REPRINTED 
 
 FROM 
 
 LONDON AND MADRAS. 
 
 rrr 
 
 3807. 
 
THUGS STRANGLING A TRAVELLER, 
 
<a 
 
 Papers on India, No. 1, 
 
 — LLL LLIN 
 
 a eT 
 
 THE 
 SUPPRESSION 
 
 OF 
 
 THUGGEE AND DACOITY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN WILLIAM KAYE. 
 
 REPRINTED 
 
 FROM 
 
 ‘‘The Administration of the East India Company; a History of 
 Indian Progress.’’—Second Edition, 18538. 
 
 PDR eee NAAN 
 
 First Evirion,—38,000 Corrzs. 
 
 PON ae 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE SOCIETY FOR INDIA: 
 LONDON AND MADRAS. 
 
 1897. 
 
CO Na EN Ts 
 
 —————_oe———. 
 Page 
 SuPPRESSION OF THUGGEE | es yest + a a 1 
 Dacotry ... a mre hs | ie ie ae PIA) 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 
 
 ————2- 6-22 2124 
 
 Ir was long before we suspected the systematic war against 
 life and property which had been carried on for years in almost 
 every part of the country from Oude to the Carnatic. It was long 
 before we could bring ourselves to understand that organised 
 bands of professional and hereditary murderers and depredators, 
 recognised, and indeed, to a certain extent, tolerated by their 
 fellow-men, were preying upon the uninitiated and unwary sections 
 of society, and committing the most monstrous crimes with as 
 much forethought and ingenuity as though murder were one of the 
 fine arts, and robbery a becoming effort of human skill; nay, 
 indeed, glorying in such achievements, as acts welcome to the deity, 
 and bringing them to prefection with a due observance of all the 
 ceremonial formalities of a cherished religious faith. 
 
 But in time we began to understand these things. We 
 obtained a clue and we followed it up, until the hideous mystery 
 was brought out into the clear light of day. There is not an intelli- 
 gent reader at the present time who does not know what a J’'hug is. 
 The word, indeed, has been adopted into our own language, and 
 has been applied to other depredators than those who worship the 
 goddess Devi. It is well known that a Thug is a professional 
 murderer. We found the Thugs carrying on their fearful trade, 
 and as soon as we came to understand them we made war upon, 
 and struck them down. ‘The servants of the Hast India Company 
 have extirpated Thuggee. It is an exploit worthy to be celebrated 
 by every writer who undertakes to chronicle the achievements of 
 the English in the Hast—one which it is impossible to dwell upon 
 without pleasure and pride. 
 
 Of the antiquity of Thuggee there is no doubt. In the creed 
 of its votaries it had, of course, a divine origin. Hverything 
 monstrous and abominable in India has the sanction of some puerile 
 or obscene legend to recommend it to the superstitious and the 
 depraved. The legend which declares the divinity of Thuggee is 
 preposterous even for an Oriental tradition. I do not know a more 
 absurd chapter in all that monstrous farrago of absurdities, the 
 Hindoo mythology, than that which sets forth how the goddess 
 Kali made war upon a gigantic monster, every drop of whose blood 
 
2 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGER. 
 
 became a destructive demon; how the blood of these demons 
 generated other demons, until the earth was in a fair way to be 
 overrun by the noxious brood; how, at length, the goddess hit 
 upon the notable expedient of creating from the celestial ichor 
 which exuded from her trenchant arm two men, to whom she gave 
 handkerchiefs, or waistbands, with orders to destroy the demons 
 by strangulation without shedding a drop of blood; and how, the 
 demons having been so destroyed, the grateful goddess gave the 
 handkerchiefs to her myrmidons, and told them that thenceforth 
 they and their descendants might carry on a profitable trade by 
 exercising the destroying implements upon the human race. The 
 Thugs, of course, claim to be descended from these unbegotten 
 heroes, and are very proud of the descent. ‘I am a Thug of the 
 royal records,” said one of these professional stranglers; ‘I and 
 my fathers have been [hugs for twenty generations.” * 
 
 And what was this royal profession of which the members 
 were so proud? It was simply the cowardly strangling of unsus- 
 pecting. travellers in remote places, generally committed under 
 circumstances of falsehood and treachery of the deepest dye. 
 These Thugs, leagued together in a great brotherhood of crime, 
 having taken the sacrament with all possible solemnity,t went 
 about the country murdering:in their cold bloodless style all the 
 unwary wayfarers whom they could seduce into their toils. There 
 was nothing to distinguish these artists from ordinary travellers. 
 
 * Thevenot, who travelled in India in the seventeenth century, has given an 
 account: of the Thugs, from which it appears that in those days they employed 
 female decoys :—‘ Though the road I have been speaking of, from Delhi to Agra, be 
 tolerable, yet hath it many inconveniences. One may meet with tigers, panthers, 
 and lions upon it; and one had best also have a care of robbers, and above all 
 things not to suffer anybody to come near one upon the road. The cunningest rob- 
 bers in the world are in that country. They use a certain slip, with a running 
 noose, which they can cast with so much sleight about a man’s neck, when they 
 are within reach of him, that they never fail, so that they strangle him in a trice. 
 They have another cunning trick also to catch travellers: they send out a handsome 
 woman upon the road, who, with her hair dishevelled, seems to be all in tears, 
 sighing and complaining of some misfortune which she pretends has befallen her. 
 Now, as she takes the same way that the traveller goes, he easily falls into conver- 
 sation with her, and finding her beautiful, offers her his assistance, which she 
 accepts; but he hath no sooner taken her up behind him on horseback than she 
 throws the snare about his neck and strangles him, or at least stuns him, until the 
 robbers, who lie hid, come running to her assistance, and complete what she 
 hath begun.” 
 
 + The sacred element was a kind of coarse sugar. According to the Thugs 
 the deity entered largely into it, and there was a kind of transubstantiation, which 
 wrought mightily upon the communicants. At all-events, they declared that the 
 sacred sugar changed their whole nature. “It would change the nature of a horse,” 
 they said. ‘“ Let any one once taste of that sugar and he will be a Thug, though he 
 know all the trades.and have all the wealth in the world.’ “ My father made me 
 taste of that fatal sugar,” said a Thug to Colonel Sleeman, “‘ when I was yet a mere 
 boy; and if I were to live a thousand years, I should never ke able to follow any 
 other trade.” ae 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGER. 3 
 
 THUGS ACCOSTING A TRAVELLER. 
 
 They assumed many different disguises, and played many different 
 parts. They separated on the road, straggled into the towns and 
 villages in little parties of three and four, and met as though the 
 
 were strangers to each other. Perhaps one of the gang travelled 
 in some state, as a man of rank, accompanied by numerous 
 attendants, and a few palanquins or doolies, in which were said to 
 be the ladies of his family, though in reality they contained little 
 but the implements of their profession. On the road, so disguised, 
 with nothing about them to awaken suspicion, these traders in 
 death would fall, as though by accident, into the company of other 
 wayfarers, and watching a favorable opportunity on the skirts of 
 some jungle, or in some secluded place bordering upon a convenient 
 watercourse, would throw the murderous waistband or turban-cloth 
 round the neck of their victim, and scientifically do him to death. 
 One man threw the fatal noose, another, seizing the other end of 
 the rope or cloth, drew it tightly round the helpless wretch’s neck, 
 the two together pressing his head forward with their disengaged 
 hands, whilst a third seized him by the legs and threw him to the 
 ground. There could be no resistance. The work was quickly 
 done. ‘The body was then stripped, the property secured, and very 
 soon the corpse was buried. The consecrated pickaxe, plied with 
 
4, SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 
 
 miraculous silence, soon dug a grave for the body.* If a stranger 
 approached whilst they were thus engaged, they laid a cloth 
 decently and reverently over the carcase of the murdered man, and 
 kneeling down beside it, lifted up their voices and wept, over the 
 death of a beloved comrade. 
 
 Various were their artifices—great their cleverness. They 
 were, indeed, consummate actors. Ifthe locahty were a dangerous 
 one, the country much frequented, they would throw up a slight 
 enclosure of canvas, pretending that their women were behind the 
 screens, and bury the body within it. Or, warned of the approach 
 of travellers by one of their scouts, some clever member of the 
 gang would throw himself down by the wayside, and simulate the 
 spasms and convulsions, or the exhaustion and prostration of a 
 dying man; and whilst the sympathising travellers were gathering 
 round him and administering such simple remedies as were within 
 their reach, his companions would conceal the body of their victim, 
 and clear away the traces of their guilt. Sometimes the locality 
 favored a readier and easier mode of disposing of the corpse which 
 was flung into a neighbouring river, or dropped into a convenient 
 well. 
 
 Thus were these murders—systematically, Pots) aes 
 pettarcg with an adroit avoidance of detection which seldom or 
 never failed. Human life in India is not of much account. A 
 corpse by the wayside in England fills nearly a whole county with 
 horror and astonishment. In India, even a humane English 
 gentleman passes it by on the other side, and is only so far con- 
 cerned at the spectacle, that probably his horse has shied at it, as 
 it would at the trunk of a tree. Hvery one is accustomed to the 
 sight of human bodies drifting down the river—floating islands 
 inhabited by gorging birds of prey; or if you should chance to 
 reside in a villa on the river-side, you are not concerned by the 
 knowledge that the round white balls which dot your lawn like 
 snow-flakes, or with which your little children are playing, are so 
 many human skulls. Still less do the natives of India, by whom 
 the European gentleman is infected, in due time, with this apathy, 
 bestir themselves, body or soul, about these indications of our frail 
 mortality. Death in India comes in many sudden shapes. If 
 a certain Moodoo-sooden, or Rungoo-Lal, is missing from his 
 
 * The pickaxe, forged with due solemnity, and then consecrated with certain 
 prescribed formalities, was held in especial veneration by the Thugs. It was 
 forbidden to bury the dead with any other instrument; for it was the symbol of their 
 profession, and a legacy left, it was believed, by the goddess herself. ‘Do we not 
 worship it,” said a Thug to Colonel Sleeman, “every seventh day? Is it not our 
 standard ? Is its sound ever heard, when digging the grave, by any but a Thug ? 
 And can any man ever swear to a falsehood upon it ?” Another asked, “‘ How could 
 we dig with any other instrument? This is the one appointed by Devi and 
 consecrated ; and we should never have survived the attempt to use any other,” 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 5 
 
 accustomed place, or does not reach the end of a journey (should 
 any one expect him), his anxious relatives take it for granted that 
 he has been bitten by a serpent—that the cholera has preyed upon 
 his vitals, or a wild beast has eaten him up. No descriptions of 
 the missing one are inserted in the newspapers, and no members of 
 the detective police are employed to discover the cause of his dis- 
 appearance. Somehow or other he has been absorbed. “ Mur- 
 gywv’—He has gone dead. 
 
 And so it happens that hundreds of natives of India disap- 
 pear;* and their disappearance is either hardly noted, or it creates 
 no astonishment or alarm. A journey in India is an affair of many 
 months; and numerous are the perils which beset the path of the 
 unprotected pedestrian. Hence itis that whole hecatombs were 
 sacrificed to the goddess Devi, and no one took account of the 
 victims. Travellers likely to be missed were not special objects 
 of regard with the Thugs. They suffered such noticeable person- 
 ages to pass on their way unheeded. Or, if tempted by the large- 
 ness of the spoil which glittered before them, they were betrayed 
 into a departure from their ordinary cautious mode of procedure, 
 they summoned to their aid something more than the common arti- 
 fices of their profession, and surpassed themselves in cunning and 
 skill. Sometimes the very environments of the marked man favored 
 the escape of his murderer. The Thugs always knew their men. 
 They never threw the noose without previously acquainting them- 
 selves with the circumstances of their victim. If they murdered a 
 Company’s Sepoy, on leave to his native village, carrying his savings 
 wrapped up in his waistband, they knew that it would be long 
 before he would. be missed, either by his own family, or the adju- 
 tant of his regiment; and that, if missed by the former, his disap- 
 pearance would be attributed to ordinary death, or if by the latter, 
 to desertion. If they murdered a confidential public or private 
 servant, bearing treasure from one station to another, they knew 
 that the absence of the man, or the party of men at the accustomed 
 
 * IT ought rather to have written thousands. A correspondent in the Thuggee 
 Department wrote me afew years ago: “In India hundreds of thousands disappear 
 in a year or two, without the most distant clue but Thannadar’s reports, to ascertain 
 whether they have not been foully murdered. Villagers have assured me that to 
 their own certain knowledge scores of men murdered by robbers, or in affrays, have 
 been reported dead of cholera, snakebites,” &c. It is not easy to arrive at a correct 
 estimate of the number of people murdered annually by the Thugs. A native news- 
 paper (the Swmachar Durpan) of great respectability, in 1833 declared that “one 
 hundred Thugs slaughter, on an average, eight hundred persons ina month. It is 
 not, therefore,’’ added the writer, “going beyond the truth to affirm that, between 
 the Nerbudda and the Sutlej, the number murdered every year is not less than ten 
 thousand.” The writer calculates that within these limits a hundred Thugs were 
 always out on their murderous expeditions—probably many more were so employed. 
 And this calculation only relates to a certain tract of country. I am inclined, how- 
 ever, to think that the individual performances of the Thugs is here somewhat 
 overrated. 
 
6 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 
 
 place, would be attributed to the dishonesty of the treasure-bearers ; 
 and that whilst the police, if set upon the track, were in search of 
 him, they would be far away from the district through which his 
 journey had lain. They took care to leave behind them no living 
 witnesses of their guilt. If they hunted down a man of note, they 
 destroyed all bis attendants. They always went forward; they 
 never presented themselves in a town or village through which one 
 of their victims had passed. So that even if they went on, riding 
 the horses or wearing the clothes of the men they had murdered, 
 their appearance excited no mistrust. They had always a ready 
 story at command, ‘They had always a given character to assume. 
 They understood each other thoroughly, and they acted in 
 concert, though often they appeared to be strangers. They had a 
 secret dialect of their own; but often more serviceable than this 
 were the secret signs by which they silently communicated with 
 each other. They played their parts, indeed, with consummate 
 address ; and they passed on unsuspected to pursue their dreadful 
 trade in the next convenient locality. For such localities they had 
 keen and disciplined eyes, as artists have for the picturesque or 
 sportsmen for good covers; and their faces sparkled and their 
 hearts swelled when they chanced on these good murder-grounds. 
 
 It might seem from this account of the depredational excur- 
 sions of these professional robbers, that they were men without 
 a local habitation or a name, flitting from place to place, and 
 never establishing for themselves such social connexions as were 
 likely to cause their migrations to be matter of observance, or, 
 indeed, to attract any kind of continued notice. But such was 
 not, by any means, the case. They belonged for the most part 
 to particular villages, where they left their wives and children; 
 and they outwardly followed some peaceful calling. They culti- 
 vated the fields—rented a few acres of ground—or, perhaps, 
 embarked as agriculturists on a larger scale, and employed laboring 
 men to work under them.* Their occasional absence from the 
 village was necessarily remarked. Sometimes the real cause 
 was not suspected; but oftenit was a matter of open notoriety. 
 A Thug set out on his dreadful journey, and every one in the 
 village knew the cause of his departure—except, perhaps, his own 
 wite. 
 
 * Take from among many instances the following, from the evidence of Colonel 
 Sleeman’s approvers :—‘‘I remained in my own house for about a year and a half 
 at Guntoulee, working upon my own fields as a cultivator, for I rented 100 
 beegahs of land, and employed laborers; the villagers knew that I was a man who 
 went from home occasionally, but they knew not that I was a murderer.”’—Again : 
 “T remained in my own house for two months after this, cultivating in my fields, 
 for I rented three or four beegahs of land, chiefly, however, as a blind to conceal 
 that I was a Thug, and to make a show that I was a cultivator. I started again on 
 Thuggee.” : 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE, 7 
 
 OM: 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 THUGS STRANGLING THEIR VICTIM. 
 
 It was not, indeed, a matter of much concernment to the 
 villagers that these migratory murderers should set out upon their 
 journeys to remote places, and return richer than they went. 
 They did not murder their neighbours. Indeed, the village directly 
 benefited by the blood-money that was brought home. The 
 Zemindar, or headman, had an immediate interest in the success 
 of the expedition. A certain amount of tribute, or hushmoney, 
 was always paid to him; and the police officials, in the same 
 manner, were bribed into silence.* Often, indeed, the 
 brothers, or other near relatives of the village police, were 
 members of the Thug gangs: and Thugs themselves have been 
 known to wear the official brassplates on their breasts which 
 stamped them as Government employés. ‘The protection of the 
 Zemindars often went the length, especially in the native states, 
 of overt and violent interference, and pitched battles have been 
 fought in defence of the tribute-paying criminals when extermina- 
 
 *“T always,” said one approver, “after my journey, was obliged to give the 
 Zemindar, Ragonauth Sing, of my village, some present, for the whole village 
 knew that I was a Thug, and the Zemindar would have had me put in irons 
 but for these presents. All Thugs thus propitiate their Zemindars.” 
 
8 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 
 
 tion has threatened the gangs.* The payments made by the 
 Thugs and other depredational leagues, of which I shall speak 
 presently, formed no inconsiderable item of their revenue. 
 They looked to it, indeed, as to a perennial source of income from 
 which they could make good any deficiencies in the amount of the 
 Government claim, and sometimes applied the screw with such 
 freedom that the unhappy Thugs, alarmed by their increasing 
 exactions, migrated altogether from the extortionate village, and 
 sought a resting-place where they might dwell without disgorging 
 so large a share of their murder-gotten wealth. Atone time, it 
 may be added, so openly was the traffic carried on, that merchants 
 often came from a distance to purchase the plunder brought home 
 by the migratory gangs; but it would seem that the extension of 
 the Company’s judicial machinery, and the greater vigilance of its 
 officers, soon indicated the necessity of greater caution in the 
 disposal of the spoil. 7 
 
 It may be doubted whether any class of natives ever followed 
 their peculiar avocations with a keener relish than these Thugs. f 
 They were brought up from early youth to the dreadful trade. 
 Thuggee was to them not merely a profession. It was a religion. 
 They believed that the goddess Devi smiled down upon their 
 exploits, and communicated with them through the agency of cer- _ 
 tain recognised sights and sounds. They performed ceremonial 
 
 * “ At last,” said another approver, “being traced by the Saugor guards, the 
 Gwalior Regent, Bayza Bhace, was induced, at the suggestion of the British Agent, 
 to send out a detachment of two companies of infantry tosecure them. The head- 
 man of the village was determined to protect them, in consideration of the share 
 of the booty they had always given him. An action took place, in which several 
 lives were lost, while the camp of the Gevernor-General of India, Lord William 
 Bentinck, and that of the Bayza Bhaee, were within hearing of the guns. The 
 Thugs all made their escape, in disguise, with the women, but were scon after 
 taken.” 
 
 + The following, from a very interesting Report, by the late Captain Lowis, on 
 River Thuggee, contains a very decided opinion on the subject of the complicity of 
 all classes of the village communities :—“ To conclude, there seems no doubt that 
 this horrid crime has been fostered by nearly all classes of the community—the 
 landholders, the native officers of our courts, the police, the village authorities—all, 
 I think, have been more or less guilty. My meaning is not, of course, that every 
 member of these classes, but that individuals, varying in number in each class, were 
 concerned. The Foujdaree police gomastahs have, in many instances, been practis- 
 ing Thugs; and the chowkedars, or village watchmen, frequently so. It is much 
 to be feared that men so respectable in position as to make it seem almost incredible 
 that they should give protection to such criminals, have, in fact, done so, for it 
 appears out of the question that the total population of a village should be Thugs 
 engaged in the regular practice of Thuggee, and several of them frequently appre- 
 hended on the gravest suspicion of that crime, without the cognisance of the Zemin- 
 dars.”’ : 
 
 t I have alighted upon only one statement which militates against this general 
 assertion, and, perhaps “proves the rule.’ A Thug, named Dhosoo, examined by 
 Captain Paton, at Lucknow, declared “we only thug from necessity, not from 
 pleasure—it is fearful business.” But I could pile up proofs of the relish with 
 which they pursued their trade. 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 9 
 
 rites in propitiation of the deity, and then looked eagerly for the 
 anticipated omens. No augurs, in remote ages of classical anti- 
 quity, ever consulted the auspices with more solemn outward 
 observances, or a firmer inward faith in the expected revelations. 
 A larger range of deity-directed signals was, however, embraced 
 in the code of these Eastern soothsayers. Men and women, of 
 different kinds, and in different situations, were pressed into the 
 service as omens, and various animals, wild and tame, were believed 
 to have the same commission from the goddess. ‘There seems to . 
 have been no harmony and consistency.,observed in the interpret- 
 ing of these divine manifestations. Thus a lame man and a danc- 
 ing-master—a potter and an-oil-seller; were equally unpropitious. 
 Of the brute creation, the donkey and the jackal were regarded as 
 the most important members, and various were the sights or sounds 
 of encouragement, or warning, eagerly looked for from the uncon- 
 scious beasts. Certain months of the year, and certain days of the 
 week, were proscribed as of ill omen; and it was necessary that 
 they should regulate both their diet and their toilet in the manner 
 of which Devi was supposed to approve. If they were fortunate, 
 they ascribed all their good fortune to a due regard of these 
 heavenly directions, and if misadventure befell them, they attrib- 
 uted it, with praiseworthy candor, to their own. misinterpretations, 
 or neglect of the omens through which the goddess had frequently 
 vouchsafed to make known her wishes to her people. ‘ Even the 
 most sensible approvers,” writes Colonel Sleeman, “‘ who have been 
 with me for many years, as well Mussulmans as Hindoos, believe 
 that their good or ill success always depended upon the skill with 
 which their omens were discovered and interpreted, and the strict- 
 ness with which they were observed and obeyed. One of the old 
 Sindouse stock told me in presence of twelve others, from Hydera- 
 bad, Behar, the Doab, Oude, Rajpootana, and Bundelcund, that 
 had they not attended to these omens they could never have thrived 
 as they did; and that in ordinary cases of murder a man seldom 
 escaped after one of them; while they and their families had for 
 ten generations thriven, though they had murdered hundreds of 
 people. ‘This, said he, ‘could never have been the case had we 
 not attended to omens, and had not omens been intended for us.’ 
 Every Thug present concurred with him from his soul.” 
 
 When once the omens had shown themselves to be propitious, 
 and Devi had smiled down upon the enterprise, murder became 
 not only a religious duty, but a pleasant task. No compunctions 
 then visited the enlightened Thug. ‘And do you never feel 
 sympathy for the persons murdered—never pity or compunction ?” 
 asked Colonel Sleeman of a Thug, who-.had turned approver. 
 “ Never,” was the answer. ‘‘ How can you,” pursued the English 
 officer, “murder old men and young children, without some 
 
 2 
 
10 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGER. 
 
 THUGS BURYING THE DEAD BODY. 
 
 emotions of pity—calmly and deliberately as they sit with you, and © 
 converse with you—and tell you of their private affairs—of their 
 hopes and fears—and of the wives and children they are going to 
 meet, after years of absence, toil, and suffering ?” And the answer 
 returned was: “ From the time that the omens have been favorable, 
 we consider them as victims thrown into our hands by the deity 
 to be killed, and that we are the mere instrument in her hands to 
 destroy them; that if we do not kill them, she will never be again 
 propitious to us, and we and our families will be involved in misery 
 and want.” “And,” questioned Colonel Sleeman, “ you can sleep 
 as soundly by the bodies, or over the graves of those you have 
 murdered, and eat your meals with as much appetite as ever ?” 
 And still the answer was: ‘“ Just the same—we sleep and eat just 
 the same—unless we are afraid of being discovered.” These last 
 words do not indicate the fulness of faith which we should have 
 expected to find in such a worshipper of Devi; for it was the 
 professed belief of the Thugs, that if the omens were properly 
 observed and interpreted, they never could be discovered. 
 
 Indeed, such was their confidence in the protective-power of 
 the goddess, that they. believed that she would not only, if religi- 
 ously served, shield them from harm, but visit with her wrath all 
 who injured them. Nor was this belief confined exclusively to the 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 11 
 
 Thugs. Their ravages were regarded with something of supersti- 
 tious awe even by influential chiefs. At least, such was the state- 
 ment of the murderers themselves, and there is otlier evidence to 
 support the supposition. When Colonel Sleeman asked an approver 
 if he knew any instances of influential natives suffering for acts of 
 enmity or opposition to the Thugs, he was answered: ‘ A great 
 many. Was not Nanha, the Rajah of Jhalone, made leprous by 
 Devi for putting to death Bodhoo and his brother Khumoolee, two 
 of the most noted Thugs of their day? He had them trampled 
 under the feet of elephants, but the leprosy broke out upon his 
 body the very next day.” “Did he believe,” asked Colonel 
 Sleeman, “ that this punishment was inflicted by Devi for putting 
 them to death?” “He was quite sensible of it,” was the answer. 
 “Did he do anything to appease her?” was then asked. “ Every- 
 thing,’’ replied the approver. ‘ Bodhookad beguna well in Jhalone ;. 
 the Rajah built it up in magnificent style ; he had a tomb raised to 
 their name, fed Brahmins, and consecrated it; had worship 
 instituted upon it—but all in vain ; the disease was incurable, and 
 the Rajah died in a few months a miserable death. The tomb and 
 well are both kept up and visited by hundreds to this day, and no 
 one doubts that the Rajah was punished for putting these two 
 Thugs to death.” This was but one of many instances which 
 Colonel Sleeman’s approvers were eager to relate. One man, 
 when asked if he knew any other cases of the same kind, replied, 
 “ Hundreds! When Madhajee Scindiah caused seventy Thugs to 
 be executed at Multoun, was he not warned in a dream by Devi 
 that he should release them? and did he not the very day after 
 their execution begin to spit blood? and did he not die within 
 three months?” ‘Then other witnesses were ready with other proofs 
 of the omnipotence of Devi, and told how, when certain Rajpoot 
 chiefs arrested eighty Thugs, all their families were afflicted, how 
 they all perished, “ not ‘a child left ;” and how one who had imposed 
 certain fines upon the gang, the very day that he took the money 
 lost his only son, “and the best horse in his stable; and was him- 
 self taken ill, 4nd died soon after a miserable death.” But they 
 all acknowledged that even Devi could not withstand the good 
 fortune of the Company. “'lhe Company’s good fortune is such,” 
 they said, “that before the sound of your drums, sorcerers, witches, 
 and demons take flight—and how can Thuggee stand?” 
 
 Thuggee did not stand—it fell. The great work of rooting 
 out these monstrous depredational leagues was accomplished in 
 a few years by the energies of a few Kuropean officers. Up to the 
 year 1829 but little had been done to suppress the abomination. 
 Occasional evidences of the crime had presented themselves some 
 years before, and a few gangs of professional murderers had been 
 arrested. In 1810, General St. Leger, then Commander-in-Chief, 
 
t3 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGER: 
 
 issued an order cautioning the troops, especially the Sepoys, about 
 to proceed on leave to their homes, against “a description of mur- 
 derers denominated Thugs,” who infested the districts of the 
 Doab, and other parts of the Upper Provinces. About the same 
 time some of the more active of our magistrates in Upper India had 
 succeeded in securing the persons of a number of these murderers, 
 but although several of them confessed, and the property of the 
 murdered men was found in their houses, the higher judicial 
 authorities did not consider that the evidence was sufficient to con- 
 vict them. “Mr. Wright apprehended seventy-six, of whom 
 seventeen made confessions which strongly criminated the remain- 
 ing fifty-nine, who denied. Those who denied, and those who 
 confessed, were alike released by one sweeping order from the 
 Nizamut Adawlut without security or anything else ;”* and sent 
 back to carry on their old trade, emboldened by impunity and 
 success. 
 
 ‘These were but fitful efforts resulting in nothing. The subject 
 excited little general interest, and no organised efforts, on an 
 effective scale, were made to root out the enormous evil. Indeed, 
 its extent was imperfectly known even to the best informed of our 
 officers until about the time which I have indicated, under the 
 government of Lord William Bentinck, operations were formally | 
 commenced, and a regular “ Department” for the suppression of 
 Thuggee instituted by that enlightened nobleman. And so vigor- 
 ‘ously was this great work prosecuted—with such remarkable 
 intelligence, and such admirable perseverance were all our meas- 
 ures shaped, and all our projects executed—that, ten years 
 afterwards, Colonel Sleeman, to whose benevolent energies we are, 
 under Providence, mainly indebted for the success of the under- 
 taking, was enabled to write:—“In 1830, Mr. George Swinton, 
 who was then Chief Secretary to the Supreme Government of 
 India, and our best support in the cause which Mr. F. C. Smith and 
 [ had undertaken, wrote to him to say that he feared success must 
 be considered as altogether unattainable, for he had been given to 
 understand by those who appeared to ‘be well informed on the 
 subject. that the evil had taken deep root in all parts of India, and 
 extended itself to almost every village community. There were 
 certainly at that time very few districts in India without these 
 resident gangs of Thugs; and in some, almost every village com- 
 munity was more or less tainted with the system, while there was 
 not one district free from their depredations. No man aware of 
 the fearful extent of the evil could ever have expected to see 
 so much progress made in its suppression within so short a time; 
 because no man could have calculated on those many extraor- 
 
 a ee ee 
 * Letter from G. Stockwell, Joint Magistr pie» Etawah, to T. Wauchope, he cig 
 Bundelcund, December, 1814. 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 13 
 
 dinary combinations of circumstances upon which our success has 
 chiefly depended—combinations which it behoves us gratefully 
 to acknowledge, as Providential interpositions for the benefit 
 of the people entrusted to our rule—interpositions which these 
 people themselves firmly believe will never be wanting to rulers 
 whose measures are honestly intended, and wisely designed for 
 the good of their subjects.” * 
 
 How this great work was accomplished is soon told. These 
 vast criminal leagues had hitherto thriven upon the ignorance of 
 the British authorities. We could do nothing to suppress them, 
 for, indeed, we knew little or nothing about them, They were 
 
 THUGS DIVIDING THE SPOIL. 
 
 mighty secrets—hidden mysteries—dimly guessed at, not at all 
 understood. But now Sleeman and his associates, resolved that 
 this trade of Thuggee should no longer be any more a mystery than 
 tailoring or carpentering, began to initiate themselves into all the 
 secrets of the craft, and were soon, in their knowledge of the theory 
 of the profession, little behind the professors themselves. 
 
 It need not be said that all this information was derived from 
 frequent intercourse with the Thugs themselves. Our officers 
 
 * Sleeman.- Preface to published Report on the Depredations committed by the 
 Thug gangs of Upper and Central India. Calcutta, 1840. : 
 
14 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEER. 
 
 having apprehended some of these professional stranglers, selected 
 the likeliest of the party, and by holding out to them promises, 
 not only of pardon, but of employment, soon wormed their secrets 
 out of them. Ina little time Sleeman and his associates had learnt 
 from these ‘‘approvers” all that was to be learnt. from them—all 
 the mysteries of their craft, the whole art of Thuggee—how the 
 murder-gangs set out on their journey, how they propitiated the 
 oddess, how they consulted the omens, how the victim was first 
 beguiled, how the noose was thrown, how the body was buried— 
 how they brought up their children to the trade, how generation 
 after generation of Thugs lived prosperously and securely, and 
 how it happened that the native chiefs either protected or stood 
 aloof from them, whilst the English were ignorant of their doings. 
 Everything that these approvers, turning their backs for ever on 
 Devi, and bowing down before the irresistible zkbal of the Com- 
 pany, now revealed—and they were tolerably loquacious in their 
 revelations—was carefully noted down, and the statements of one 
 informant collated with those of others. From these men Sleeman 
 and his associates learnt not only the whole theory and practice of 
 Thuggee, but gathered no small amount of knowledge concerning 
 the gangs that were in actual operation, and the men who were 
 connected with them. With such clues as the approvers afforded, 
 it was now easy to hunt down the different gangs which were 
 scattered over the country, and many large captures were made. 
 New approvers were brought upon the lists of the “ Department,” 
 and new gangs were hunted down. Many criminals were thus 
 brought to trial, convicted, and sentenced either to be hanged, 
 transported, or imprisoned. . 
 These captures struck terror into the hearts of the whole 
 fraternity of Thugs. And far more terrible than the English 
 officers, environed with the prestige of that irresistible ikbal of the 
 
 * One or two extracts from Colonel Sleeman’s Reports will suffice to convey an 
 idea of the extent of these captures and their results :—‘‘ When they arrived at 
 Dakhola, Captain Borthwick having heard of their proceedings, detached a party 
 of horse tu apprehend them. The horsemen came upon the gangs unawares, while 
 encamped outside a village, aud accused them of stealing opium; they were glad to 
 have an opportunity of clearing themselves of this unfounded accusation, so accom- 
 panied the horsemen to the village for the purpose of being examined; immediately 
 on their arrival they were secured and taken to Captain Borthwick, of whom seventy- 
 nine were made prisoners—viz., five made approvers, seventy-four tried by Colonel 
 Stewart (resident at Hyderabad), thirty-nine condemned to death, twenty-one to im- 
 prisonment for life, eleven to limited imprisonment, and three acquitted.” Again: 
 ‘Captain Borthwich having received intelligence of the residence of these gangs, 
 arranged for their apprehension as soon as a party of them returned from one of 
 their excursions. He proceeded with Captain Macmahon and about 200 of the 
 Jhowrah cavalry, and came upon their villages before daylight, and so completely 
 surrounded them that the capture of the whole gang was effected without the escape 
 of a single individual—in all fifty-three Thugs ; four of whom were made approvers, 
 twenty-two executed, eleven transported, three sentenced to limited imprisonment, 
 and thirteen released for want of evidence.” 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGER. 15 
 
 Company, which was acknowledged to be too powerful for Devi to 
 combat, and his well-armed, well-mounted followers, was the know- 
 ledge that their own brethren were turning against them, and that 
 ever at the stirrup of the Thug-hunting Mnglishmen went one or 
 more apostate members of their own murderous Guild. Jt was 
 plain to them, now that all their secrets were revealed—that there 
 was no safety any longer to be derived from the ignorance of the 
 dominant power—that let them go where they might in the Com- 
 pany’s territories, the Thug-led '‘'hug-hunters would be upon their 
 track. Some endeavouring to find in the neighbouring native states 
 a fair field for their operations, or to obtain service under the 
 native chiefs, fled hastily across the boundary-line; but there, too, 
 the Philistines were uponthem. Jnglish humanity was not brought 
 to a stand at the confines of the country subject to our own regula- 
 tions, and guarded by our own police. From Northern Oude 
 to Southern Hyderabad our influence at the native Courts, and the 
 labors of our political officers, produced the same results as in our 
 own provinces; and even there some, hopeless of eventual escape, 
 and weary of a life of unceasing anxiety, rushed into the presence 
 of the English officer, flung themselves at his feet, and implored 
 him to receive them as approvers.* 
 
 But great as was the personal energy and ability brought to 
 bear upon the suppression of the crime of Thuggee, it was hardly 
 probable that our officers should have achieved complete success 
 unless armed with peculiar powers—unless a certain relaxation of 
 
 * Indeed the operations of our officers in the Deccan and in Oude do not con- 
 stitute the least interesting chapter in the great history of Thuggee-suppression. 
 There were greater difficulties to be overcome by those who operated in the native 
 states—-difficulties such as are here set forth by Captain Malcolm: ‘No analogy,” he 
 writes, ‘ exists between the proceedings in the Thug Department within the territo- 
 ries of the Honorable Company, or any other well-regulated state, and those which 
 are carried on in the Nizam’s dominions, in which no system of police can be said to 
 exist. Inthe former, the parties charged with this duty are armed with a warrant, 
 before which the gates of every village are thrown open, and the police, if not aiding 
 or furthering the object on which they are employed, dare not openly at any rate 
 throw any obstacles in their way. In the Nizam’s territory, however, the case is 
 very different; a few of the principal Talookdars evince the greatest readiness to 
 afford me prompt assistance whenever called on by Government todoso. Their 
 authority, however, does not extend to the villages held on military and other rent- 
 free tenures with which their districts are studded, and the Potails of which affect 
 to attend to no orders but those emanating from their immediate superiors. The 
 consequences frequently are, that when a Thug is traced into a village of this class, 
 the gates are shut in the face of the pursuing party; or should they have been 
 allowed to enter from ignorance of the object of their visit, the Government orders, 
 when produced, are treated with the utmost contempt; and if the party do not 
 _ quietly take their departure, they are generally forced to do so by the armed men 
 stationed at the place on the part of the Jagheerdars, or by the armed villagers them- 
 selves. Serious collisions have in consequence arisen, in which several of my men 
 have at times been severely wounded, and at others treated with the greatest indig- 
 nity.”—|[ Captain Malcolm to Captain Reynolds. Preface to Captain Sleeman’s 
 Report. | 
 
16 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 
 
 the law, warranted by the extraordinary character and the extreme 
 enormity of the crime, had been legalised by the Supreme Govern- 
 ment. or some years we had been trying men accused of Thug- 
 gee; but they had almost invariably escaped. It had been difficult, 
 to a degree perhaps not readily appreciable by English lawyers or 
 any other residents in this little island of Great Britain, to convict 
 men, upon clear judicial evidence, of specific acts of Thuggee. The 
 migratory character of the murder-gangs—the vast extent of coun- 
 try which they traversed—the number of local screens and fences 
 —the difficulty of personal identification—the craft and subtlety of 
 the offenders themselves—the unlimited amount of false swearing 
 and of false impersonation which, at any time, they could bring 
 into our criminal courts—were obstructions to the course of justice, 
 under a strict interpretation of the existing law, which were seldom 
 or never overcome. A timid or even a cautious—perhaps I ought 
 to write a “conscientious” judge, would be sure to acquit even a 
 notorious Thug for want of satisfactory evidence of the commission 
 of aspecific offence. Some of the causes which I have recited con- 
 tributed largely, also, to the embarrassment of the question of 
 jurisdiction. A murder was committed in one part of the country, 
 and the murderers were apprehended in another, perhaps some 
 hundreds of miles distant from the scene of the atrocity. To lmit 
 the jurisdiction in such a case to the particular Zillah in which the 
 crime was committed, was to throw up all sorts of difficulties and 
 delays, and almost to ensure the prisoner’s escape. ‘Ihese impedi- 
 ments to the strict and prompt administration of justice were 
 wonderfully protective of Thuggee. The more complicated the 
 machinery, and the more formal the procedure of our courts, the 
 better for these professional stranglers. They throve upon the 
 legal niceties:and the judicial reserve of the English tribunals, 
 and laughed our Regulations to scorn. 
 
 - It was wisely determined, therefore, after due consideration 
 by the supreme Government of India, to make the case of 'Thuggee 
 an exceptional case, and to sanction a relaxed application of 
 existing laws and regulations to members of the great fraternity of 
 Thugs. Accordingly an Act was passed in 1836, by which a man 
 convicted of belonging, or having belonged, to a gang of Thugs 
 was rendered amenable to imprisonment for life, whilst at the 
 same time, prisoners accused of ‘‘huggee were made liable to the 
 jurisdiction of any of the Company’s Courts, without reference to 
 the locality of the alleged offence, and the formality of the Mahom- 
 edan Futwah was dispensed with as a preliminary to the trial of 
 this class of proscribed offenders.* The good effect of these. 
 
 * The Act being conveniently short, I may as well give it in a note: 
 
 Act XXX., 1836. (1).“It is hereby enacted, that whatever shall be proved to 
 have belonged, either before or after the passing of this Act, to any gang of Thugs, 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 17 
 
 enactments were soon felt. They were all that the Thuggee 
 officers needed to enable them to carry out the great work which 
 was placed in their hands. The strong defences of the Thug gangs 
 were now struck down. ‘They had no longer our ignorance on the 
 one side, and our judicial over-scrupulousness on the other, to 
 protect them. So the work of suppression went on bravely. The 
 gangs were hunted down; our gaols were filled with Thugs ; 
 conviction and condemnation were no longer unattainable ends ; 
 and a great institution which had existed for centuries was alien 
 up in a few years. 
 
 I do not say that there is no such thing as Thuggee, at the 
 present time, in any part of the Company’s dominions. It is 
 probable that still an occasional traveller may, from time to time, 
 be strangled by the wayside. But the cases are few in number, 
 and comparatively insignificant in character. The system is 
 destroyed ; the profession is ruined ; the Guild is scattered, never 
 again to be associated into a ereat corporate body. The craft 
 and the mystery of Thuggee will no longer be handed down from 
 father to son. A few English officers, acting under the orders of 
 the supreme administrative authorities, have purged India of this 
 great pollution. If we have done nothing else for the country, we 
 have done this one good thing. It was a great achievement—a great 
 victory. And it is one to be contemplated without any abatement 
 of satisfaction, or any reservation of praise. 
 
 It is a greater exploit than the conquest of Sindh or the 
 Punjab, or the annexation of Pegu; and the names of the com- 
 mander of that little army of Thug-hunters and of his unflinching 
 lieutenants, ought, in every History of India, to have honorable 
 mention, and by every student of that history to be held in grateful 
 remembrance. I cannot conclude. this chapter better than by the 
 mention of them. They are Sleeman, Borthwick,* Ramsay, Rey- 
 
 either within or without the territories of the East India Company, shall be 
 punished with imprisonment for life with hard labor. (2) And it is hereby enacted, 
 that every person accused of the offence made punishable by this Act, may be 
 tried by any court, which would have been competent to try him, if his offence had 
 heen committed within the Zillah, where that court sits, anything to the contrary, 
 in any regulation contained, notwithstanding. (3) And it is hereby enacted, that 
 no court shall, on a trial of any person accused of the offence made punishable by 
 this Act, require any Futwah from any law officer.” 
 
 A supplementary Act (No. XVIII. of 1837) decreed that “ any person charged 
 with murder by Thuggee, or with the offence of belonging to a gang of Thugs, 
 made punishable by Act No. XXX. of 1836, may be committed by any magistrate, 
 or joint magistrate, within the territories of the Hast India Company, for trial 
 before any criminal court competent to try such person on such charge.” 
 
 * Two examples of gangs captured by Captain, now Colonel, Borthwick, are 
 given in a note at page 372, from Colonel Sleeman’s Report. But the first of these 
 is so remarkable, not only for the interesting character of its details, but also from 
 the circumstances of its being an account of the capture of, I believe, the first con- 
 siderable gang of Dacoits convicted and punished in any part of India, that I am 
 
 3 
 
18 SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEER. 
 
 nolds, Malcolm, Etwall, Hollings, Lowis, Graham, Paton, Riddell, 
 Ludlow, Birch, Miles, Marsh, Whiteford, and others of good service 
 
 induced to give in this place an amplified version of the story almost in the words 
 that it was related to me :—‘“‘ Captain Borthwick wag at the time Political Agent 
 of the western division of the province of Malwa, in which the principality of Rutlam 
 is comprehended. The chief of this state was then a minor—a circumstance which 
 occasioned a more frequent and minute interference in the administration of its 
 affairs than commonly characterised our political control over the native states of 
 that province. So situated, the Political Officer was necessarily kept constantly 
 informed of all that transpired, both by the Akhbar-Nowese, or news-writer, whom 
 he had stationed in the principality for the purpose, and by the minister himself of 
 the state. Inthe course of almost daily communications from these individuals, 
 Borthwick received an account stating that five bodies of the Bunnyah or Sudookar 
 class had been discovered in the jungle, a few paces from the high road, ten or 
 twelve miles to the southward of Rutlam, the capital of the state. They were 
 slightly covered with stones, and had the appearance of having been recently 
 murdered. The part of the country where these bodies were stated to have been 
 discovered, was much infested by predatory Bheels, and on reading the report, 
 Borthwick’s first impression was that the crime had been committed by them. The 
 unusual atrocity of it, however, determined the British agent immediately to pro- 
 ceed to Rutlam and investigate the case. The inquiry was accordingly commenced ; 
 but it had not proceeded far before Borthwick saw that the Bheels were in no way 
 concerned in the murders, but that the perpetrators were evidently Thugs. At the 
 same time it transpired that six or eight days previously, about which time it was 
 supposed that the murders must have been committed, a large body of travellers 
 had passed through that part of the country along the highway towards Hindostan. 
 They had the appearance, and, indeed, gaveout that they were pilgrims returning to 
 their homes, after having paid their devotions at a shrine of peculiar sanctity in 
 the western part of Guzerat. All this tended so strongly to excite Borthwick’s 
 suspicions that these travellers were the authors of this atrocious deed, that he 
 resolved upon taking immediate measures for arresting them. It was observed that 
 they were travelling very leisurely, but, after the lapse of so many days, they could 
 hardly have proceeded to a distance of less than 100 miles. Resolved, however, upon 
 making the attempt to effect their seizure, and having obtained from different 
 persons, who had well observed and even conversed with some of them, a full des- 
 cription of their appearance, he despatched a party of native horsemen, under the 
 command of a smart and intelligent officer, in pursuit of them, with the strictest 
 orders, when once he came up with them, not to lose sight of them until they were 
 secured and brought in for examination. Furnished with a description of the sup- 
 posed gang, and with requisitions on the local authorities of the villages and districts 
 through which they would have to pass, calling upon them in the name of the — 
 British Government to afford him every assistance in their power to effect this 
 object, the party set out in pursuit. It was only at the village of Dekhola, about 
 150 miles from Rutlam, whence they were despatched, that they came up with the 
 gang. Having satisfied himself that they were the people of whom he was in 
 pursuit, the officer went to the principal man of the place and presented his requisi- 
 tion for aid; but finding the latter was unable to give him the assistance he required 
 (the village being a small and poor one), he had recourse to a piece of strategy, 
 which is worthy to be held in remembrance for the sake of its own cleverness as 
 well as for its excellent results. The Government of India had established a strict 
 monopoly of opium over Malwa, which had then existed for some time, and these 
 very horsemen formed a portion of the body of troops employed by Captain Borth- 
 wick, and posted at the different commanding outlets to prevent the unauthorised 
 export of the drug. So it occurred to the officer, on finding the village could not 
 supply him with means sufficient to use coercion, to take advantage of this circum- 
 stance—to denounce the gang as smugglers, and charge them with having contra- 
 band opium in their possession. ‘Too glad to find there was not the slightest insinu- 
 ation thrown out as to their real characters, they were eager with their offers to 
 submit their luggage at once to the officer’s inspection. This, however, not suiting 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE. 19 
 
 ~S 
 lo Zax * NO 2/4 
 yy’ @s Sa <k 
 
 uh ee 
 v 
 ecu 
 aN \ o 
 \ y fine 
 \ ee 
 Hy a - 
 
 S \, 
 Wy 
 \ 
 
 Ut, 
 
 Lig Y BIS 
 (fi) ay # ‘ 
 A SH & 
 “i ; 
 
 ASA V4 
 WA. 
 
 RECLAIMED THUGS. 
 
20. SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEER. 
 
 and good repute. Many of these were afterwards distinguished as 
 agents for the suppression of professional Dacoity. But to this 
 important subject I must devote another chapter. 
 
 This chapter, however, would hardly seem to be complete 
 without some mention of a fact, more prominently noticed elsewhere, 
 illustrative of the completeness of the efforts which were made for 
 the entire suppression of Thuggee. Through the instrumentality 
 of Colonel Sleeman and one of his assistants, Lieutenant Brown, 
 Schools of Industry were established at Jubbulpore, with the view 
 of affording employment to adult approvers, and of educating their 
 
 his purpose, he pretended that no inspection at so paltry a village, where there were 
 no authorities of sufficient importance to testify to the result, would be satisfactory 
 to the British Agent, and signified his desire to have it made at a place where it 
 could be effected in a more open and authoritative manner. After some hesitation 
 on the part of the gang they agreed to go back with him to Bhulwara, a stage to 
 the southward of Dekhola, which they had passed a day or two before. At Bhul- 
 wara there was a large body of Sebundies, or police soldiers, which, on arriving 
 there, the authorities, in compliance with the requisition presented by the officer, 
 placed at his disposal. He now considered he had sufficient means to make a 
 capture of the gang, and thinking it no longer necessary to disguise his suspicions 
 -and intentions regarding them, openly charged them with being Thugs, and declared 
 his determination to carry them before Captain Borthwick, to be subjected toa strict 
 examination. Boldly and clamorously they attempted to repel the charge. They 
 declared themselves to be innocent and inoffensive people returning from their 
 pilgrimage to shrines in the west of Guzerat. To all this he paid no attention, but 
 was not a little stageered on a paper being presented to him by one of the leaders, 
 which was asserted to be a passport of the English Government, under the protec- 
 tion of which he (the leader) declared they were travelling. This caused doubt and 
 
 ~ anxiety to the officer, which, however, was in some measure appeased by consider- 
 
 ing the strictness of his orders, and in feeling assured that if it came to pass that a 
 mistake had been made, every allowance would be shown tohim. All his fears, 
 however, were speedily dispelled by one of the gang, in a paroxysm of fear, coming 
 to him and confessing that they were Thugs, and offering, if his life were assured 
 to him, to make a full disclosure of all their proceedings. This was a contingency 
 for which Captain Borthwick had fortunately prepared him, and he accordingly on 
 the instant separated this proffered approver from the gang, and kept him from 
 that moment away from all intercourse with his comrades. In the meanwhile 
 Captain Borthwick himself, after despatching the officer and party from Rutlam 
 
 _ proceeded to Joura, a small town twenty miles to the north of the former, there to 
 
 ~await to the result of the measures he had taken. Shortly afterwards he received 
 a report from the officer of the success that had attended him, which was speedily 
 followed by his arrival at Joura with the gang in his custody. Borthwick immedi- 
 ately entered upon the examination of the approver. Of the information which was 
 thereby elicited, that part which contained a full and particular account of the 
 murders committed by the gang, from the time they passed Rutlam until they were 
 overtaken at Dekhola, claimed his immediate attention. The approver gave an 
 account of no less than eighteen different murders committed in that short interval ; 
 and in order to confirm this part of his evidence, Captain Borthwick sent him the 
 following day under a guard, and accompanied by a native writer, to note all that 
 transpired along the line of road upon which the murders were stated by him to 
 have been perpetrated. In every instance stated, the place where the body of the 
 murdered person was deposited was pointed out. The several bodies were disin- 
 terred, and each instance was verified by the village authorities nearest to the spots, 
 Thus a complete corroboration of the approver’s statements was obtained; and 
 other approvers having come forward, the guilt of the gang, individually and 
 collectively, was fully established by a mass of incontrovertible proof.” 
 
SUPPRESSION OF THUGGER. 21 
 
 children—so that the little ones, instead of being initiated into the 
 fearful mysteries of Thuggee, were trained to the understanding 
 and the practice of useful trades, and the rising generation of 
 professional murderers turned into industrious artisans. 
 
DACOITY, 
 
 ——ee00n0 088) bas000100—— 
 
 Tue efforts of these energetic and indefatigable officers at the 
 head of the Thuggee Establishment had hitherto been mainly 
 directed to the suppression of that great crime which gave the name 
 to their Department. But when they had reason to believe that 
 their measures had broken up the greater number of gangs, and 
 suppressed the activity of the evil, if they had not wholly rooted it 
 out, they began to address themselves to the eradication of another 
 foul disease of cognate origin and kindred aspect, which, if not so 
 terrible to contemplate, was more extensively disseminated, and 
 scarcely less fatal in its effects upon the general peace and happi- 
 ness of the people. | 
 
 It was no new thing to the comprehension of English residents 
 in India at this time that robberies, attended with violence, often, 
 indeed, with murder, were frequently committed in dwelling-houses 
 by gangs of armed men. For three-quarters of a century had 
 these gang-robbers been known as Dacovts, and every one in India, 
 or, indeed, every one with the commonest knowledge of India and 
 her affairs, knew well that Dacoity, or gang-robbery, was a crime 
 of very frequent occurrence in all parts of Hindostan. Hver since 
 we had established police-bands to capture, and law-courts to try, 
 offenders of any kind, we had been capturing and trying Dacoits, 
 and passing laws against them, tinged with more or less of the 
 severity or the leniency of the times. In the days of Warren 
 Hastings, when a sort of unscrupulous vigor, not in effect so 
 injurious to humanity as it seems to be in description, was brought 
 to bear upon the disorders of the country, it was decreed that: not 
 only should every convicted Dacoit be executed in his own village, 
 but that the village should be fined “ according to the enormity of 
 the crime, each inhabitant according to his substance, and that the 
 family of the criminal should become the slaves of the State, and be 
 disposed of for the general benefit and convenience of the people, 
 according to the discretion of Government.”* 
 
 * General Regulations for the Administration of Justice, August, 1772. This 
 measure was recommended by the Committee of Circuit at Cossimbazaar. The 
 arguments with which they support it are curious :—‘‘ We have judged it necessary 
 to add to the regulations a proposal for the suppression and extirpation of Dacoits, 
 which will appear to be dictated by a spirit of rigor and violence very different 
 from the caution and lenity of our other propositions, as it in some respects 
 
DACOITY. 28 
 
 But although in those days our early administrators were not 
 without some general knowledge of the habits of this “race of 
 outlaws, living from father to son in a state of warfare against 
 society,’* though it was known that Dacoity was something more 
 than an accident, a casual blot, a superficial excrescence, it had 
 “been but imperfectly ascertained to what extent, and in what per- 
 fection, it was an integral institution. But when the same 
 process that had been applied to the exposition of Thuggee, with 
 all its systematised enormities, its creeds, and its rituals, was 
 brought to bear upon the kindred crime of Dacoity, there was 
 
 involves innocent with the guilty. We wish a milder expedient could be suggested, 
 but we much fear that this evil has acquired a great degree of its strength from 
 the tenderness and moderation which our Government has exercised towards these 
 banditti, since it has interfered in the internal protection of the provinces. We 
 confess that the means which we propose can in nowise be reconcileable to the 
 spirit of our own constitution; but till that of Bengal shall attain the same per- 
 fection, no conclusion can be drawn from the English laws that can properly be ap- 
 plied to the manners or state of this country. * * * We have many instances 
 of their meeting death with the greatest insensibility; it loses, therefore, its effect 
 as an example, but when executed in all the forms and terrors of law in the midst 
 of the neighbours and relations of ‘the criminal; when these are treated as ac- 
 cessories to his guilt, and his family deprived of their liberty, and separated for 
 ever from each other, every passion which before served as an incentive to guilt, 
 now becomes subservient to the purposes of society, by turning them from a vo- 
 cation in whichall they hold dear, besides life, become forfeited by their conviction ; 
 at the same time their families, instead of being lost to the community, are made 
 useful members of it, by being adopted into those of the more civilised inhabitants. 
 The ideas of slavery, borrowed from our American colonies, will make every modi- 
 fication of it appear, in the eyes of our own countrymen in England, a horrible 
 evil. But it is far otherwise in this country; here slaves are treated as the chil- 
 dren of the families to which they belong, and often acquire a much happier state 
 by their slavery than they could have hoped for by the enjoyment of liberty, so 
 that in effect the apparent rigor thus exercised on the children of convicted rob- 
 bers, will be no more than a change of condition, by which they will be no sufferers, 
 though it will operate as a warning on others, and is the only means which we can 
 imagine capable of dissipating these desperate and abandoned societies which sub- 
 sist on the distress of the general community.” The logic of this seems rather to 
 halt in the concluding passages; for if the sale of the families of the Dacoits was 
 _ calculated to better their condition and enhance their happiness, it could not have 
 
 operated as a very effectual warning. The Committee of Circuit seem to have recom- 
 mended the proposed measure as a severe and deterring punishment, and then taken 
 the greatest tronble to demonstrate that it would be no punishment at all.—t[ Letter of 
 the Committee of Circuit at Cossimbazaar, August 15, 1772, in Colebrooke’s Digest. 
 Supplementary Volume. | 
 
 * Warren Hastings (1773). The following description of the Dacoit bands, writ- 
 ten eighty years ago, shows that our predecessors in India had a very fair general 
 knowledge of the subject :—‘‘ The Dacoits of Bengal are not, like the robbers in’ 
 England, individuals driven to such desperate courses by sudden want. They are 
 robbers by profession, and even by birth; they are formed into regular communi- 
 ties, and their families subsist by the spoils which they bring home to them; they 
 are all, therefore, alike criminal wretches who have placed themselves in a state 
 of declared war with Government, and are, therefore, wholly excluded from every 
 benefit. of its laws.”—[ Letter from the Committee of Circuit to the Council of Fart 
 William, dated at Cossimbazaar, Ede 15,1772. Colebrooke’s Digest. Supplementary 
 Volume. 1 
 
24 DACOITY. 
 
 found to be as much system in it, as stern a faith, as engrossing 
 a superstition. It was seen then that Dacoity was the normal 
 condition of whole tribes born and bred to the profession, that 
 there were robber-castes in India just as there were soldier-castes 
 or writer-castes, and that men went out to prey upon the property 
 of their fellows—- and; if need be, on their lives—with strict 
 religious observance of sacrament and sacrifice, strong in the belief 
 that they were only fulfilling their destiny, and doing good service 
 to the deity whom they adored. 
 
 I do not mean that there was no such thing as accidental 
 Dacoity—that men not bred and born to the profession never, 
 under the force of accidental circumstances, took to Dacoity 
 for a livelihood—but that it was established upon a_ broad 
 basis of hereditary caste, and was, for the most part, an organic 
 state of society. “I have always followed the trade of my © 
 ancestors—Dacoity,” said Lukha, a noted Dacoit, who subse- 
 quently became approver. “My ancestors held this profession 
 before me,” said another, “ and we train boys in the same manner. 
 In my caste, if there were any honest persons, 1.6. not robbers, 
 they would ‘be turned out and not kept with us.” The first of 
 these belonged toa robber-tribe known as Budducks, one of the 
 largest and most exclusive of the depredational castes; the other 
 was of the tribe of Hurrees. Sometimes boys were adopted into these 
 robber-castes. “Iwas hitherto a Beree by caste,” said another 
 approver, “and converted into a Kheejuck (another robber-trade) 
 by one of Jeeteen of that caste, who, seeing me begging and dis- 
 tressed, took me under his pr otection, and gave me maintenance.” 
 Sometimes they married into a robber-caste, and took up the trade 
 with their wives. Sometimes they inherited the profession from 
 the mother’s side. ‘ Man Singh, a very noted leader of Budducks,” 
 said the same Lukha, whose evidence I have above quoted, ‘ was 
 a Gosain and nota Dacoit, but he united himself to a Budduck 
 woman, by whom he had Man Singh. This man had been engag- 
 ed in a hundred enterprises.” 
 
 Such, read by the light thrown upon this deeply interesting 
 subject by the investigations of our British officers, were the here- 
 ditary robber-castes of India; the Budducks, the Kheejucks, the 
 Hurrees, the Dosads, and others. The gangs, composed of these 
 men, were for the most part distinguished by their exclusiveness 
 and uniformity. Dacoity was conducted by them with all becom- 
 ing solemnity ; it was, ike Thuggee, a mysterious institution not 
 to be hghtly approached—one into the hallowed precincts of which 
 admission was to be obtained only by formal initiation. But though 
 there were robber-castes, and many gangs of Dacoits composed of 
 these exclusive fraternities, all Dacoity was not of this constitu- 
 tional character. There were gangs of a less formal and select 
 
DACOITY. ; 25 
 kind—gangs composed of men of different tribes,* often strangers 
 to each other ; and there were Dacoits not of the hereditary class, 
 lay members, as it were, of the profession, who troubled themselves 
 little about presiding goddesses, and set about their work in a less 
 scientific way. But although in these gangs might be discerned a 
 fusion of many castes, they all seemed to rally round the men of 
 the hereditary robber-castes, without whose agency they believed 
 that they could accomplish little. “ A convicted Dacoit in the 
 Purneah gaol,” writes an intelligent officer of the Thuggee Depart- 
 ment, to whose investigations we are indebted for much of our 
 knowledge of the robber-castes of India, “from whom I sought 
 information, confessed to me his having been with three different 
 gang-leaders, with whom he had been concerned in ten different 
 Dacoities within the Purneah district. These gangs were promis- 
 cuously composed, but the nucleus was composed of the robber- 
 castes, and he laid it down as a rule, well known by the robber 
 fraternity, that no gang could, retain its organisation and efficiency 
 without an admixture of the ‘ yanam chors, as he styled them, or 
 ‘born robbers.’ ‘This man was one of the industrial castes which are 
 called by the robber-castes* ‘janwars,’ acommon term for simplicity 
 and clownishness in India, but by whichis here meant the uninitiated. 
 He assured me that his ‘ oostad,’ or teacher, was a Dosad (a noto- 
 rious robber-caste), and that on one occasion, when he proposed to 
 set up a gang himself this man told him that without the assist- 
 ance of the hereditary robber-castes, no gang ever was or ever 
 could be established, for that to them alone had descended, through 
 a long line of ancestors, the ‘ zlm,’ or secret lore necessary for the 
 purpose.” T 
 
 This at all events was something to know—but there was 
 much more to be known. ‘The hereditary robber-caste constituted 
 the aristocracy of depredational crime. They were the leaders and 
 instructors of the organised bands of robbers—the pivots upon 
 which the whole machinery turned. Every gang was more or less 
 regulated by them, but every gang was not mainly composed of 
 them. ‘The most noticeable thing of all was the extraordinary 
 extent of these depredational leagues—the thousands of members 
 that they numbered. There seemed, indeed, to be a network of 
 organised plunder spread over the whole face of the country. It 
 
 * “ The Budducks,” said an approver of one of the local Purneah gangs, “ de- 
 predate with men of their owncaste alone, and no others ; and we in this part of 
 the country depredate with people of all castes, and the houses of the different men 
 are not in one place, but various distances remote the one from the other, sone 10 
 
 or 12 coss (20 or 24 miles), others only 1 or 2 coss (2 or 4 miles), therefore, those 
 who live near them are well known to all, and those who live far off are only known 
 to Moostajirs and Sirdars. The members of the yang, then, do not all know each 
 other, but only the Sirdars and Moostajirs know all. »—"T Buidence of Bokhat, Mistry. | 
 
 + MS. Notes of Captain Hippisley Marsh. 
 4 
 
26 DACOITY. 
 
 was a tremendous suggestion which staggered the credulity, and 
 baffled the comprehension even of men accustomed to the excesses 
 of great criminal as But they set themselves to work 
 vigorously—to learn all they could, and do all they could—beliey- 
 ing that as they had stricken down Thuggee, Dacoity could not 
 stand up much longer before the ikbal of the Company. 
 
 The first approaches’ to a full understanding of the subject 
 were made without stumbling on any great difficulties. The 
 ereater the segregation of this or that class, the easier is it to 
 trace out and to illustrate its idiosyncrasies. Now the Budducks 
 and Kheejucks were not only exclusive, but migratory castes. 
 They carried on their depredations at a distance from their own 
 homes, and set out in gangs composed entirely of their own frater- 
 nity. It was as easy to elicit a full revelation of the practices and 
 observances of the Budducks or Kheejucks, as of their fellow- 
 adventurers, the Thugs. Indeed, our previous investigations into 
 the physiology of the one, facilitated our enquiries into the habits 
 of the other, and guided us more directly to the truth. There 
 were many points of analogy between them. ‘They had a secret 
 dialect, and secret signs. ‘They assumed various disguises. ‘They 
 offered up sacrifices. As with the Thugs, so with the Budducks, 
 the goat was the favorite victim. They consulted the auspices. 
 They had the same overflowing faith in the cry of the jackal. 
 They swore oaths of fidelity and secrecy. They were altogether the 
 same sort of comfortable religionists with the same utter disregard 
 for the happiness of their fellow-men.”’* 
 
 The ordinary practice of these gang's was to set out, after 
 the usual ritual preliminaries, in parties of thirty, or forty, disguis- 
 ed as travellers or pilgrims, or bird catchers, or anything else 
 that might promise good chance of concealment. The principal 
 implement of their profession was the spear. The spear-head 
 they carried about with them, concealed ‘on their persons ; the 
 
 * Captain Marsh says that the ‘habits and organisation of the robber-castes of 
 Purneah were analogous with those of the Budducks of Western India. -“ It is 
 wonderful,” he observes, “how perfectly similar are the habits and organisation of 
 the Western Budducks and of the robber-castes of the Purneah district. No 
 Budduck cun exist without wine—i.e., fermented liquor—ditto, the robbers of 
 Purneah, No-Budduck reaches full manhood without being initiated into the 
 mysteries and dialects of the caste---ditto, the robber-castes of Purneah. No 
 Budduck ever heartily consents to till the soil, but. will escape it on the first 
 opportunity—- ditto, the robber-castes of Purneah, The little land they till is only 
 to make a show, ‘and screen their real profession. No Budduck gang would ever 
 dream of attacking a house without the preliminary rites and poojah of Kali— 
 ditto, the gangs of the robber-castes of Purneah. Every Budduck Dacoit has a 
 peculiar fashion of girding his breast, back, and loins, so as to offer no impediment 
 to his movements, and to protect Soon from blows, a fashion not used by any 
 description of peaceable men-—ditto, the Purneah robber-castes. All this I have 
 learnt from their own lips and their own showing.’ Pheu an ee I demt- official 
 Letter from Captain Marsh to Major Sleeman. | oy 
 
DACOITY. 27 
 
 handles they either converted into walking-sticks, or buried in 
 a convenient place. One of the party sent on in advance, or some 
 confederate at a distance—a corresponding member of the society 
 —either brought or sent in tidings to the effect that he “had his 
 eye onarich house.” A full description of the locality—of the 
 building itself, of its inhabitants, of the probable means of defence, 
 as far as they could be ascertained, was communicated to the 
 leaders of the gang; and then the night and hour of the attack 
 being determined upon, the gang was duly mustered, and an 
 estimate formed of its adequacy to the intended enterprise.. If the 
 party were not considered strong enough to secure success, some 
 “ auxiliaries ” werecalledin. ‘hese were members of robber-tribes, 
 or local Dacoits, resident in the neighbouring villages. With their 
 party thus augmented they took counsel together, ‘and determined 
 on their plan of operations. It was their policy then to -separate 
 for a day or two before the meditated attack, and then to meet at 
 a given hour—an hour after night-fall—and to advance at once to 
 the enterprise. They then collected the handles of their imple- 
 ments, fixed them into the spear-heads and axes, prepared their 
 torches, divested themselves of all their superfluous: clothes, and 
 advanced to the attack. : 
 
 It was always a nocturnal surprise. With flaming paitchies! 
 and spears glittermg in the broad light, they came suddenly on 
 the sleeping inhabitants of the doomed house, and either roused 
 them with their noise, or pricked them up with the points of their 
 weapons. Thus suddenly startled from their sleep, finding them- 
 selves surrounded by armed men, whose numbers their fear greatly 
 exaggerated, the unhappy merchants, or bankers, so surprised, 
 could seldom muster either their senses or their courage sufficiently 
 to conduct an effective defence. If by any chance the resistance 
 was obstinate, the Dacoits, who had not always the stoutest hearts 
 to sustain them, were in a fair way to be beaten back. But the 
 chances were greatly in their favor. A party suddenly. surprised 
 is always at a disadvantage. So. it often happened that the luck- 
 less inhabitants, confused, bewildered, panic-struck, like people 
 under the influence of a fearful dream, did all that they were 
 directed to do—pointed out the places where their wealth was 
 hidden, and went like sheep to the slaughter. 
 
 Though the ritual formalities of which I have spoken may 
 have been peculiar to particular classes of Dacoits, the mode of 
 procedure here described seems to have been common to all. 
 With the more demonstrative part of the business, indeed, we had 
 been long acquainted... What we now discovered was not only the 
 very curious inner history of the social organisation and religious 
 environments of Dacoity, but all the secret mechanism of those 
 screens and defences, only dimly known before, which enabled the, 
 
28 DACOITY. 
 
 great crime to run riot over the whole length and breadth of the 
 land. That the location in an Indian village of numbers of pro- 
 fessional robbers, ever and anon setting out on depredational 
 journeys, and returning with much spoil in their hands, should be 
 unknown either to the villagers, high or low, or to the rural police, 
 was clearly an impossibility. It was a matter, indeed, of notoriety 
 in the village. It could not be otherwise. Insuch cases, amongst 
 us, knowledge is exposure and extermination. A gang of robbers 
 could not exist for a day in an English village after their location 
 were once discovered. Hvery influential man in the neighbourhood 
 would be eager to secure their capture and imprisonment, and the 
 county constabulary would soon beat up their haunts. But in India 
 all thisis reversed. The squirearchy and the police are alike inter- 
 ested in the protection and sustentation of Dacoity. The Zemin- 
 dar and the Thannadar grow rich upon it. They do not foster the 
 rank weed for nothing. Dacoity is highly remunerative. The 
 headman of the village shares the spoil with the successful robbers. 
 He has his seigneural rights.* He is a harborer of thieves on a 
 
 * From the depositions of a Budduck approver, named Lukha, we gather a full- 
 length picture of a model Zemindar of this kind, whose exactions at last drove a 
 profitable association of Dacoits clean off his estate. 
 
 “ Five hundred rupees out of this booty,” says the approver, after detailing the 
 circumstances of a Dacoity, “were given to Thakur Dhotal Sing, the great land- 
 holder of the village in which we resided.” 
 
 And again, after another enterprise: 
 
 “We gave a share of one-fourth of the booty to Thakur Dhotal Sing, the landlord 
 of Sepreea.’ 
 
 The fourth of the spoil, however, did not suffice him. He grew more exorbitant 
 in his demands: 
 
 “In five or six days we reached home in safety; but the landlord, Dhotal Sing, 
 exacted from us more than a fourth of this booty as his share. The rest we divided, 
 but the rapacious landlord got us all seized and bound, and taking from us all the 
 gold and bullion, gave us only one hundred rupees each...... We prepared to 
 leave this man’s estate, but he implored us to remain, and swore solemnly never 
 again to behave dishonestly to us.” 
 
 It seems that they consented to remain; but in a little time the greedy land- 
 lord was at his old tricks: 
 
 ‘*Dhoulut and I got about a hundred rupees, but we had no sooner got home 
 than Thakur Dhotal Sing came with his son and the other joint proprietors of the 
 estate, seized us all, tied our arms behind our back, and demanded a fourth of our 
 booty. We brought out one of the two hundred rupees, and declared that was all 
 we had gained by the enterprise, but they would not believe us. We protested and 
 remonstrated, and told them that we would leave their estate, as it would never do 
 for us to take all the risk and trouble of Dacoity, and for them to take all the profit. 
 They were a senseless set of peasants, and all we could say seemed to make no kind 
 of impression upon them—as we committed Dacoities on others, they committed 
 them on us. They were ashort-sighted people, or they would have seen the advantage 
 of observing the same good faith with us that we always observe with our patrons.” 
 
 This time they acted up to their threats, and betook themselves to another 
 village: - 
 
 = Dhotal Sing,” says the ill-used Dacoit, “the chief of Sepreea, was a rapacious 
 man, and used to extort from us, in some mode or other, a good deal more than the 
 fourth of our booty, which we considered the seigneural, or Zemindaree right; so 
 we went to reside in the village of Bigholee, not far distant.” 
 
DACOITY. 29 
 
 large scale. They come and go freely, uninterruptedly, so long as 
 they are disposed to pay for the privilege; and as their very exist- 
 ence depends upon the payment, they must perforce submit to the 
 exaction. They are, so to speak, the servants or children of the 
 great men, who supply them in time of need with food and clothing, 
 and make moneyed advances to them when they set out upon their 
 expeditions. Indeed, the robber-gangs are often attended either 
 by one of these landowners in person, or by a delegate from his 
 immediate family. The connexion between them is of the closest 
 kind. Each is necessary to the well-being of the other. 
 
 The bare outside fact of this criminal participation of the land- 
 lords was no discovery of modern times. It had attracted the at- 
 tention of Warren Hastings,* who saw at a glance that it was wholly 
 impossible to suppress Dacoity without proclaiming the responsi- 
 bility of the Zemindars as accessories to the crime, and in all cases 
 of conviction punishing them with as much severity as the active 
 offenders.t He would have made short work of these nursing 
 mothers of crime, and hung up the fattest Zemindar with as little 
 compunction as the leanest Dacoit. As I have said before, the 
 most vigorous measures are often the most humane; and I have 
 little doubt that if these recommendations had been carried out 
 and persevered in, and a heavy blow thus struck at conniving land- 
 lords, we should not now be hearing, after the lapse of three-quarters 
 of a century, that around the immediate seat of the supreme Govern- 
 ment—almost under the shadow of the vice-regal palace itself— 
 “gang-robberies have increased to such an extent that a feeling 
 of general insecurity has arisen in the minds of the people of these 
 districts.” These are the words, not of Warren Hastings, but of 
 
 * See Proceedings of Governor and Council, April 19,1774, quoted in “ Cole- 
 brooke’s Digest,” supplementary volume. 
 
 “At this time I have repeated complaints from all Pate, of this province of the 
 multitude of Dacoits which have infested it for some years past, and have been guilty 
 of the most daring and alerming excesses. I know not whether the knowledge of 
 these evils has been officially communicated to the members of the Board. To me 
 it has only come through the channel of private information, as I do not recollect 
 to have heard the slightest intimation of them from the Zemindars, farmers, or 
 other officers of the revenue; which may appear extraordinary, but that Iam 
 assured that the Zemindars themselves too frequently afford them protection, and 
 - that the Ryots, who are the principal sufferers by these ravages, dare not complain, 
 it being an established maxim with the Dacoits to punish with death every informa- 
 tion given against them.” 
 
 + The words of the recommendation are worth quoting: “that such of the 
 Zemindars or farmers as shall be convicted of having neglected to assist the Fouj- 
 dars in the execution of their trust, shall be made responsible for any loss sustained 
 by such misconduct, or otherwise fined according to the nature of the offence; but 
 that all persons, of whatever degree or profession, who shall be convicted of receiving 
 fees or other pecuniary acknowledgments from robbers, knowing them to be such, or 
 of abetting or conniving in any shape at their practices, shall be adjudged equally 
 criminal with them, and punished with death; and that this be immediately made 
 public throughout the province.”—[ Warren Hastings, 1774, ut supra. | 
 
30. DAGOITY. 
 
 Lord Dalhousie. The Governor of 1852 only repeats the complaint 
 of the Governor of 1774. The immunity which the landlords have: 
 enjoyed in the interval has been the main cause of the perpetua- 
 tion of the evil. We have been much too slow in our interference 
 with their vested interests in robbery and murder. Lord Corn- 
 wallis, when he re-organised the Police Department, in 1792, 
 proclaimed that landlords, convicted of being accessories to the 
 commission of a robbery, should be “compelled to make good the 
 value of the property, stolen or plundered.”* So that, even if the 
 regulations had been put into effect against the Zemindars, it 
 would have been merely a matter of calculation with them—a mere 
 question of profit and loss—the balance being pretty certainly in 
 favor of the former. It is not strange, therefore, that under such 
 regulations the landlords continued to carry on the old trade, and 
 to participate largely in the professional emoluments of the 
 Dacoits. 
 
 Warren Hastings complained that the farming system had 
 a tendency to extend and perpetuate this evil. And the same fact 
 is insisted upon and demonstrated on the evidence of the Dacoits 
 themselves, by the present generation of British functionaries. 
 The small Moostajirs, indeed, are the great harborers of Dacoits— 
 the great promoters of Dacoity. “There could be no Dacoity 
 without the Moostajirs,” was the statement almost invariably made 
 by the approving Dacoits examined by Captain Marsh and other 
 officers.—| Old European residents in the Mofussil confirmed this 
 
 * “Tandholders and farmers of land are not in future to be considered respon- 
 sible for robberies committed in their respective estates or farms, unless it shall be 
 proved that they connived at the robbery, received any part of the property stolen 
 or plundered, harbored the offenders, aided, or refused to give effectual assistance to 
 prevent their escape, or omitted to afford every assistance in their power to the 
 officers of Government for their apprehension, in either of which cases they will 
 be compelled to make good the value of the property stolen or plundered.” 
 
 + A few specimens of the evidence on this head, contained in the Official 
 Reports, will suffice : 
 
 (uestion.—If the Moostajir be not in league, cannot the professional robbers 
 practise Dacoity ? 
 
 Answer.—It cannot be done without the Moostajir.—[ Evidence of Hazaree 
 Dhurkar. | 
 
 Question.—Can there be no Dacoity without Moostajirs ? Sate 
 
 Answer.—There can be no Dacoity without Moostajirs, for, through their influ- 
 ence, the Thannah people cannot lay hold of us robbers from fear of the Moostajirs ; 
 and the use of the Moostajirs is this, that they find the robbers in food and clothes, 
 and lend them money, and give them liquor, and in every way protect our families 
 and ourselves. This is the use of Moostajirs.—[ Evidence of Suroofa Hulwaee. | 
 
 Question.—Since the Moostajir knows he has robbers in his villages, does he 
 make no effort to turn them out ? 
 
 Answer.—If he gains much by remaining, why should he turn them out? 
 He keeps them for his own benefit.—| Hvidence “of Jhubban, approver. | 
 
DACOITY. 31 
 
 testimony. “It is my firm opinion,” wrote an Indigo planter of 
 long standing in Purneah, “that each and every native Moostajir 
 must of necessity be a Dacoit leader, because, in the first instance, 
 he must know the character of residents in his villages, otherwise 
 he would be constantly subject to have unprofitable tenants; and, 
 secondly, because it 1s utterly impossible that large gangs could 
 assemble and cross the country in different directions at night 
 without being stopped by the heads of villages, and as the. ap- 
 provers themselves say that no gang will dare to move out without 
 a Moostajir, it appears to me beyond all doubt that one or 
 two Moostajirs are the actual leaders of every Dacoit-gang.’’* 
 
 It would seem, too, if the evidence of the approvers is to be 
 trusted, that if there could be no Dacoity without the assistance 
 of the Moostajirs, neither could there be Moostajirs without the 
 assistance of the Dacoits. ‘There is no petty Moostajir,” said one 
 man, “free from connexion with Dacoity; and whoever has 
 arepugnance so to connect himself, will not take a Moostajiree.”’ 
 “Without being a rogue,” said another man, “a Moostajir’s pro- 
 fession could not be carried on. No class of rogues come up to the 
 Moostajirs: . . . If there were no robbers in the village, then 
 none would take Moostajiree, and now every class of men become 
 Moostajirs in this hope that they may share in the spoils of 
 Dacoity.” ‘Moostajiree of villages,” said a third, “is taken for 
 purposes of Dacoity...... By becoming a Moostajir he cannot 
 manage without forming a connexion with Dacoits.’ There is 
 every reason to consider this evidence to be trustworthy, as far as 
 it goes. It relates, however, almost entirely to a particular part of 
 the country ;T and the extent to which the evil prevails in other 
 parts may not be safely predicated from it. But the complicity, 
 after one fashion or another, of the landholders, whether Zemin- 
 dars or Moostajirs, in the depredations of the Dacoits, is not local 
 and accidental, but general and continual. The same system, with 
 she¢ht superficial variations, which prevails in Bengal, prevails also 
 in Oude.{ The landholders are the arch-offenders. 
 
 Question.—Is this true, that without a Moostajir or Sirdar, no Dacoity can take 
 place ? 
 _ Answer,—If the Moostajirs do not join, and there be no Sirdar, how could poor 
 robbers commit Dacoity ? Without the command of the Moostajir and the Sirdar no 
 Dacoity can be carried on. Under disguise of landholders the Moostajirs aoe 
 Dacoity on foot.—[ Evidence of Jhubban, Kuraria. ] 
 
 * Kvidence relating to Dacoity, printed in Calcutta. 
 
 +The Purneah district. 
 
 {With certain variations, of course dependent upon the nature of. the landed 
 tenures. In the example, which we have quoted from the evidence of a Budduck 
 practising in Oude, the protecting landlord was a powerful Zemindar. In the 
 instances cited by the Kheejucks of the Purneah district, the territorial offenders 
 were principally small Moostajirs, or Revenue-farmers. 
 
Bo DACOITY. 
 
 Associated with them, in the protection of the more active 
 criminals, are the equally corrupt members of the police. This was 
 no new discovery. Warren Hastings had as clear a perception of 
 the fact as any Superintendent of Police in the present day. But 
 although the Indian constabulary force has been modelled and re- 
 modelled—though first one system has been tried and then another, 
 every description of organisation that has yet been attempted has 
 been found to be equally inefficacious for the protection of life and 
 property, and the detection and punishment of crime. Instead of 
 protecting life and property, these men, under whatever name they 
 draw a certain amount of salary, whether they belong to the 
 regular police, or are the village watch, only protect rapine and 
 disorder. ‘To such at least point their own unaided instincts ; but 
 Kuropean superintendence, though powerless hitherto to convert 
 the Indian police into an effective body, has done something to 
 control its excesses. ‘There is still much more to be done. It is 
 the weakest point of our Indian administration. But to break up 
 a gigantic league of this kind, a confederacy between the landlords 
 and the police so contrived, so glossed over—each playing into the 
 hands of the other—as to baffle almost every effort to convict the 
 suspected offenders of actual participation in the delinquencies of 
 the Dacoits, is a work of no very easy accomplishment for a hand- 
 ful of European strangers. The network of this foul conspiracy 
 stretches up to the very doors of the magistrate’s cutcherry. It 
 embraces all classes, from the wealthy Zemindar and the influential 
 Amlah to theill-paid and insignificant village watchman, who, perhaps, 
 is a member of a robber-caste.* The more intricate the machinery 
 
 * See the following evidence of a Dacoit approver : 
 
 Question.—-What class of people become Chokeedars (watchmen) ? 
 
 Answer.—Dosaud, Hurree, Kurraria, &c., &c. (robber-castes) ; these principally 
 furnish the Chokeedars. 
 
 Question.—In the course of the month what does such person realise ? 
 
 Answer. —Two rupees a month for each Chokeedar is levied on the Ryots; and 
 they (the Chokeedars) realise a great deal from thieves and robbers and Dacoits, 
 and this is the real reason why they undertake to be watchmen—to feather their 
 own nests—else no one would willingly undertake so detestable an occupation. 
 
 Question.—Do the Chokeedars ever go on Dacoity ? 
 
 Answer.—No: they do not go on Dacoity, but know all about the Dacoits. 
 Whoever leaves his house for Dacoity, he does so with the knowledge of the 
 Chokeedars; and they do not go on Dacoity for this reason, that in a village all 
 kinds of people dwell; if any person should be discovered absent by the Naka- 
 Buskundaz, he would be reported to the Thannudar (native police superintendent), 
 therefore, the watchmen at night do not leave their village, but go on the rounds 
 and set robberies on foot, and take share from robbers and Dacoits.—[Hvidence of 
 Bokai, Mistry, taken by Captain Marsh, July 19, 1842. | 
 
 Again : 
 
 Question.—Are the Chokeedars of your caste (Hurree) all thieves ? ; 
 
 Answer.—They call themselves Chokeedars, and by this deceit engage in 
 robbery and Dacoity; all the Chokeedars of the Hurree caste are robbers and 
 Dacoits.—[ Evidence of Jnoomuk Hurree, taken by Captain Marsh, July 20, 1842, | 
 
DACOITY. 33 
 
 of our own Jaw-courts, and the more extensive our police establish- 
 ments, the more subtle become the contrivances by which the 
 conspirators endeavour to cloak the crimes which they are all 
 interested in concealing. Highty years ago, Warren Hastings 
 regretted that “the regularity and precision which have been 
 introduced into our new courts of justice,” should be “ among the 
 causes of the increase of robbers.” It is not to be doubted, I fear, 
 that in these days the more complicated machinery which we have 
 introduced in furtherance of the improved administration of justice 
 has had a tendency to raise up so many screens or barriers between 
 the eye of the British functionary and the crimes which are com- 
 mitted around him. 
 
 Upon this subject,'in its general bearings, important as it is, I 
 cannot now afford to enlarge. But thisis the proper place in which 
 to speak of the effects of our present system upon the great crime of 
 Dacoity. It isa distinguishing feature of the practice of these pro- 
 fessional depredators that they adapt their ways, with wonderful 
 precision, to the legal machinery which is brought to bear upon 
 them—that they even turn the very engine which is designed for 
 their destruction, into an instrument of defence. They adapt their 
 organisation to our own, and the more intricate it is the greater 
 are their chances of evasion and escape. “The English,” writes 
 an officer of great intelligence and experience in the intricacies of 
 these criminal leagues, “ having divided the country into districts 
 and Thannas, the robbers have made it a fundamental maxim and 
 sine qua non to attach themselves by divisions to ''hannas, in order 
 to bribe every man of real and actual influence over the villagers 
 to enter into a league with their paymasters—their principle being 
 to sacrifice much in order to retain a little in certainty and safety. 
 Now the two classes which have supreme actual influence among the 
 village population are the Thannadars (with their myrmidons) and 
 the Revenue-farmers (with theirs). These then are the persons 
 held in the pay of the Dacoits. To ensure regularity in this neces- 
 sary particular, a robber-division is attached toa Thanna, and a 
 subdivision to a particular form. ‘This robber-division is under a 
 ‘Sirdar (or chief) of robbers; and it is among the first of his duties 
 to pay monthly with his own hand the shares respectively of the 
 Thannadar and the Revenue-farmer.”’* 
 
 Nor does the corruption, as I have already intimated, stop 
 here. “The Sirdars,’ says another writer, an intelligent and. 
 
 * MS. Correspondence.—The same writer calculates the number of robbers 
 located within one Thanna (or police division):—‘ I calculate to every Thannadar 
 four Revenue-farmers resident in a Thanna; on every Revenue-farmer’s farm four 
 Sirdars (or chiefs), with their respective divisions of robbers. ‘To every Sirdar 
 four Naib-Sirdars (or captains), and to each Naib-Sirdar four burglar gangs, and to 
 every burglar gang five men each. Thus, 1X4X4X4X4X5 = 1,280 members of 
 the depredational league in one Thanna.” 
 5 
 
834 ; DACOITY, 
 
 zealous magistrate, ‘are men who travel in their palkis (palan- 
 quins), and arrange all these little affairs first with the local 
 police, next with the magistrate’s Amlah, and eventually with the 
 Sessions’ Amlah and the law officer.”* “In short,” to use the 
 comprehensive words of another civil officer, the highest authority 
 on such a subject in Bengal, “the whole plan has been got up to 
 meet our rules of evidence, and itis carried on with the help of our 
 ministerial and police Amlah.”+ Whatever we have done, indeed, 
 the Dacoits have turned our doings to their own uses—our revenue 
 system, our police system, our judicial system, have all been 
 -lmpressed into their service. Whatever may have been our 
 administrative organisation, they have adapted to it, with con- 
 summate skill, the organisation of their criminal leagues, and out- 
 manoeuvred us at all points. 
 
 Nor did the triumphs of these astute criminals stop short 
 even at the doors of the Sessions Court. They reached to the very 
 judgment-seat. So protected by the Amlah, it would have been 
 hard if the Dacoits could not have brought into court any amount 
 of false evidence to secure their acquittal. It never, by any chance, 
 happened that all, or even the most influential, members of a 
 robber-gang were arrested; and they who were at large never 
 failed to exert themselves to obtain the liberation of their more 
 unfortunate comrades who had fallen into the grasp of the law. 
 False witnesses were readily obtainable from among their own 
 people, willing and able to swear him off. The manner in which 
 this evidence was got up was often very clever and ingenious. ‘‘ It 
 is quite out of my power,” writes Mr. Wauchope, magistrate of 
 Hooghly (of whose services I shall come to speak presently), to the 
 Superintendent of Police in the Lower Provinces, “ todescribe on 
 paper the delight with which the Dacoits with me talk about their 
 exploits—of the pleasure parties which Kartich Koura, a famous 
 Sirdar, used to take from Calcutta to his native village, whence 
 they never returned without committing one or more Dacoities ; 
 how on one of these occasions their Sirdar had three of his fingers 
 cut off ; how he was arrested and committed to the sessions ; or the 
 roars of laughter with which they give the details of the trial’ 
 before the Judge, where he was acquitted on the evidence of a 
 most respectable Brahmin, and a still more respectable Kait—the 
 first being Sirdamund Thakoor, a first-rate leader in the gang, and 
 the second Syud Mytee, now an approver with me, and only lately 
 sentenced to transportation for life.”} 
 
 A system so complete in its organisation as this was not to be 
 put down by the ordinary judicial machinery applied to accidental 
 offences, and by the ordinary ministers of the law. It was apparent 
 
 * MS. Correspondence. + Ibid. { MS. Records. 
 
DACOITY. 30 
 
 that, as in the case of Thuggee, a necessity existed for the adop- 
 tion of specific measures of a more stringent character, and of a 
 less regular type. Neither the law courts nor the law officers, as 
 then constituted and appointed, were sufficient for the suppression 
 of an evil so complex and so extensive. Something more required 
 to be done. 
 
 It was in the month of April, 1237, that the first attempt was 
 made to suppress Dacoity by means of special measures directed 
 to that one end, and a special machinery employed for their execu- 
 tion. Sir Charles Metcalfe was, at this time, Lieutenant-Governor 
 of the North-Western Provinces. The subject had been for some 
 time pressing urgently upon the consideration of the authorities, 
 and the time had now come for action. A Commission for the - 
 suppression of Dacoity was established; and Mr. Hugh Fraser, 
 a civil servant of good capacity, was appointed Commissioner, 
 with a liberal staff of auxiliary subordinates. Special powers 
 were conferred on him. Throughout the whole of the North- 
 Western Provinces he was invested with magisterial authority. All 
 the magistrates were instructed to co-operate with him, and the 
 police were directed to render every possible assistance to his agents. 
 But the year and a half, during which the Commission was in 
 operation, were distinguished by no important results. There was 
 an attempt rather to strike at accidental symptoms, than to probe 
 down to the seat of the disease. It aimed rather at the conviction 
 of Dacoits than the suppression of Dacoity. The great subject 
 itself, in all its length and breadth—zin all its intricacies and 
 complexities—was not sufficiently studied. But Sleeman had 
 reduced Thuggee to its elements, and he was obviously the proper 
 man to submit to a similar process the kindred crime of Dacoity. 
 He had already, indeed, acquired much available information re- 
 garding the professional robber-castes ; and his associates in the 
 Thuggee Department had approved themselves to be men of the 
 right stamp to co-operate with him. The union of the two offices 
 of the General Superintendent of measures for the suppression of 
 Thuggee and the Commissioner for the suppression of Dacoity, 
 seemed, indeed, to be recommended by many important consider- 
 ations, not the least of which was the peculiar fitness of the man 
 who had long held so worthily the former appointment; and now 
 Lord Auckland, at the end of the year 1838, being at Simla, and 
 holding in his.own hands the government of the North-Western 
 Provinces, determined to unite the two offices under the superin- 
 tendence of Colonel Sleeman. At the commencement of the follow- 
 ing year the junction was formerly effected, and from that time all 
 the measures for the suppression of Dacoity under the Bengal 
 Presidency, with the exception of those in the Lower Provinces, 
 which were conducted by the “Superintendent of Police,’ were 
 
36 DACOITY. 
 
 under the direction of the man who had done so much to root 
 Thuggee out of the land. 
 
 ‘he same system now which had been employed so successfully 
 for the extirpation of Thuggee, was brought into play against the 
 great fraternities of Dacoits. Sleeman’s head-quarters were to be 
 in Rohilkund. His assistants were spread out all over Upper India. 
 The plan now to be pursued was simply, as described by Sleeman 
 himself, to hunt down the Dacoits by a simultaneous, vigorous, and 
 well-sustained pursuit throughout all parts of India, and thereby 
 to break up their little communities, and compel them to blend with 
 the rest of mankind in public service or private industry, and by 
 degrees to lose their exclusive feeling, and forget their exclusive 
 language. And this was to be done, firstly by the agency of 
 informers, who were to set our officers on the track, and enable us 
 to detect the offenders; and secondly, by specific legislative 
 enactments, to enable us to punish them. 
 
 There was no scarcity of informers. Our gaols were full of 
 Dacoits. It was astonishing what a mass of serviceable information 
 was locked up within our prison-walls. The whole art and mystery 
 of Dacoity was there to be had for the asking. Professors proud of 
 their knowledge, and rejoicing in the opportunity of giving free vent, 
 in voluble discourse, to the cherished reminiscences of bygone days, 
 talked without stint to the British officers about their depredational - 
 achievements, and openly avowed the eagerness of their desires to 
 be again at the exhilarating work. They could not understand 
 that their profession was not as honorable as it was lucrative and 
 exciting. They had no shame, and they had no remorse. They 
 g'loried in their exploits as sportsmen do, and talked over a success- 
 full gang-robbery with its attendant murders as our European 
 gentlemen talk over their boar-chases or tiger-hunts. ‘‘ Whilst talk- 
 ing over their excursions” wrote one of Sleeman’s assistants,* “which 
 were to me really very interesting, their eyes gleamed with pleasure, 
 and beating their hands on their foreheads and breasts, and mutter- 
 ing some ejaculations, they bewailed the hardness of their lot, 
 which now ensured their never being able again to participate in 
 such a joyous occupation.” It was a pleasant life, and a lucrative 
 employment, beside which the hard labor and slender earnings of 
 honesty cut but a sorry figure in the eyes of the work-eschewing 
 Hindoostanee. When asked, after many years spent in prison, if 
 he would not on regaining his liberty betake himself to honest 
 courses, the gaol-bird would always return the same discouraging 
 answer: ‘ No, no,” shaking his head and laughing, “that would 
 never do. Why should [I become an honest man—work all 
 day in the sun, rain, and all weathers, and earn what? Some. 
 five or six pice a day? We Dacoits lead very agreeable and 
 
 * Capt. W. M, Ramsay. See Colonel Sleeman’s Budduck Report. Calcutta, 1849. 
 
DACOITY. 37 
 
 comfortable lives. When from home, which is generally only 
 during the cold season, we march some fourteen or sixteen miles 
 a day, for perhaps a couple of months, or say four at the outside— 
 commit a Dacoity, and bring home money sufficient to keep us 
 comfortable for a year, or perhaps two. When at home we amuse 
 ourselves by shooting, and visiting our friends, or in any way most 
 agreeable—eat when we please, and sleep when we please—can 
 what you call an honest man do that ?’’* 
 
 But however discouraging all this may have been viewed with 
 regard toany hope that may have been entertained of the reform- 
 ation of Dacoits, the freedom with which the convicts spoke of 
 their professional achievements promised well for the success of 
 our endeavours to root them out of theland. The Dacoits, indeed, 
 were not to be formed—they were to be extirpated. It was 
 characteristic of English benevolence that we should have been 
 slow to resort to such a remedy as this—that we should have sought 
 rather to convert these depredational tribes into industrial classes 
 by holding out to them sufficient inducements to honest exertion. 
 But all such projects were seen, upon a closer examination, to be 
 worthy only of an Utopian country, and a Saturnian age. People 
 talked about buying up Dacoity—about sending out a general 
 invitation to these hereditary robbers to come and settle upon 
 grants of land appropriated to them by Government, and to live 
 a life of peaceful integrity for the remainder of their days. But 
 “the difficulties and risks of such a measure were,” as Colonel 
 Sleeman well remarked, “little understood. Our territories did 
 not contain one-twentieth part of the great body which we should 
 have had to collect; and we should have found it impossible to col- 
 lect them by mere invitation, without offering them as little labor, 
 and as much luxury, as they then enjoyed in their wild state, with 
 all the same hopes of rising to wealth and distinction. We should 
 have had to give a leader of robbers and murderers, with his four 
 or five wives, more pay than we give to a native commissioned 
 officer, who had served our Government faithfully thirty or forty 
 years, who had his breast covered with medals, and his body with 
 honorable scars. Had we at any time increased the labor from abso- 
 lute idleness, or diminished their subsistence from absolute luxury, 
 they would have been off to their native forests and ravines.” t 
 
 All this was undeniable. The arguments against so wild a 
 project as the establishment of the colonies of reformed Budducks, 
 to be supported at the expense of the industrious inhabitants of 
 the country, were so conclusive, that the scheme was soon reasoned 
 down. Indeed, we had begun to discover by this time that 
 humanity, like ambition, sometimes “ overleaps itself, and falls 
 
 * Substance of conversation held with Captain W. M. Ramsay. 
 + Colonel Sleeman’s Report. Calcutta, 1849. 
 
38 DACOITY. 
 
 on the other side.” Nothing is more remarkable in the history of 
 Dacoity than the fact of the large number of notorious offenders 
 who have escaped conviction and punishment, partly through the 
 agency of false witnesses and the corruption of the native officers of 
 our law courts, and partly through the unwillingness of the Euro- 
 pean judicial functionaries to convict and punish, except in cases 
 substantiated by the clearest possible evidence of the commission | 
 of a specific offence. The judicial axiom that it is better that twenty 
 guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should be 
 punished, however sound it may be in the abstract, had not certainly, 
 in its application to the case of these great depredational leagues, 
 any tendency to advance the interests of mankind. Such tender 
 mercies as were exhibited, with the best possible intentions, by 
 our enlightened Kuropean functionaries, were in effect cruel. 
 Seventy years before, Warren Hastings had clearly discovered 
 the impossibility of suppressing Dacoity by judicial proceedings in 
 harmony with our refined Hnglish ideas of justice, and a strict 
 observance of rules of evidence as recognised in our English law 
 courts. He saw that such mercy was in effect unmerciful, and that 
 there was no real humanity but vigor. As time advanced, and the 
 machinery of our law courts became more complicated, and our 
 Kuropean law officers became more and more the representatives 
 and exponents of the high abstract principles of Western civilisa- 
 tion, it was not hkely that the scruples which stood in the way of a 
 larger growth of real justice and humanity should have been less 
 influential upon the decisions of our judicial tribunals. ‘The Dacoits, 
 indeed, from generation to generation, laughed at us and our law 
 courts. ‘ Do you think that we shall succeed in extirpating you ?” 
 asked Captain Ramsay. “If you go on in the way the Thugs have 
 been put down,’ was the answer, “you certainly will; but in the . 
 customary way, that is, requiring proof to convict of specific acts 
 of Dacoity, never—it is impossible—we should go on increasing 
 from year to year.” 
 
 These words, which were spoken in 1839, contain the pith of 
 the whole question of Dacoity-suppression—the evil laid bare and 
 the remedy suggested. But it was not until 1845 that the remedy 
 was applied. It has been seen that in 1836 an Act was passed for 
 the suppression of Thuggee, declaring that any one proved to have 
 belonged at any time to a gang of Thugs should be hable to convic- 
 tion and punishment on the general charge, and now it was pro- 
 posed that a similar exemption from the necessity of convicting 
 for specific offences should be applied to the case of professional 
 Dacoity.* “Itis hereby enacted,”. said the new Act—No. XXIV. 
 
 * The preamble of the Act stated “professional Dacoits, who belonged to cer- 
 tain tribes, systematically employed in carrying on their lawless pursuits in different 
 parts of the country.” The reader, bearing these words in mind, will perceive that 
 
DACOITY, 39 
 
 of 1843—“ that whosoever shall be proved to have belonged, 
 either before or after the passing of this Act, to any gang of 
 Dacoits, either within or without the territories of the East India 
 Company, shall be punisbed with transportation for hfe, or with 
 imprisonment for any less term with hard labor.” The Act at the 
 same time gave general jurisdiction to all magistrates to try offences 
 of this class wheresoever committed, without the formality of “ any 
 Futwa from any law officer.” It was impossible that such a law as 
 this should not be productive of salutary effects. The difficulty of 
 conviction of a specific offence was great to a degree not readily 
 appreciable in this country. For these gangs of Dacoits, for the 
 most part, depredated at a distance of some hundreds of miles from 
 their homes ; and the necessity of bringing witnesses from remote 
 places to give evidence in our law courts was an evil of so intoler- 
 able a nature, that, whatsoever might have been the sufferings of 
 men, whatsoever their hopes of justice or their desire after revenge, 
 they shrunk from the long journey to the distant tribunal, and 
 silently submitted to their wrongs.* 
 
 Nor were these the only legal measures adopted for the suppres- 
 sion of the great crime. Dacoity was not an eno:mity peculiar to 
 the Company’s territories. On the contrary, both Thuggee and 
 Dacoity had thriven with peculiar luxuriance in the native 
 ‘states. Oude, indeed, had long been the hot-bed of both. It 
 often happened that in these native states prisoners had been 
 tried, convicted, and sentenced, as Thugs and Dacoits, but had 
 subsequently contrived to escape; and, having escaped, had 
 not only returned to their old trade of robbery and murder, 
 but had fearfully persecuted all who had contributed to their 
 previous detection.— An Act was therefore passed, declaring that 
 all prisoners convicted in native states by a tribunal in which an 
 Kuropean covenanted servant was one of the presiding judges, 
 might be received into our gaols to undergo their sentence.”{ It 
 is a feature, indeed, of our English administration in India, that, 
 in all our shumanising measures for the suppression of Suttee, 
 Female Infanticide, Thuggee, Dacoity, and other kindred 
 abominations, we have not stopped short on the borders of the 
 
 the specification contained in them subsequently embarrassed the Bengal Govern- 
 ment, and compelled the passing of another Act, generalising the application of the 
 former one—See post, page 409. 
 
 * “ To avoid the great loss and inconvenience which the necessity of this attend- 
 ance involved, it was found that the sufferers did all in their power to conceal their 
 sufferings, and often denied that they had ever been attacked, when the dearest 
 members of their family had been killed or wounded, and all they had in the world 
 been carried off.” —[Sleeman’s Budduck Report, 1849. | 
 
 + “‘ Hither,’ says Sleeman, “from the negligence or connivance of the guards, 
 or the wish of the officers of such courts to avoid the cost of maintaining them.” 
 
 + Act XVIII. of 1843. 
 
40 DACOITY. 
 
 provinces subject to our own regulations. We have exerted our 
 influence to the utmost to indoctrinate the native courts with our 
 own views, and have seldom failed to elicit their acquiescence and 
 assistance. Grudgingly, perhaps, these may have been given. 
 The zeal with which such measures have been prosecuted by the 
 native princes has fallen greatly short of our own. But we have 
 had British officers at their Durbars to see that their promises are 
 fulfilled, and in reality the measures which they have authorised 
 have been practically our own.* 
 
 Thus aided by special legislative provisions, Colonel Sleeman 
 and his colleagues set to work as vigorously for the extirpation of 
 the Budduck and other professional robber-gangs, as they before 
 had done for the extirpation of the Thugs, and, learned in all the 
 mysteries of the craft, and aided by professional approvers, they 
 hunted down large gangs, culled new approvers from the list of 
 detected culprits, and carried on the war with remarkable success. 
 And whilst in the Upper Provinces of Bengal these energetic officers 
 were thus vigorously employed, inthe Lower Provinces Mr. Dampier, 
 the Superintendent of Police, with one or two of the old assistants 
 in the Thuggee Department, were about the same excellent work. 
 But although the haunts of a large number of robber-gangs were 
 beaten up, and Dacoits were captured and catalogued by hundreds, 
 Dacoity was not suppressed. Ido not underrate the services of 
 Sleeman and his detective police. ‘Those services were very great. 
 An immense deal of good was accomplished. If they did nothing 
 
 * Since the British Government in India have entered more heartily into the 
 great work of extirpating Thuggee and Dacoity, and have not only issued specific 
 enactments, but appointed an especial and independent Department to carry out 
 these enactments, the native princes and chiefs have rendered us more assistance 
 than they were wont to do, when the detection and apprehension of Thugs and 
 Dacoits was left to the ordinary civil establishments. Indeed, before the adoption 
 of these special measures, it was often found a work of difficulty to obtain the 
 hearty co-operation of a British Resident at a Native Court, who felt that to com- 
 municate with the Court respecting the contemplated seizure of a gang of Dacoits 
 was to thwart the undertaking (for if the Court knew, the Aumils knew; and if the 
 Aumils knew, the Dacoits knew what was going on), and yet was umwilling to co- 
 operate without the consent of the Court. An example of this is worth giving. In 
 1822, the widow of a jemadar of Dacoits went to the judge at Cawnpore, and 
 Stating that she had been refused her legitimate share of the plunder taken by her 
 late husband’s associates, boldly denounced the gang to the British functionary. A 
 certain village in the Oude territory was numed as the place in which property 
 captured in several Dacoities would be found, and the houses of the receivers were 
 indicated by the woman. Immediately afterwards the judge, under cover of a 
 tiger-shooting expedition, visited the village pointed out to him, and the truth of 
 the woman’s story was confirmed. On returning to Cawnpore the judge, eager to 
 turn the information he had obtained to good account, wrote to the Resident at Luck- 
 now, suggesting to him to send out a detachment of local troops to aid the agents 
 of the civil officer in the capture of the gang. The Resident consented not with- | 
 out some scruple, and the Nazir was sent with the woman to accompany the party 
 and point out the offenders. But the detachment had not proceeded far, when the 
 Resident’s heart failed him, and after a march or two the detachment was recalled. 
 
 —[MS. Notes. } 
 
DACOITY. Al 
 
 else, they drew away the veil which shrouded the mysteries of 
 Dacoity. We have advanced a long way towards the cure of a 
 disease when we have learnt thoroughly to understand it. I 
 believe that Dacoity is now thoroughly understood. But the 
 “ Department” did much more than this—they actually captured 
 (as I have said) and either punished or turned into approvers vast 
 numbers of Dacoits.* But, like all men of earnestness and enthu- 
 siasm, they were run away with by an idea. The idea was a new 
 anda striking one. It was the great idea of the hereditary robber- 
 tribes of India. It was a very important and a deeply-interest- 
 ing subject, but they gave themselves too exclusively to it. This 
 matter of the professional robber-castes was a great feature of 
 Dacoity, but it did not in itself constitute Dacoity. Sleeman 
 and his associates struck at the robber-castes, and I believe that 
 they were well-nigh extinguished. At all events, as great brother- 
 hoods of crime, they were utterly broken up and dispersed. 
 
 Still Dacoity was not suppressed. Subdued in one form and 
 in one part of the country, it seemed to take a new shape and to 
 break out in another place. The general effect of such measures is 
 to urge the evil, against which they are directed, into more remote 
 demonstrations—to drive the offenders into distant parts of the _ 
 empire, to carry on their depredations beyond the reach of central 
 supervision. ‘Thus, some little time ago, when there was a great 
 outcry against the practices of the London beggars, and these pro- 
 fessional mendicants were, for a time, hunted out of the metropolis, 
 it was observed by all dwellers in the home counties that there was 
 a vast increase of rural mendicity. Butin Bengal the effect was 
 directly the reverse of this. Dacoity, hke Government, began to 
 centralise itself, and Calcutta was surrounded by banditti. The 
 men constituting these gangs did not apparently belong to the here- 
 ditary robber-tribes of India. ‘They seemed rather to make up an 
 indistinct and heter ogeneous posse comitatus than a great homogene- 
 ous guild or brotherhood. Whether these gangs were partly 
 composed of men who had lost their occupation in the provinces, 
 and, unable any longer to preserve their aristocratic exclusiveness, 
 had fused themselves into the general mass of Dacoity,t and re- 
 signed themselves to the usual conditions of that misfortune which 
 is said to bring together strange bed-fellows, I do not pretend to 
 know; but I grieve to say that an alarming increase of Dacoity in 
 the Lower Provinces of Bengal has recently manifested itself, and 
 that only last year gang-robbers were swarming, in a state of 
 intense activity, under the walls of the Supreme Court of Calcutta. 
 
 * The approvers themselves are convicts. Sentence is passed upon them, but 
 not carried into effect. They are indulgently treated, but of real liberty Se itiod 
 none. ‘They are, in fact, prisoners at large, for life. 
 
 + It would appear from Mr. Wauchope’s last report, which I had not seen on 
 writing this, that they were. 
 
 6 
 
A2. DACOITY. 
 
 It was at the commencement of the fear 1852, that the Super- 
 intendent, of Police in the Lower Provinces of Bengal submitted to 
 Government a letter received from Mr. Wauchope, Magistrate of 
 Hooghly, “forwarding a list of 287 Dacoits concerned in 83 
 Dacoities.” In this letter the Magistrate reported that the 287 
 Dacoits mentioned by his approvers were connected with only 
 three gangs; and he added, that he knew at least thirty-five gangs 
 committing similar depredations within fifty miles of Calcutta. 
 Of the Dacoits whom he had catalogued his approvers could give 
 him no detailed account; unlike the Budduck and Kheejuck ap- 
 provers, they seldom knew the parentage or caste of their confed- 
 erates ; but it was ascertained that, for the most part, they had 
 come from some Mofussil village, which they occasionally visited, 
 and located themselves in Calcutta or Chandernagore. ‘lo arrest 
 the progress of the evil, it was now suggested by the Superintend- 
 ent of Police that a Commissioner for the suppression of Dacoity 
 in.Lower Bengal should be appointed, armed with special powers, 
 to operate under the provisions of the Act (XXIV. of 1843) for the 
 suppression of professional Dacoits, belonging to certain. tribes 
 systematically employed in carrying on their lawless pursuits. 
 “ T- feel perfectly convinced,” he added, “ that unless the ‘Thuggee 
 system is brought into operation against these gangs, we shall fail 
 in putting them down.” : 
 
 Fortunately, it was not difficult to name an officer well qualified 
 for the performance of this important work. The Hooghly Magis- 
 trate, who had sent in the list of 287 Dacoits, was just the 
 man for such an enterprise. Mr. Wauchope, an officer’ of 
 rare energy and intelligence, had studied well the habits and 
 practices of the Dacoits, and had a large acquaintance with 
 the -personal. composition of the principal gangs in the neigh- 
 bourhood of his-court. On one occasion a notorious Dacoit chief 
 was brought up before him under an assumed name. The man 
 loudly déclared his innocence—protested he had never been con- 
 cerned in Dacoity of any kind, or even suspected of such an 
 offence. Mr. Wauchope heard him out, and then laughingly 
 réplied that the story was doubtless a very good one, but that it 
 was'not good enough for him—that he knew something more about 
 the matter; that the man, to his certain knowledge, had been 
 arrested under such a name, as concerned in such a Dacoity, by 
 the Magistrate of the twenty-four Pergunnahs, and again in 
 Howrah, -under another name, for participation in another 
 Dacoity ; that ‘his real name was so-and-so, but that, to distinguish 
 him from another Dacoit of the same name, he went by a certain 
 nickname.,in the’ gang—and by that nickname Mr. Wauchope 
 called him. Astonished and alarmed by this display of knowledge 
 “all his secret ‘history thus laid bare by one whom he had thought 
 
DACOITY: 43 
 
 to cozen in the old way, by hard lying—the unhappy man felt that 
 he was at the mercy of the English Magistrate, and cried’ out, 
 “Pardon me, my lord; I am ready to tell you all I know.” 
 
 It was plain that this was the kind of man to deal with the old 
 Bengal Dacoits, of whom it was truly said that “they would never 
 confess unless they saw that they were in the hands of a man 
 from whom there was little or no hope of escape.’ So Mr. 
 Wauchope was recommended for the office of Special Commissioner 
 for the suppression of Dacoity, and Government sanctioned the 
 appointment.* But although the man was ready, the Act was not. 
 A question had arisen, in the course of the preceding year, as to 
 whether Act XXIV. of 1843+ could be brought into operation 
 against the Dacoit bands of Lower Bengal; for although the 
 wording of the two first sections was of a general character, and 
 seemed to includein their provisions all kinds of Dacoits practising 
 in the Company’s territories, the preamble only specified certain 
 tribes of professional robbers ; and to these, therefore, the opera- 
 tion of the Act, strictly interpreted, might be limited. The 
 principal judicial authorities were at variance on the subject, and 
 the Supreme Government had expressed its unwillingness to alter 
 the existing law unless it were clearly shown by a judicial decision 
 that its provisions were insufficient. It was proposed, therefore, 
 that the legality of the application of the Actin question to the 
 case of ordinary Dacoits should be tested by certain trials in the 
 Hooghly Court, and the decisions of the Sudder thereupon. This, 
 however, did not go far to solvethe ambiguity. One man was 
 tried under the doubtful Act, and the Sudder Court sentenced him 
 to be transported for life. But it was understood that the Judges 
 were not all of one opinion on the subject; and it was possible, 
 therefore, that the next case might meet with a different fate. 
 
 In the meanwhile, however, the attention of Government had 
 been called, through another channel, to the alarming increase of 
 crime in the Lower Provinces of Bengal. A petition had been 
 received from several respectable inhabitants of the districts of 
 Burdwan, Hooghly, and Krishnaghur, setting forth that thefts and 
 gang- -robberies had increased to such an extent that there was a 
 general feeling of insecurity throughout the country—an evil main- 
 ly to be attributed to the imefficiency of the police, and especially 
 the village watch. ‘Ihis was not an appeal likely to be disregarded. 
 An Act “for the further repression of Dacoity and other crimesin-the 
 Lower Provinces of Bengal” was drafted, and read for the first time 
 on the 27th of June, 1851. The preamble set forth that, “ whereas 
 Dacoities and, other heinous crimes are of frequent occurrence 
 
 * The appointment was made on the 26th of oar 1852, pepe ey for one 
 year, to be reported on at the expiration of that period. 
 
 - + See ante, page 39. 
 
44 DACOITY. 
 
 within certain zillahs of the Presidency of Fort William, in Bengal, 
 and whereas it has been doubted whether the laws in force against 
 Dacoits and professional robbers can be put in force, except in the 
 case of those who belong to certain tribes referred to in the 
 preamble to Act XXIV., 1843, and it is expedient that such 
 doubts be removed, and that further provision be made for the 
 more regular and due appointment of the village watchmen ;” and 
 the first section decreed that ‘the provisions of Act XXIV., 1843, 
 shall apply to and be put in force against all persons belonging, or 
 who have at any time belonged to, or robbed in company, with any 
 gang of persons associated for the purpose of practising robbery 
 or extortion, and every such person shall be deemed a Dacoit with- 
 out reference to the tribe or caste to which he belongs.” 
 
 The results of Mr. Wauchope’s appointment, as far as they 
 are yet apparent, are of the most satisfactory kind. He was 
 appointed provisionally for a year, and ordered to report progress 
 upon the expiration of it.. In the meanwhile the accounts, which 
 he has furnished to his immediate superior, are of the most satisfac- 
 tory complexion. He reports, within the first six months of his 
 operations, a very large diminution of crime. He has hunted down 
 and broken up some extensive gangs; and the immediate result of 
 his active measures is, that the number of ascertained cases of 
 Dacoity within his jurisdiction are shown, in 1852, to be only 
 one-half of those which were committed within a corresponding 
 period of the preceding year; and seventy-five per cent. less than 
 those, within a similar space of time, just before his assumption of 
 office in the spring of last year. But there is one great impedi- 
 ment to complete and permanent success, which Mr. Wauchope 
 reports to the Superintendent of Police. Speaking of the detailed 
 results of his labors, he says: “In all, about 1,250 men have been 
 denounced as Dacoits—131 have been arrested ; 47 of them from 
 Calcutta ; almost all of these are well-known Dacoits, driven by the 
 Mofussil Police to take shelter there. The arrest of so many 
 criminals in Calcutta has dispersed the gangs in that city, but un- 
 fortunately they have not far to go for a place of refuge. The French 
 settlement of Chandernagore is now swarming with Dacoits driven 
 from Calcutta, or the remnants of Mofussil gangs. From the French 
 territory they sally out and commit depredations in the neigh- 
 bouring districts. They are perfectly safe, because, having for the 
 most part assumed false names, I cannot call on the French authori- 
 ties to deliver them up. Neither can my people follow them into 
 the foreign territory to discover their places of concealment.”* 
 
 Here then the matter rests for the present. The result of all © 
 our recent efforts for the suppression. of Dacoity seems to be this 
 
 * Mr. Wauchope to Super intendent of Police, Lower pease Decentlies 2, 1852, 
 MS. Records. 
 
DACOITY. 45 
 
 —that very much has been done to break up, and indeed to exter- 
 minate, the great depredational leagues, consisting of members of 
 robber-castes, often entirely composed of men of one caste, which 
 have been from generation to generation governed by fixed laws 
 and observant of ancient religious usages—that the more regular 
 and complicated machinery of predatorial crime which the Bud- 
 ducks and Kheejucks, and other cognate tribes, bad long kept in 
 vigorous action, now either moves languidly, or not at all. And 
 so far, Sleeman and his associates have done great things, and 
 rendered life and property more secure in the provinces of Upper 
 India. But to establish a reign of terror among any class of 
 criminals in one part of a country, is naturally to drive them into 
 another. Many were convicted and punished; many, it is to be 
 hoped, alarmed by the new dangers which surrounded their profes- 
 sion, fell back upon the peaceful calling of the husbandman. But 
 some, it seems, of the scattered fragments of the great leagues 
 which had been broken up in the Mofussil, sought a place of safety 
 under the walls of the Supreme Court of Calcutta. There they 
 were met by a vigorous and experienced Company’s officer, who, 
 armed with new powers under a special Act of the Legislature, 
 soon assured them that they had miscalculated their chances of 
 immunity in that part of the world. Another resting-place was, 
 therefore, to be sought ; and they found it in the French settlement 
 of Chandernagore. They knewthat they were not safe within the 
 Company’s territories, and they found a little slip of foreign land 
 whereon to locate themselves out of reach of the Company’s officers. 
 Dacoity seems now to be in a desperate strait, and I doubt whether 
 it will ever be restored to its old vitality and vigor. 
 
 Ever since we have had any connexion with the internal 
 administration of India, Dacoity has been the curse of the country. 
 There is nothing more difficult to ascertain correctly than the 
 statistics of crime. It is almost impossible to discriminate between 
 an increase or decrease of committed offences and an increase or 
 decrease of detected ones. What appears to be the increased 
 criminality of the people may, after all, be only the increased 
 vigilance of the police. I see little room to doubt that thr oughout 
 the country generally Dacoity has greatly decreased. LHven if 
 _ there had been no improvement in the police, our improved revenue- 
 systems would by themselves have sufficed to diminish Dacoity. 
 Although there doubtless were gangs of hereditary robbers, who, 
 delighting in their profession, and proud of their descent, were born 
 and bred to be Dacoits, and followed the hereditary calling i 1Irres- 
 pectively of all the ordinary inducements to crime and of all acci- 
 dental circumstances, there were many others who were driven to 
 it, in hard famine times, who took to it when agriculture was pre- 
 carious and provisions were scarce—the relatives or connexions, 
 
46 DACOITY. 
 
 perhaps, of members of robber-castes, who were easily persuaded. 
 in such seasons to adopt a service which could not fail, so long as 
 there was any property to be plundered. And the members of the 
 robber-castes themselves, who were often agriculturists as well as 
 depredators, were roused into unwonted activity when the crops 
 were failing around them. At all events, it has been ascertained, 
 
 beyond all question, that, in seasons of scarcity, Dacoity has 
 always increased. Now, as the tendency of our revenue-systems 
 has been to develop the resources of the country and to prevent 
 the occurrence of these seasons of scarcity, it is reasonable to. be- 
 heve that Dacoity must have subsided, to some extent, under the 
 healing influence of general prosperity. Whatsoever has a ten- 
 dency to civilise the people must diminish such an evil as this. 
 
 That Dacoity is far less insolent and violent in its demonstra- 
 tions—far less sanguinary and unscrupulous, and less openly 
 defiant of authority, than in the early days of our administration, 
 is a fact that admits of no dispute. Dacoity is now im compara- 
 tively few cases attended with murder. At the close of the last 
 century it was no uncommon thing for gangs of Dacoits to kill, 
 with brutal torture, the unhappy wretches whom they had plun- 
 dered, to hack their bodies to pieces, and to hang the bloody 
 trophies of their successful crime on the neighbouring trees, as 
 they passed on to commit new atrocities, flushed with victory, and 
 carrying everything insolently before them. 
 
 It may be said that, after all, what I have written only goes to 
 show that Dacoity has not been suppressed. It is very true that 
 we found Dacoity in India, and that if we were to quit the country 
 to-morrow, we should leave it there. All that I have attempted to 
 show is the increased vigor .and policy of our measures, and the 
 symptoms of eventual success which have recently been developed. 
 Much, indeed, has been done, earnestly and wisely, for the suppres- 
 sion of this monster evil, within the last twenty years of our rule. 
 But it is no easy thing to “abolish crime.’ Even in the best- 
 governed countries, and with the most elaborate detective establish- 
 ments, the science of crime is perfected under the very eyes of the 
 police. The greatest evils that can exist under the sun are seen, 
 known, and understood by our detective force, and yet nothing 
 can be done to eradicate the disease with which they are so fami- 
 liar.* 
 
 * Take, for example, the following melancholy fact in the last annual report of 
 Mr. Davis, the Chaplain of Newgate :—“ It is a fact much to be regretted that the 
 metropolis contains gangs of men who not only live together for the purposes of 
 stealing, but who educate young persons of profligate habits in the most ready and 
 dexterous methcds of stealing. Some are instructed how to pick pockets, others how 
 to use false keys and picklocks ; ; Some, not far advanced in criwne, are induced to 
 give information and to procure impressions of valuable keys. The ‘law against such 
 persons is not yet strong enough. Youth such as I have referred to are clothed by 
 their employers as well as if me were the children | of respectable parents: -They 
 
DACOITY. A7 
 
 There is one great difficulty with which in India, they whose 
 duty it is to endeayour to suppress Dacoity, have to contend, but 
 of which nothing in these days of a kindred character is known in 
 England—I mean the curse of evil landlords, who harbor and 
 encourage Dacoits, and gorge themselves with a share of the spoil. 
 L cannot help thinking, i in this case, of that old mythological simile, 
 which did such good service in my school-boy days—drawn from 
 the story of Hercules and the Hydra. He had no sooner smitten 
 off one head, than another sprung up tauntingly from the bleeding 
 carcase of the monster, and so he might have gone on for ever, if 
 the serviceable Iolas had not cauterised the wound with a hot iron,’ 
 and burnt out the productiveness of the flesh. It appears to me: 
 that if we would thoroughly suppress Dacoity, so that smitten _ 
 down in one place it may not spring up in another, we would do 
 well to apply the searing-iron to the productive Zemindars.* 
 
 are fed extravagantly and indulged in vice. Some are taken to all the large towns 
 and places of fashionable resort in the kingdom, and obtain great plunder by their 
 skill in picking pockets. hey are so dressed and so taught that in first-class railway: 
 carriages, on the platforms, in the pump-rooms, and at concerts, they disarm sus- 
 picion. The detective police will readily point out to the magistrates several estab- 
 lishments for such education in different parts of the metropolis, some of which are. 
 visited by them almost daily in consequence of their notorious character. In some 
 of them as many as 20 or 30 boys have been, and probably are now, kept in constant 
 occupation, well fed, handsomely clothed, strictly guarded and taken out by the 
 elder offenders, and by them violently beaten if they give any information tc others 
 or umbrage to their thievish masters. These persons are frequently seen by the 
 detective police, who know their names and nicknames, and watch their movements, 
 
 but have no power until some overt act is committed to put a stop to their iniquity. 
 Men and boys of this dangerous character are seldom convicted of great crimes, 
 which circumstance shows that a distinction should be made between great crimes 
 and great criminals.” 
 
 * It must be borne in mind that it has been my design in this chapter to treat 
 of one great series of operations under the Bengal Presidency. What I have written 
 must be regarded rather as an illustration of the subject than ag a general treatise 
 on Dacoity. : 
 
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