2-979-645 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War in China - Examination at the Police-Office, Victoria, Hong-Kong, of Esing, the Baker, upon the Charge of Poisoning, 1857. 'The Chinese in profile is Alum; the full-face is his father; and the Chinese woman behind is one of his wives...Esing (properly called Alum)...supplied the bread poisoned with arsenic from which so many people suffered in Hong-Kong, and who, with his father and eight of his workmen, are now on their trial for that crime...Two or three hundred people, altogether, had partaken of the poisoned bread, but no lives had been lost...Private letters from the Chinese Seas, received at Paris, state that Alum had been tried before a Council of War legally constituted, and convicted of an attempt to poison the English Charge d'Affaires and his family. The man was condemned to death and shot...'. In fact Cheong was expelled, and forbidden from ever returning to Hong Kong. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.