2-979-663 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Garotting a Chinese Criminal - from a drawing by a Chinese artist, 1857. 'The penal code of China...is marked by great barbarity. The punishments are in general most cruel, and ill proportioned to the crimes for which they are inflicted: for the slightest offence a mandarin is degraded, banished, and even deprived of all property. [The iIllustration is]...selected from a series of beautifully-executed drawings in colours, upon rice- paper, in a small folio volume, which has been obtained in Canton by an officer of the Hon. East India Company's Service...[It shows] the Garotte, with which, partly through "ticket-of-leave " experiments, the people of this country have of late become acquainted. The Chinese infliction is a terrible torture...the criminal is seen attached to a cross by cords, which the executioner gradually tightens by means of a lever till the blood gushes from the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth of the culprit'. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.