Several Of Them Said That They Are There For Kidnapping, But
Others Are Hostages For Criminal Relations Who Have Not Yet Been
Captured.
This imprisonment of hostages is in accordance with a law
which authorizes the seizure and detention of persons or families
belonging to criminals who have fled or are in concealment.
Such are
imprisoned till the guilty relative is brought to justice, for months,
years, or even for a lifetime. Two of these women told us that they had
been there for twenty years.
There are likewise some single cells - hovels clustering under a wall,
in which criminals who can afford to pay the jailer for them may enjoy
the luxury of solitude. In each ward there is a single unfettered
man - always a felon - who by reason either of bribery or good conduct,
is appointed to the place of watchman or spy among his fellows in
crime. There is a turnkey for each ward, and these men, with the
unchained felons who act as watchmen, torture new arrivals in order to
force money from them, and under this process some die.
In the outer wall of the prison there is a port-hole, just large enough
to allow of a body being pushed through it, for no malefactor's corpse
must be carried through the prison entrance, lest it should defile the
"Gate of Righteousness." There is also a hovel called a deadhouse, into
which these bodies are conveyed till a grave has been dug in some
"accursed place," by members of an "accursed" class.
In addition to the large mortality arising from poor living and its
concomitant diseases, and the exhaustion produced by repeated torture,
epidemics frequently break out in the hot weather in those dark and
fetid dens, and oftentimes nearly clear out the prison. On such
occasions as many as four hundred have succumbed in a month. The number
of criminals who are executed from this prison, either as sentenced to
death, or as unable to bribe the officials any further, is supposed to
be about five hundred annually, and it is further supposed that half
this number die annually from starvation and torture. Sometimes one
hundred criminals are beheaded in an hour, as it is feared may be the
case on the Governor going out of office, when it is not unusual to
make a jail delivery in this fashion.
In numerous cases, when there is a press of business before the
judgment-seat and a dead-lock occurs, accusers and witnesses are
huddled indiscriminately into the Naam-Hoi prison, sometimes for
months; and as the Governor or magistrate takes no measures to provide
for them during the interval, some of the poorer ones who have no
friends to bribe the jailer on their behalf, perish speedily.
At night, in the dens which I have described, the hands of the
prisoners are chained to their necks, and even in the daytime only one
hand is liberated. I thought that many of the faces looked quite
imbecile. The jailer, as we went out, kept holding out his long-clawed,
lean, brown hand, muttering about his promised kum-sha, very fearful
lest the other turnkeys, who were still lying on their beds smoking
opium, should come in for any share of it.
Mr. Henry,* my host and very able cicerone, is an American missionary,
and as such carries with him the gospel of peace on earth and good will
to men. Surely if the knowledge of Him who came "to preach liberty to
the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,"
were diffused and received here, and were spread with no niggard hand,
the prison of the Naam-Hoi magistrate, with its unspeakable horrors,
would go the way of all our dungeons and bedlams.
[*I cannot forbear adding a note on the extent of Mr. Henry's work in
1881. He preached 190 times in Chinese, and five times in English; held
fifty-two Bible-class meetings, and thirteen communion services;
baptized forty-five adults and eight children; traveled on mission work
by boat 2,540 miles, by chair, eighty miles, and on foot 670 miles;
visited 280 different towns and villages, and distributed 14,000 books,
receiving assistance in the latter work only on one short journey. His
life is a happy combination of American energy and Christian zeal.]
But this is not all. From the prison it is only a short distance to the
judgment-seat, and passing once more through the "Gate of
Righteousness," we crossed a large court infested by gamblers and
fortune-tellers, and presented ourselves at a porch with great figures
painted on both its doors, and gay with the red insignia of
mandarinism, which is the entrance to the stately residence of the
Naam-Hoi magistrate, one of the subordinate dignitaries of Canton. In
the porch, as might have been in that of Pilate or Herod, were a number
of official palanquins, and many officials and servants of the mandarin
with red-crowned hats turned up from their faces, and privates of the
city guard, mean and shabby persons. One of these, for a kum-sha of
course, took us, not through the closed and curtained doors, but along
some passages, from which we passed through a circular brickwork tunnel
to the front of the judgment seat at which all the inmates of the
Naam-Hoi prison may expect sooner or later to be tried. My nerves were
rather shaken with what I had seen, and I trembled as a criminal might
on entering this chamber of horror.
In brief, the judgment-seat is a square hall, open at one end, with a
roof supported on three columns. In the plan which I send, No. 1 is the
three pillars; No. 2, the instruments of torture ranged against the
wall; No. 3, four accused men wearing heavy chains, and kneeling with
their foreheads one inch from the ground, but not allowed to touch it.
These men are undergoing the mildest form of torture - protracted
kneeling without support in one position, with coarse sand under the
bare knees.
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