the occupants prisoners, he turned them over
to his savage followers. For security they were incarcerated in one
small room or chamber some eighteen feet square. The season was the
height of summer; the room was closed to the eastward and southward by
dead walls and to the northward by a wall and door, so that no fresh
air could enter save by two small windows, strongly barred with iron.
Into this limited space 146 human beings were crammed, already in a
state of exhaustion by a long day spent in fatiguing conflict, and
several of them seriously wounded. Piteous entreaties were made to the
guards on duty to diminish the numbers imprisoned by removal elsewhere;
large sums were offered as the price of this boon, but with no effect.
No step could be taken without the permission of the Nabob, who was
asleep, and none dared wake him. After vain attempts to break open the
doors and fruitless appeals to the mercy of the sleeping Nabob, “the
prisoners went mad with despair.” The rest of the story can best be
told in the words of one of the masters of the English language, Lord
Macaulay. “They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the
windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of
the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored
the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the meantime held lights
to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of
their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and
moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and
permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before the
soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side
the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to
do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three
ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known,
staggered one by one out of the charnel house. A pit was instantly dug.
The dead bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into
it promiscuously and covered up.
“But these things which, after the lapse of more than eighty years,
cannot be told or read without horror, awakened neither remorse nor
pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on
the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some of them,
indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart; but
those from whom it was thought that anything could be extorted were
treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was carried
before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him
up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were
suspected of knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures
of the Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings
of that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only
with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the female
relations of the Nabob procured their release. One Englishwoman had
survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the prince at
Moorshedabad.”
It is told in history how the merciless Nabob was eventually called
to strict account. The English at Madras vowed vengeance, and an
expedition was forthwith fitted out for the Hugli, small in numbers,
but full of undaunted spirit, and led by one of the most famous
of British soldiers, Lord Clive. The victory of Plassy, which
consolidated the British power in India, overthrew Surajah Dowlah, who
expiated the crime of the Black Hole when captured and put to death by
his successor Meer Jaffier.