2-979-665 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Head of a Chinese Criminal exposed in a Cage to his Children, 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 head of the criminal exposed in a cage whilst, as a climax to the punishment, his children are, by the merciful consideration of the Celestial authorities, made to take a moral lesson by looking at the disfigured head of their dead father'. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.