The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 368: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TORTURES 339 of captives upon the bench, he perceived that many of them kept flinging frighted and shuddering glances toward this table, so that at length the idea stole into the man’s mind that the punishment to be expected was associated with the objects so ominously spread upon that board. Presently a superior officer of the peons entered the room, and he made an imperious sign for the howlings, the lamen- tations, and the wailings to be hushed. To a certain extent he was obeyed, for the captives doubtless thought that their punishment would be meted, or rather mitigated, according to the degree of submissiveness they displayed. Some of the women however continued to weep with a bitterness which they were evidently unable to restrain. The suspenseful curiosity of the Burker was at length about to be assuaged, but in a manner as horrible as if, when suffering from a burning thirst, the most noxious fluid was poured down his throat. A couple of the peons seized upon the Burker’s comrade, and the wretched gos- soon began to address them in a strain of the most piteous appeal. To these entreaties, however, they were not merely inaccessible, but with their clenched fists they dealt him some severe blows over the head in order to compel him to hold his peace. They then stretched him upon the floor, and one of the peons proceeded to administer a terrible fustigation with a large whip which he took from the table. The gossoon howled hideously, but the more he yelled, the heavier fell the blows, until at length the peon desisted from sheer exhaustion. The gossoon was then lifted up and forcibly expelled from the place. One of the dignified-looking natives was now seized upon, and in silence did he submit to the torture he was about to undergo. In the first place, the peons twisted his ears with most merciless brutality, and though the victim writhed with the pain, yet did not a sound escape his lips. He was then made to kneel upon the floor, and a brick was placed in the bend of each leg, just within the knee-joint. A cord was then fastened around his waist; the extremities were fixed to his ankles, and his form was thus drawn down until the haunches rested upon the heels. When it is remembered that the bricks were inserted behind the knee-joints, the excruciating agony of this position can be fully compre- hended. There the man was left in the middle of the room, COnnIClOoOoKS (S©)