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ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE
UNDER BRITISH RULE
IN EGYPT

BY
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

SECOND EDITION
WITH A NEW PREFACE

T. FISHER UNWIN
ADELPHI TERRACE
LONDON 1907

YALE

First Edition, igo6
Second Edition, igoy

(All rights resetved)

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
In issuing a new edition of this pamphlet — the first
having been sold out — a few words are necessary.
Although three months have elapsed since the pamphlet's
first appearance — months during which its contents, trans
lated into Arabic by the local Press in Egypt, have been
passionately discussed, and not in Egypt only, but in
India, and also in a minor degree everywhere where British
rule in the East prevails and the good name of English
justice is a vital issue — no attempt has been made, officially
or unofficially, to controvert the facts of which it is a
record. All that has been ventured in the way of answer
has been to impute a lack of patriotism to its author in
that he has laid too bare unwelcome truths, and, as the
Times has put it, " discredited " British administration by
exposing its irregularities. A silence so marked in the
face of grave accusations publicly brought forward is the
pamphlet's best justification.
Meanwhile, in regard to the latest and gravest of the
scandals recorded, that of Oenshawai, the false pretexts put
forward by the Home Government have had little by
little to be abandoned. The excuse of "fanatical unrest,"
solemnly pleaded by Sir Edward Grey in July as a reason
with members of Parliament for foregoing public criticism,
became in August one of " political unrest," and in
3

4 ATROCITIES OP JUSTICE IN EGYPT
November was discarded by him altogether, the protest
raised in Egypt against its validity having become in the
meanwhile overwhelming. So, too, the pretence of legality
in the trial has been gradually shifted to that of military
necessity, if not by Sir Edward Grey, at least by his
supporters in the English Press. As early as the 14th of
October the Cairo correspondent of the Daily Telegraph,
after a tour in the Delta, wrote as follows : —
" The bogey of ' unrest in Egypt ' is, I trust, buried. . . .
I grant that in the neighbourhood of Tantah there is much
bitter feeling, a feeling that one can well understand in view
of the Denshawai deplorable business. Britishers here have a
particular and proper pride in supporting whatever action may
be taken by the British authorities, and yet I have up to the
present not met a single Englishman whose business keeps
him in constant contact with the true fellaheen who has not
deplored the reprisals take" hy us at Denshawai. But this is
apart from the important and insistent question, ' Is there
unrest in Egypt ? ' Again I say there is no foundation for
the assertion that there is unrest."
Nevertheless, in spite of its admissions, our Government has
done nothing at all to atone for its agent's great mistake.
Lord Cromer has returned to Egypt without a word of official
reproof; his subordinates have neither been dismissed nor
censured. No promise has been given of a repeal of the
abominable decree of 1895, nor any engagement taken that
like judicial atrocities shall not on like occasions be repeated.
Worst of all, the villagers condemned by the mock tribunal of
Shibin-el-Kpm are still undergoing their sentences of hard
labour, unrelieved by prospect of release. Among them, be it
noted, is the husband of the peasant woman wounded by the
officer's gun fired in the pigeon-shooting raid ! With regard
to this unfortunate man, on the 29th of November last Sir

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 5
Edward Grey, in reply to a question asked in Parliament,
declined to instruct Lord Cromer to make representations in
favour of the remission of his sentence — a life sentence — or release
from imprisonment.
This refusal of all redress or justice, though the truth is
known to Sir Edward Grey, is the best justification of the
second edition of the pamphlet
W. S. B.
December 26, 1906.

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE
UNDER BRITISH RULE IN EGYPT
If British rule in the East has any moral meaning it is con
nected with legality — the introduction of that equal justice
before the law which is the boast of all civilisation.
When we first occupied Egypt it was with the cry of
"Justice" on our lips. Sir Edward Malet, our then Consul-
General, was never tired of demanding it as the most urgent
of all reforms, and the very last words he uttered publicly at
Cairo in his official capacity were " Justice ! Justice ! " How
then has it come about that, after twenty-four years of what
has been, all but in name, British rule in Egypt, so great a
scandal should have arisen as that exhibited by the recent trial
and execution of the villagers of Denshawai for an affray
which had arisen between them and certain English officers
of the Army of Occupation by a legal process hardly differing
at all from martial law, and where the rules of equity as between
man and man have been set ostentatiously at defiance ?
My object in writing these pages is to try and trace the
history of cases of the kind as they have happened within my
recollection in Egypt, and in this way to show the essentially
inequitable basis on which the criminal relations between
Englishman and native, especially between English officer and

8 ATROCITIES OP JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Egyptian fellah, have been made to stand, as often as it has
been thought advisable on political grounds to uphold the
former and punish the latter. Four years ago I addressed Lord
Lansdowne, then at the Foreign Office, on the subject, showing
how a recent case of the kind had been hushed up, and how
the truth regarding it had been disguised by our diplomacy at
Cairo, and my memoir was referred by him to Lord Cromer,
who, while unable to deny — for I had given documentary
proof — that the case had been falsely reported, and, as such,
presented to the House of Commons, nevertheless indignantly
denied that any legal inequity or irregularity existed. His
words deserve attention at the present moment, when the
abnormal action of the law, which it is impossible any longer
to deny, is excused on grounds 01 political necessity in view
of an alleged " fanatical unrest " creating danger in Egypt.
Lord Cromer, in an official but unpublished despatch 01
March 21, 1902, addressed to Lord Lansdowne, and forwarded
to me officially by the Foreign Office, says : " I must, in
justice to the General [in command of the British garrison]
and to the Egyptian judicial authorities, give a positive denial
to the following remarks, which are contained in Mr. Blunt's
memorandum. ' When the English General of the Army of
Occupation in Egypt chooses to insist,' Mr. Blunt says, ' the
Egyptian authorities are either powerless to resist, or lend
themselves too readily to measures of undue severity on natives
with whom English officers have come into collision.' I
need hardly say that there is not the smallest foundation for
this insulting statement."
The indignation thus expressed four years ago reads strangely
to-day, when my very moderate statement of an already
notorious fact stands reinforced by the hangings, floggings,
and sentences of penal servitude we have just witnessed ; when
the Egyptian authorities have lent themselves, before the whole

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 9
world, to savage severities inflicted by a special tribunal
insisted on by the English General in command ; when,
in a case which was hardly one of manslaughter, we find it
described as " brutal and premeditated murder " in an official
report presented to Parliament ; and when, finally, Lord
Cromer himself entirely approves the whole of the proceedings,
including the sentences, as "just and necessary."
I feel myself, therefore, more than entitled — indeed, com
pelled by public duty — to renew my protest against a state of
things become intolerable. It is the more necessary because
in the present instance our Government has openly connived
at a concealment of the truth, using, more unscrupulously than
is usual, the tricks and subterfuges resorted to by all Govern
ments to prevent a discussion of the case in Parliament. The
Denshawai case, when it was first sought to bring it forward in
the House of Commons, was set aside by an appeal made by
Sir Edward Grey "to English patriotism, so earnest and so
emphatically pronounced as to seal the lips of members,
accompanied with a promise of full information. Excuses
were next made for delay in publishing, and, though all the
essential documents had a month before been published, in
Egypt, the Blue Book was not presented to Parliament till the
last week of the Session. Even then the full information
promised was not vouchsafed. The facts of the case, it was
found, had been carefully concealed. Not a single syllable oj
the evidence given at the trial — not even that of the officers —
was printed, although the excuse for the delay had been
precisely the lengthy character of that evidence, and though
reports of it had appeared in all the Egyptian papers. In its
place was given a childish presentment of the evidence em
bodied in the text of the Judgment of the court — a self-contra
dictory, truculent, and absurd document, such as has seldom, if
ever, issued from a tribunal in any country pretending to be

10 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
civilised. Nor was the case less prejudiced by the fact that Lord
Cromer — who had ordered the trial, and who, there is reason
to believe, had decided on the aeath sentences before the trial
began — instead of being required to explain his own share in
a matter so compromising, appears in the Blue Book in the
character of impartial critic and adviser of the Government,
approving the abnormal procedure adopted, and giving testi
monials of humanity to the English officials — men less blame
worthy than himself — who had been acting under his orders.
This, I repeat, is a scandal so great and an offence against
human right so cynical that I am compelled to renew my
charges and to insist on further inquiry. I have it in my
power, I believe, to make publicly known the true circum
stances, not only of this but of other kindred cases, proving
that the Denshawai miscarriage of justice is no exceptional
error of judgment, but part of a system under which every
principle of civilised law has been for years past made sub
servient to what has been considered political advantage. It
is not too much to say that Lord Cromer, great as are his
merits as an administrator and an economist, and in spite of
his initial services to judicial reform in Egypt twenty years
ago, has of late years so dominated justice there that in political
cases there is no Native Court, not even the Court of Criminal
Appeal at Cairo, that has the smallest independence. The
judgment delivered at Shibin-el-Kom would be alone a proof
of this. I am resolved, therefore, that this condition of things
shall no longer pass in the silence imposed on it by Sir Edward
Grey, believing as I do that publicity, at whatever cost to
patriotic pride, is the only safeguard against evils which, ir
continued, must end in disgrace and ruin to the English name.
I publish this pamphlet as an appeal to my own countrymen
in English. But I am also resolved, if necessary, to go further.
If I find the case not taken up in Parliament this autumn in

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 11
such a way as to oblige Sir Edward Grey to express his dis
approval of the injustice done ; if nobody in Egypt is called to
account for an act of terror ot which either our officials
there or Lord Cromer have certainly been guilty ; if the
villagers still undergoing unjust imprisonment are not released ;
if the infamous Decree of 1895 is not revoked and the relations
between the English Army of Occupation and the Egyptians
are not put on a civilised footing, then I shall appeal, beyond
the sense of justice in my own countrymen to a larger body of
opinion. / intend to have this pamphlet published in French,
so that our wrongdoing may be patent to all the world ; so that
the French Generals who smarted seven years ago under the
lash of our English indignation when they irregularly condemned
Dreyfus may know that we too have officials, military and
civil, whose ideas of legality are no higher than were then
their own ; so that the King of the Belgians may know that
not only on the Congo is the common protection of law against
the violence ot soldiers denied to natives ; that the Czar may
know that the hangings of innocent men in Russia have their
counterpart in the judgments of tribunals presided over by
English judges. Still more, and perhaps with more effect,
/ shall have this pamphlet translated into Arabic, so that
every Egyptian may understand, and all the Eastern world,
that British justice, so long vaunted among us, has become a
vain and unmeaning word, and that England has publicly
renounced her sole title to their regard, an unswerving adherence
to equity before the law, and with it the whole of the mission
of civilisation of which she has made boast I have the power
to do this not in Egypt only, but in India and throughout the
East, where my words will have weight, however little power
may be mine in England ; and, for the sake of the brotherhood
of man with man, I shall not hesitate in this sense to persuade
and to warn.

12 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Sir Edward Grey has said that the British Empire cannot
be carried on if the doubtful acts of its officials abroad are to
be criticised at home and their injustices denounced. It is a
grave saying and one which, if true, would lead to but a single
conclusion. If of a truth the deeds of our officials cannot bear
the light, if they are indeed deeds of darkness, then the British
Empire, which exists, Sir Edward Grey tells us, by the world's
ignorance of these things, deserves to go the way of other
Empires where justice has been flouted and the common right
of humanity denied. It were best, then, to paraphrase Mr.
Gladstone's well-known utterance about India thirty years
ago, that the British Empire with all its crimes upon its head
should "perish."
Early Cases. Lord Charles Beresford at
Alexandria.
On Sunday, the nth of July, 1882, Sir Beauchamp Seymour
(afterwards Lord Alcester), commanding the British fleet in
Egyptian waters, bombarded Alexandria. England was at
peace with Egypt, and the pretext put forward was that
the British fleet was in danger from the guns of the Alex
andrian forts occupied by the Egyptian army, and a demand
had been made that these should be evacuated. As the
evacuation, though the forts were for the most part destroyed,
was not complete, the bombardment was renewed on the 12th,
and in the afternoon the city was found to be on fire. This
was partly the work of Sir B. Seymour's shell fire, partly ot
pillagers, Bedouins and roughs, who, profiting by the confusion,
spread the conflagration. The Egyptian army the same
evening, July 1 2th, evacuated the place, and, a large number
of the inhabitants having fled with them, Alexandria was left
to its fate.

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 13
On the 13th English sailors from the fleet were landed
to deal with the conflagration. There was still no acknow
ledged state of war, but on their first landing, civilian natives
found in the streets were shot down and run through almost
indiscriminately. I remember being told by one acquainted
with the facts in 1887 : "The new town is built on the
graves of the Arabs. The British public does not know to
this day how many of them our men killed when they landed.
They were shot down and speared as they lay." But in a few
days some semblance of order replaced the first barbarities.
The Khedive, who had ordered the defence of the forts against
the fleet, seeing his army beaten, had placed himself under
the protection of Sir Beauchamp Seymour, and Lord Charles
Beresford was entrusted (July 15th) with the task of policing
the city, and acted in His Highness's name. Martial law was
then established, and under it natives found under suspicious
circumstances were freely arrested, summarily tried and
executed on charges of murder, theft, arson, and the rest.
Some of these probably deserved their punishment, but many
mofe were as probably innocent, the ordinary forms of law
being dispensed with, and those who gave judgment being
ignorant of the language, customs, and legal codes of the
country. It is calculated that several hundreds were thus
dealt with. But no detail has ever been published, nor is
there probably in existence any true record. The London
Standard of July 17th publishes the following telegram from
its correspondent at Alexandria, which shows the pressure put
at the very outset on the Egyptian Government in the direction
of severity : "All action is taken in the name of the Khedive.
At first the latter refused to sanction the order for the shooting
and flogging of incendiaries, and required time to consult his
advisers. Major Tulloch, however, who was the bearer of
the document for signature, instantly turned to repair to the

14 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Admiral to report, when the Khedive at once sent after him
and gave him the sanction required."
On the 1 8th of July a first contingent of the British army
arrived at Alexandria under General Alison, and was landed
and encamped at Ramleh, a suburb of the city. The Khedive
then was encouraged to form a new Government with such
few Turkish and Circassian Pashas as had with him deserted
the National cause, and the administration of justice with the
policing of the city was entrusted to these, British officers
assisting the Khedivial police, and British soldiers enforcing
their judgments. The new regime, however, which we find
established in August, proved to be even worse for the natives,
if possible, than the other, as in addition to the arbitrary
character of the decisions arrived at by Lord Charles
Beresford's drumhead courts martial, sentences of a peculiarly
barbarous and vindictive character, unknown to modern
English practice even in war-time, were now imposed,
especially in cases affecting captured rebels, by the Khedive's
men. Among these were torture in prison, the thumbscrew,
the kurbash, the bastinado, and, in one instance, the keel
hauling of three prisoners of war, most of the modes of
torture being fully proved afterwards, though at the time
denied. Two instances may be specially cited belonging to this
period, as connected with crimes and offences committed
against Englishmen and pushed forward by English insistence.
The first is the case of the arrest and trial of one Atieh
Hassan, a native carter, accused of murdering Mr. Dobson and
Mr. Richardson on the nth of June — that is to say, a full
month before the bombardment of Alexandria — avowedly as an
act of vengeance for the death of Englishmen and quite
unconnected with the actual maintenance of order. The man
was arrested by English order, and tried by an English court

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 15
martial and sentenced to be shot, but having been handed over
to the Khedivial authorities the punishment was changed to
hanging, and to being left to hang from sunrise to sunset in
the quarter he inhabited, with a placard affixed to his breast
in English and in Arabic, stating the crime for which he had
been condemned to death. Colonel Cleland, chief of the new
police, superintended the execution, with two half companies
of the 96th Regiment, and three companies of the 95th,
drawn up in open square surrounding the gallows, the execu
tion being carried into effect by the Egyptian police. The
case is worth attention, not from any special barbarity in the
carrying out of the sentence, although some extra cruelty is
noticed in the published accounts of the execution, but because
it exemplifies what has since often happened — the use of
English military power in Egypt to punish natives for crimes
against Englishmen, according to military ideas of law, and by
irregular means. The crime, if really committed by the man,
had been committed at a time when the ordinary criminal
courts were open for his punishment, and his judgment now
by court martial, where no proper safeguards existed for the
defence of the accused, was not justice, but the lawless seizing
of an opportunity of getting blood at any cost for blood. That
it was a case of vengeance, not of justice, is shown by the
local English newspaper accounts of the day, where the only
regret expressed is at the long delay since the crime was
committed. "So many horrors and miseries," writes one ot
them, "have happened since that day, that men's hearts are
broken and crushed to such an extent that even revenge has
lost some of its sweetness."
A second case of about the same date exemplifies the
astonishing disproportion between offence and punishment
shown in cases where Englishmen were concerned. It is that
of an Englishman who, driving through the streets of

16 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Alexandria, accidentally ran over an Arab. A small crowd
collected and a native seized the horses' heads, but without
violence being used towards the Englishman. The man
who had seized the horses' heads was arrested by soldiers and
accused before a Native Court of having dragged the English
man from his carriage, although the latter gave no evidence to
that effect, admitting indeed that the native was wrongfully
accused. Nevertheless, a sentence of four dozen stripes and
fifteen years' hard labour was imposed. This case was never, that
I know, officially inquired into, though the barbarous condition
of things was recognised shortly after by, our Government.
I was myself instrumental in getting the worst features
connected with these punishments forbidden at the time,
notably the keel-hauling and the thumbscrew, though the
latter continued to be used secretly in the prisons until the full
official exposure of the practice of prison torture by Messrs.
Chermside and Beaman (see Blue Book, Egypt, No. 5, 1883).
My intervention came about in this way. Seeing the report
of some of these tortures having been inflicted on certain
political prisoners and prisoners ot war a few days before
the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, I wrote to Downing Street and
laid the matter personally before Mr. Gladstone, asking him
whether it was to re-establish such atrocities of vengeance as
were being indulged in at Alexandria that he had sent British
troops to Egypt. My letter brought a prompt and important
answer, which may here be quoted as bearing upon abuses
which have lately been renewed. Sir Edward Hamilton, Mr.
Gladstone's private secretary, wrote as follows : —
" 10, Downing Street,
"Sept. 8, 1882.
"I need hardly say that Mr. Gladstone has been much
exercised in his mind at the rumours about these 'atrocities';

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 17
I can call them by no other name. Immediate instructions
were sent out to inquire into the truth of them, and to
remonstrate strongly if they were confirmed. I am glad to
say that as far as our information at present goes the state
ments appear to be unfounded [they afterwards turned out to
be for the most part true]. The strictest orders have been
given for the humane treatment of the prisoners. There
seems to be some doubt as to whether thumbscrewing was not
inflicted on a spy in one case, and searching inquiries are to
be instituted, with peremptory demands of explanation and
guarantees against recurrence. You may be quite sure that
Mr. Gladstone will denounce ' Egyptian atrocities ' as strongly as
1 Bulgarian atrocities.1 " *
It was the possession of this written promise given to me by
the Prime Minister that enabled me a few days later to inter
vene with effect when it was proposed to hand over Arabi and
the other National leaders after the defeat of Tel-el-Kebir
unconditionally into the hands of their political enemies and
so, public opinion in England aiding me, eventually to save
their lives.
Nevertheless, although we were able to prevent the great
judicial crime intended of having the Nationalist leaders
hanged by the Khedive, and although we were promised,
when their trial was compromised by Lord Dufferin, that
there should be a general political amnesty, and although the
talk of a reform of justice in Egypt was loud on official lips,
especially Sir Edward Malet's, it was not long before precisely
the same methods were resorted to at Cairo of obtaining
vindictive punishments on natives who had come into
collision with Englishmen, through the joint instrumentality
of English martial law and the subservient savagery of the
' Note. — The italics throughout are mine. — W. S. B.

18 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE EST EGYPT
Khedivial Courts. A notable instance of this was the
case of the prosecution connected with Professor Palmer's
death.
The Palmer Case.
It will be remembered that Professor Palmer, a distinguished
Arabic scholar holding the chair of Arabic at Cambridge, had
been entrusted during the war by Lord Northbrook, then at
the Admiralty, with a secret mission to the Bedouins east of
the Suez Canal, and with a large sum of public money,
j£ 20,000, wherewith to purchase their assistance against the
Cairo Government. It being war-time, in all except the
technical distinction put forward by our Government between
war and military operations, and a fact that Professor Palmer
and his two military and naval companions were travelling
with ^3,000 of this money in disguise, the character of the
three Englishmen had been clearly that of spies, and their
death one not of common crime, but political and covered by
the promised amnesty. This, however, did not prevent a
vengeance being insisted upon. The form of it we find once
again to be that of military law covered thinly with a
semblance 01 Egyptian legality.
In order to obtain the result of vengeance, Lieutenant-
Colonel Warren was sent to the desert where the Englishmen
had been killed, accompanied by a sufficient military force and
by Bedouins furnished him by the Khedivial Government, and
having arrived at the spot he proceeded to make wholesale
arrests of such Bedouins, men, women, and children, as he
found within the district. These he took back with him and
lodged in gaol in Suez, and proceeded to construct a case
against the men which should justify the capital punishment or
five of them, for the three Englishmen who had lost their
lives. He effected his purpose of selection by entirely irregular

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 19
methods. Assuming a friendly guise towards his prisoners, he
made them sit beside him for several days in succession,
supplying them with coffee and cigarettes, and out of their
conversation thus invited, and translated to him by a drago
man, for he knew no word of Arabic, drew up a report as
evidence incriminating the number required. They were
then sent to Zagazig to undergo the formality of a trial before
a Native Court, which sentenced them to death, and they
were thereupon hanged. The vengeance, however, did not
altogether end here. Six months later, as I passed through Suez,
I found a number of the Bedouins with women and children
collected by Warren still detained in prison in connection with
this afiair, though charged with no crime. I laid their case
before Sir Benson Maxwell, the then judicial adviser in Egypt,
as also before Mr. Gladstone, and so procured their release.
It was from Mr. West, our then Consul at Suez, that I learned
the particulars of Colonel Warren's method. Sir Benson
Maxwell expressed himself as indignant at the women's case.
Other scandalous cases of the miscarriage of justice with
English connivance about the same time — the early half of
1880 — were the hangings of Abu Dia at Tantah and of
Suliman Sami at Alexandria, both of them judicial murders
for political reasons. But, as in neither case was there any
direct action of the English Agency that can be traced in
pushing forward the prosecutions, I pass over them with a
reference only to the fact that in both instances the English
Government was politically interested in the guilt of the
accused being proved. Abu Dia, an officer of Arabi's army,
had, during the first days of the war of 1882, intervened at
Tantah to save the lives of Christians who were being
massacred with the connivance of the civil governor, a
partisan of the Khedive's ; and Suliman Sami was the officer
who, in command of the regular troops, had stopped the riot

20 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
at Alexandria on June nth. Both these riots the English
Government had asserted had been instigated by the Arabists,
and they had made a pretext of them, in a very public
manner, especially through Lord Dufferin at the Constanti
nople Conference, for armed intervention. The prosecution
of Suliman Sami was moreover of political use to them, inas
much as it was instituted on a charge of his having fired
Alexandria during the bombardment, for his conviction would
relieve them by so much of their own responsibility for the
burning of that city. The hanging of Suliman Sami became
the subject of an indictment of Mr. Gladstone's Government
by Lord Randolph Churchill for its misdoings in Egypt, and
it was, I think, the last judicial murder, for an English political
purpose, that was permitted in that country under Mr. Glad
stone's administration. The Quail-shooting Case at Ghizeh.
With the accession of Lord Salisbury to power in 1886, the
failure of the Drummond Wolff mission and the establishment
of Lord Cromer in full authority at Cairo, an era of reforms
was commenced, and, amongst others, a reform of the Law
Courts, with a gradual improvement of justice as between
native and native — a period to which Lord Cromer refers
in the Denshawai Blue Book. Nevertheless, what he does
not refer to is that at the very outset there occurred a case
of extreme barbarity, and of recurrence to martial law in
dealing with a criminal charge affecting the relations between
native Egyptians and the Army of Occupation, one in which
no semblance of legality was observed or even pretence of refer
ence to civilised law. This was the case of the quail-shooting
affray in the district of Ghizeh. The facts, as related by the
newspapers of the day, and confirmed by what I learned later
of it by personal inquiries on the spot, are these : 

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 21
Two English officers, Scoffield and Leith, of the Welsh
Regiment, went out on Sunday, March 27, 1887, in plain
clothes, quail shooting near the Ghizeh Pyramids, and there
accidentally peppered four Arabs with small shot These were
angry at being hurt, and came up in a menacing attitude, and
— such was the English account of the affair— endeavoured to
wrest their guns from the officers, with the result that one
Arab was shot dead and another wounded. Upon this the
neighbouring villagers turned out in force, arrested the officers,
and tied them hand and foot until the police should come.
On the arrival of the police the officers were liberated, and the
matter was reported by these to the General commanding in
chief at Cairo. A military Commission was then appointed,
and it was decided that a wholesome lesson should be given to
the natives for what was called an " ebullition of fanaticism,"
and the chief persons of several villages round were flogged.
The Cairo correspondent of the Standard thus describes the
punishment : —
" The particulars I telegraphed to you regarding the assault
on British officers near the Ghizeh Pyramids is, as nearly as
possible, correct, but I omitted to say that, besides the flogging
awarded, some of the prisoners were heavily fined into the
bargain, and that three sheikhs were punished by fine and
imprisonment. At 3 p.m. last Thursday two companies of
the Welsh, to which the officers assaulted belonged, marched
off to the villages of the prisoners, and were drawn up to
witness the execution of the sentence. Buleigh Bey was
present with native mounted police, and Captain Freeman
with some of his English military police. These consist of
men picked from different cavalry regiments ; a fine stalwart
body they are, and admirably disciplined. Captain Riddle
(60th Rifles) was also there on duty. He is attached to the
police. The prisoners were tied to the typical triangle, and in
3

22 ATROCTTIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
front of the villagers they received a pretty good castigatian
from the cat, laid on by stalwart British warders from the
Ghizeh Gaol. The older prisoners bore the infliction well,
but the younger ones halloaed. The punishment of the cat,
however, is nothing in comparison with that inflicted by the
corbash, and this used to be laid on the natives' backs and feet
on every possible occasion. After a certain number had been
flogged at one village, the troops, warders, and police moved
on to another, and here some other persons were flogged in
presence of the inhabitants. Colonel Tulloch, commanding
the Welsh, then made a short speech, saying that the British
were in Egypt to protect Europeans as well as natives, that
they had shed their blood for the country, and were desirous to
maintain order. Therefore if a similar outrage occurred, the
perpetrators would be punished in a much more severe manner
than the present prisoners had been. It must be remarked,
however, that the villagers are often very hardly used by
Europeans as regards their crops. No sooner does the shoot
ing season commence — in fact, there is always something to
shoot about Cairo all the year round — than a swarm of Greeks,
Italians, French, Levantines, nondescripts of all blends, and
Englishmen, go forth and tread down their crops. Again and
again have the poor natives protested. But what can be
done ? The ' Capitulations,' as they do in every and all
occasions, step in. It is a crying shame. I heard to-day that
some of the sheiichs of the villages have given out that on the
first occasion of a European misconducting himself when on a
shooting excursion they will have him hanged without mercy
in retaliation for the punishment inflicted upon the Arabs."
This, I repeat, was a case of martial law pure and simple,
that is to say, of no law at all. I have not been able to
ascertain whether the course adopted by the 'General in
command had Lord Cromer's formal sanction, but it is

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 23
probable that it had and that it must have been approved also
by the Home Government. The villagers in the neighbour
hood, whom I questioned about the facts of the occurrence two
years later, unanimously assured me that, though the first shot
which had peppered the Arabs was accidental, the second,
which killed the villager, was certainly intentional — "fired
out of fear." I do not affirm that it was so, but such was the
local knowledge. , The officers were not, I believe, subjected
to any form of trial on account of the villager's death, not even
to the formality of a court martial.
The Decree of 1895.
In 1890 Sir John Scott was appointed official Adviser to the
Ministry of Justice ; a man of high integrity, great experience
of Egyptian law, and sincere sympathy with the natives. Under
him the native law courts were reformed, both in procedure
and in the personal character of the judges. His principle in
appointing these was to choose men known for their probity and
also for their independence of character, not merely, as we have
seen them later, for their subservience to English orders. As
long as Scott remained in the position of practical Minister of
Justice the whole native magistrature was inspired with con
fidence and a certainty that judgments delivered by them,
even against Englishmen, so long as they were just, would
bring them into no trouble. He found himself, however,
constantly at variance with Lord Cromer in regard to the
appointments to the Native Court of Appeal. Lord Cromer
was for strengthening the English political position in Egypt
by influencing the Courts and by appointing a majority of
Englishmen to the judgeships and only such natives as should
be amenable to English pressure, whereas Scott maintained
that there were plenty of native judges more competent than
and quite as worthy of confidence as the Englishmen. This

24 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
eventually led to Sir John Scott's retirement, as Sir Benson
Maxwell had retired before him ; and from that date may
be reckoned the grosser violations of law and interferences
with judicial independence which recent years have
shown. With regard to the relations existing between the Army of
Occupation and the natives, however, no such civilised reform
was introduced, if we except the trifling police cases of assault
between privates of the English regiments and natives in the
streets of Cairo and Alexandria, drunken disputes for the most
part, which were dealt with summarily and with a certain show
of impartiality. Graver cases, and especially those where
officers were concerned, continued to be treated arbitrarily
and on political grounds. It must be noted too that the cases
tried by the ordinary, or as they are called Summary, Native
Courts were confined to charges made against natives. In
cases of mutual assault no countercharge could be brought against
a soldier except before an English court martial. Nevertheless,
the English General in command was always complaining
of the lack of protection given by law to his men.
In the winter of 1894-1895, an affray took place at Suez
between sailors of Her Majesty's Navy and natives of that
seaport town, in which the punishment inflicted on the latter
by a Summary Court was not considered by Lord Cromer to
have been sufficient, and it was, I understand, in consequence
of this and of the strained relations existing at the time
between him and the Khedive that Lord Cromer pressed upon
the Egyptian Government the new law which has been
recently so much cited, that of February 25, 1895, giving him
a legal right, in concert with the English General in com
mand, of taking into his own hands all such cases as might
affect the Army of Occupation and the Royal Navy. Ac
cording to the new law, where soldiers should have brought a

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 25
complaint before the General of assault by a native, the
General, if he thought fit, might apply to the English Agency
requesting that the case be taken out of the jurisdiction of the
Summary Courts, and dealt with by a special semi-military
Tribunal, the members of which, partly English, partly Egyp
tian, should be practically chosen by the British Agent and him
self, and these judges should be empowered to decide the case
at a public trial according to semi-military procedure, and to
inflict what sentences they pleased, without appeal. It rested
with the British Agency to allow or disallow this course.
Although this law was decreed while Sir John Scott was in
office at Cairo, it is difficult to believe that it was due to his
initiative, and I have been informed that the contrary was the
case. But it must be remembered that the worst features of
the new tribunal did not disclose themselves until after his
retirement. Sir John Scott might well have thought, when
the Decree was issued, that his presence at the Ministry of
Justice would be, as doubtless it would have been, a sufficient
check upon abuses, for the choice of the judges would have
rested partly with himself. With his departure, however,
and the growing assumption of all power, judicial as well as
administrative, by Lord Cromer, the guarantee for impartiality
was enfeebled to the point of extinction, until the extreme
possibilities of injustice under the Decree have been revealed
to us to-day in the barbarities we have witnessed.
It is hardly possible to exaggerate this point. Although in
appearance vested with a character less arbitrary than a court
martial, Tribunals formed under the Decree of 1895 afford
less protection to natives tried by them even than the other,
inasmuch as they have power of inflicting punishments of a
severity no court martial, except in war-time, would venture
to impose ; while the composition of the Tribunals, partly
native, partly English, throws the odium of such punishments

26 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
on the native judges, relieving by so much the odium which
would otherwise rest wholly on the British General and the
British Diplomatic Agent. The criminal law, too, of Egypt,
whose procedure is in part followed, gives special facilities in
unscrupulous hands of convicting innocent men, so that trials
conducted under the Decree combine the preliminary interro
gations of the accused under conditions of terrorism, even
perhaps of torture — for all is done in secret, and with wide
possibilities of falsifying the proces verbaux, or written reports
of the evidence used later at the open trial — with the lack of
legal ceremony and the celerity of execution of a court
martial. It is not too much to say that under the Decree of
1895 a nativ* Egyptian could be legally sentenced to death,
even death by impalement or crucifixion, for having by a
blow prevented or resented the violation of his wife by an
English soldier. The Denshawai case falls little short of such
an extreme but possible case in its sheer iniquity.
Nevertheless, though the text of the Decree permits any
and every enormity of punishment in any and every case where
a complaint of assault has been made by a British soldier
endorsed by the British General and sanctioned by the British
Diplomatic Agent, it is clear and there is official record that
the Decree was intended to be applicable only in cases where
officers and soldiers of the Army of Occupation had been
assaulted while in the execution of their military duty. This
is to be found in Blue Book, Egypt, No. 3 (1901). In it
Sir Rennell Rodd, then acting British Agent, under date
August 25, 1901, and when speaking of a case which had
been tried before an ordinary Court in which officers not on
duty had been assaulted, writes in reference to the Decree of
1895:- " There is, indeed, a special Court with very far-reaching
powers, from whose sentences there is no appeal, which may be

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 27
convened in exceptional circumstances to try offences against
officers and men of the Army of Occupation. This Court
has only been assembled twice to my knowledge since it was
instituted, and in both cases for offences of a very grave
character against soldiers in uniform in the execution of their
duty. It would have been entirely contrary to the spirit and
intention in which that Tribunal was constituted to convene
it inforder to try an af&ir of this nature. . . ."
The Denshawai trial, therefore, ordered by Lord Cromer to
be held under the Decree of 1895 and before a special Tribunal,
in a case where the officers were out for their pleasure pigeon
shooting, and not at all on duty, was, on the authority just
cited, if not contrary to the text, contrary at least to the
spirit and intention of the law, and therefore illegal.
It is very necessary that this point should be pressed upon
Sir Edward Grey in any further questions that may be asked
in Parliament, for it bears upon the all-important fact, which
is really at the root of the whole of these scandals, Lord
Cromer's official readiness to override and strain the law where
public considerations in his opinion require it. Sometimes
these interventions of his authority, so noticeable in recent
years, have been directed towards ostensibly good objects,
sometimes towards objects merely of immediate political
advantage. But in either case the injury done by them to the
integrity and independence of the judicial body in Egypt and
to the public respect for legality throughout the country has
been very great, and has resulted in a complete subservience ot
the Native Courts to the least hint or expression of the British
Agent's will.
The Minshawi Case.
A notable instance of Lord Cromer's intervention, with an
ostensibly good object, in the working of the law is that of the
arrest ordered by him of the late Minshawi Pasha.

28 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Minshawi Pasha was a fellah notable of great wealth and
influence in the Delta, a man of liberal sympathies, wide
benevolence, and patriotic antecedents. He enjoyed the
highest repute in his own province as a local magnate and the
leader in all public works of a benevolent kind. He had the
misfortune, however, to be a country neighbour and personal
friend of the Khedive's, the Khedive being at that time on
very ill terms with Lord Cromer, to whom various high
handed practices of His Highness's had truly or falsely been
reported. These Lord Cromer was resolved to put a stop to,
and the occasion was given him by the following incident.
The Khedive, who is an agriculturist on a large scale, had on
repeated occasions been subject to thefts of his cattle on an
estate adjoining Minshawi's, and through the neglect or
unintelligence of the Anglo-Egyptian police the thieves had
always remained undiscovered. At last it happened that a
prize bull recently imported from Europe was stolen, and as
the police again failed to arrest the culprits the Khedive applied
to his neighbour to help him to find out who these were.
This Minshawi agreed to do, and having learned, through his
local influence, the identity of the thieves, for they were well
known in the district, he had them arrested in concert with
the provincial governor and conveyed to his own house.
There, according to report, he had them beaten with a view
to discovering where the bull had been hidden. It was no
doubt a most improper and illegal act, but it is exceedingly
doubtful whether it was one of such gravity as to have called
for Lord Cromer's intervention, but for the fact of the
Khedive's connection with the affair. As it was, however,
Lord Cromer saw in it the opportunity he needed, and as the
Egyptian authorities had taken insufficient action in the matter,
Lord Cromer took it into his own hands and ordered the
Pasha's arrest and prosecution, with the result that Minshawi

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 29
was in a very public manner arrested on a charge of torture,
and was tried for it at Tantah, his native town, where twenty
years before he had rendered a notable service to humanity by
saving the lives, at considerable personal risk, of Christians in a
local riot, and sentenced to imprisonment
Lord Cromer's action at the time was much applauded in
England, his personal intervention in the matter being univer
sally acknowledged, and in no way repudiated by him. The
following extract from the Daily Telegraph of April 25, 1902,
will show the view taken of his action : —
" The trial of Menshawi Pasha, in connection with what
is known as the Egyptian Torture Case, was concluded to-day.
For a month past this case has caused the greatest ferment,
especially in the native circles, Menshawi being one of the
most influential and wealthy pashas in Egypt. He was
actively identified with Arabi in the revolt of 1882 ; but a
contingent of his having saved the lives of Europeans during
the troubles, he was allowed to return to Egypt. The present
case is that in order to curry favour with the Khedive he took
natives from the local prison and flogged them unmercifully
to extract a confession of the theft of a prize bull belonging
to the Khedive which had mysteriously disappeared.
" On the men being brought into court they protested their
innocence, and stated that torture had been applied to obtain
the so-called confession. A medical examination proved that
they had been brutally ill-used, and Lord Cromer ordered the
arrest of Menshawi Pasha. The Native Court at Tantah, after
a week's sitting, now sentences Menshawi to three months'
imprisonment, and the Mamour of the district and the servants
who applied the torture to two months.
" Surprise and general satisfaction is expressed amongst the
natives that the British authorities show, by the decisive
measures taken in the present instance, that they will not

30 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
permit oppression of the lowest subject even by the highest
in the land."
The use of the word "torture," as rightly applied to flogging
by Lord Cromer's admirers in this case, may be usefully con
trasted with their deprecation of the word to-day in connection
with the punishments at Denshawai and with Lord Cromer's
own apology for the practice published in the recent Blue Book.
The Montaza Case.
Another less-known case, where the Khedive was also
concerned, but in which not justice but injustice was the
result of a very distinct illegality forced upon the Egyptian
Government in the Khedive's absence by Lord Cromer and
sanctioned by a mere "Ministerial order," in no way
differing from the " Administrative orders " in use in Russia,
is that of Montaza, the true facts of which Lord Cromer has
so -far succeeded in keeping almost secret. That it was dealt
with illegally is proved by Sir Edward Grey's recent statement
that it did not come under the head of cases dealt with under
the Decree of 1895, which alone could have legalised the irregu
larity. The facts were as follows : —
On Sunday, the 10th of June, 1900, two English officers
or the Alexandria garrison, Captain Bulkely and Captain
Howes Welsh, attempting to penetrate in plain clothes that
part of the Palace precincts at Montaza which is reserved for
the ladies of His Highness's household — though the Vice-
Reine herself was not at the time in residence — came into
conflict with the guard of the place, and with some workmen
accidentally employed on the premises, and got themselves
somewhat severely beaten. According to the legal reports,
proces verbaux, of the adventure, which give the officers' own
story, they were on their way in a sailing-boat by sea to
Aboukir, and the wind being contrary their boatman put them

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 31
on shore at the Khedive's private landing quay, which is
within the forbidden precincts. There they found a single
guard on sentry duty in a kiosk who motioned them away,
and after an altercation between him and their boatman which
they did not understand, the man still opposing, they rushed on
him, knocked him down and attempted to disarm him. The
excuse they gave for this assault was that they had been asleep
in the boat, that they did not know where they were, and that
they took the sentry to be a coastguard or a madman and
feared that he might shoot them. All three, officers and
sentry, fell on the ground together, when the cries of the
sentry brought people to his assistance, workmen who were
repairing a jetty, and who, seeing the guard overpowered by
strangers, themselves overpowered these, belabouring them
with pieces of carpentering wood lying near, and inflicting
rather serious scalp wounds.
The incident having been reported by the officers, to the
English General in command at Alexandria, he demanded a
severe punishment on the natives. It happened, however, that
the Khedive was away from Egypt and precisely^ at that
moment was paying a visit to Her late Majesty Queen
Victoria in England, and, as the conflict had occurred on the
Khedive's private property and the natives concerned were in
the Khedive's personal service, the native Egyptian Ministry,
subservient as it generally is to English dictation, refused to
prosecute. Nevertheless, on the General's continued represen
tations, Lord Cromer decided that the prosecution should be
insisted on. Pressure was therefore put upon the Ministers,
and they were compelled to agree. The law of 1 895 was in
this case — at least so Sir Edward Grey has declared — not
invoked, the officers being neither in uniform nor in the
execution of any military duty, but, in order to ensure a con
viction and what was considered an adequate punishment, a

32 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
procedure quite as exceptional and sanctioned by no law was
adopted. Abandoning all legal precedent in criminal cases,
the Egyptian Prime Minister was induced, by a simple Minis
terial order, to appoint a special Commission of Inquiry to act
instead of the Public Prosecutor, and to take new evidence
supplementary to the police evidence already obtained, which
seemed to take too favourable a view of the native case. This
special Commission consisted of two Englishmen, Mr. Corbett,
the Procureur-GeneYal, and the English Adjutant-Colonel of
the garrison, with Kheyri Pasha, civil governor of Alexandria,
as third. Thus constituted, the Commission examined wit
nesses afresh, and framed an indictment, in default of any
identifiable person among those who had injured the officers,
against the unfortunate sentry whom they had assaulted, and
against another guard who had accompanied the officers to the
surgery and telephone, and who, they said, had struck them on
the way there. As, however, there was no Article in the Egyp
tian Code which in a case of assault in order to repel an assault
could be punished with any severity, especially in the case
where the persons assaulted were themselves guilty of a tres
pass in enclosed premises — an offence according to the Code of
a very serious kind — a fiction of law was employed to inculpate
the two guards of a conspiracy to assault with "previous
agreement and intent to do bodily hurt." The last paragraph
of a certain Article in the Criminal Code— Article 220 — was
unearthed for the purpose. According to this, persons
forming part of a band of armed men more than five in
number might be indicted as a band of highway roughs and
punished with extreme penalties, and on this charge the
Commission of Inquiry decided that the sentry and his com
panion should be tried before a Native Court at Alexandria.
The result was that a vindictive punishment was secured.
Although there was no particle of evidence produced show-

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 33
ing conspiracy or premeditation of any kind, but on the
contrary the evidence of the officers themselves proved that
the sentry was alone when the affray began, and that the
other guard prosecuted had not been present at all when the
injuries they complained of were inflicted, these two men, in
default of other victims, were sentenced, the sentry to eight
months' and his companion to three months' imprisonment.
This case is interesting in many ways, and especially as
showing how small a protection appeal affords to natives in
such circumstances, and how certainly the Court of Appeal,
packed as it is by Lord Cromer with Englishmen of his
choice, and with subservient native judges, can be relied upon,
however unjustly, to uphold a sentence obtained. Appeal here
was made by the two prisoners, based on the undeniable fact
that they were two persons only, whereas Article 220 names
six persons as necessary to constitute an armed band, but the
Court of Appeal, notwithstanding the illegality, without
hesitation confirmed the sentences, and the assaulted sentry, an
unfortunate soldier who had just been rescued from a sixteen
years' captivity at Omdurman in the prisons of the Khalifa,
was forced to undergo the whole of this new imprisonment at
English hands.
Such are the facts revealed by the proces verbaux of the trial.
They were told me first in their main outlines by the Khedive
himself on the 23rd of November, 1901, and His Highness
promised at the same time to send me the proces verbaux of the
trial, as well as the details of a second case which had occurred
near his palace at Koubba, where a notable of Walla, riding on
an ass on the high-road, had been assaulted by troopers of the
2 1st Lancers, and had died of the injuries inflicted, without
any court martial having been held on any of them or punish
ment of any kind imposed. I have a record of this con
versation in my journal of that date, as also of a message I

34 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
received later, to the effect that shortly after it occurred Lord
Cromer, to whom the Khedive had mentioned the incident,
forbade His Highness to send me the details of either case. I
obtained, however, notwithstanding the prohibition, the docu
ments relating to the Montaza trial, and find in them the facts
as I here state them. On my sending in an account of the
affair, in the spring of 1902, with other matters of a like
nature, illustrating the perversion of justice in cases affecting
the Army of Occupation in Egypt, to Lord Lansdowne, at the
Foreign Office, Lord Cromer, to whom my representations
were referred, thought fit to deny the Montaza facts. He
was, I presume, unaware that the proces verbaux of the trial
were in my possession when he made the denial, for it cannot
be supposed that he had so soon forgotten a case of which he
had himself authorised the procedure.
The Fox-hunting Case.
Another and better known case, somewhat similar to that of
Montaza, is the case of certain officers of the nth Hussars,
who, with other officers, broke into my walled garden near
Cairo, during my absence in England, at five o'clock on Sunday
morning, the 21st of July, 1901, to hunt the half-tame foxes
there. Here was a case of trespass, insignificant according to
English hunting ideas as between the officers and myself, but
a very serious violation of Egyptian law, for which the tres
passers, had they been natives, might have been prosecuted
with the certainty of heavy sentences being imposed. More-
ever, they were the aggressors, having struck the first blows on
my native servants with their hunting-whips, and were thus
wholly in the wrong. The servants had at most struck one
blow, and thrown a clod of earth in return, inflicting injuries
so light as to have left no marks, not even a contusion. Yet
on application by the General in command at Cairo to Sir

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 35
Rennell Rodd, acting in Lord Cromer's place, that "the chief
offenders might be severely punished," a political colour was at
once given to the aflair, and all the forces of the law, regular
and irregular, were put in motion to ensure conviction of the
natives, and heavy sentences pronounced. The whole staff of
the garden was arrested, and three of them were conveyed in
irons to Cairo. The preliminary inquiry of the local police,
which, as in the Montaza case, had recorded facts adverse to
the officers, was set aside, and a new inquiry, under circum
stances of extreme intimidation, was ordered to replace it.
The servants were then sent for trial before a removable
native judge, and once more a charge of conspiracy and pre
meditation, "previous agreement to assault and do bodily
hurt," was preferred against them, and a sentence of three
years' imprisonment demanded by the prosecution. It was
due to an accident only — namely, that the natives were in my
service, and had found an able and honest lawyer to defend
them for my sake — that the full penalty was not imposed. As
it was, terms of six and four and three months were given in a
country court where the Advocate-General appeared in person,
with the governor of the province and other high officials,
Egyptian and English, and where the officers, who had been in
mufti at the time of the affray, gave evidence in uniform.
In this instance, however, the full sentences were not
carried out. The noise of the affair had reached England, and
questions had been asked in Parliament, and the Court of
Appeal to which the officers, not content with their limited
vengeance, had applied to increase the sentences, reduced them.
What made the case really important, however, was that
when the Blue Book containing what purported to be the full
papers connected with the trial appeared — for these had been
promised — it was discovered by a comparison of it with the
official reports in the original Arabic, that a false account of

36 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
the case in its most essential features had been forwarded
officially to the Foreign Office, and by the Foreign Office
had been presented as a true account to Parliament.
This brings us to the culminating iniquity of the hanging or
four natives and the scourging of eight others, besides the
infliction of varying terms of penal servitude ranging up to
life imprisonment, for a so-called "assault" on five English
officers under circumstances of the strongest provocation last
month at a village in the Delta.
The Pigeon-shooting Case at Denshawai.
Although full information in regard to this astonishing case
was promised by Sir Edward Grey to Parliament as early as
July 2nd, the Blue Book concerning it was not presented till
July 28th, that is to say a few days only before the close
of the Parliamentary Session and after the Foreign Office vote
had been taken, thus making all real discussion of it in the
House of Commons impossible. The excuse for the delay in
publishing was the lengthy nature of the evidence given at the
trial which would need translation. Nevertheless, the Blue
Book, when it at last appeared was found to contain no word
of that evidence. In place of it there stands printed the text
of the Judgment pronounced by the judges in which what
purports to be a risumi of the facts proved at the trial is
given. It contains also a statement by Lord Cromer that
the trial was a fair one and that the sentences pronounced
"though severe, were just and necessary." Lord Cromer,
moreover, appeals at great length to his past services in the
cause of justice and moral progress in Egypt — matters relating
chiefly to twenty years ago, and concerned mainly with the
reform of the Native Courts. Of any recent cases which have
occurred between English officers and natives he says nothing,
and he is silerit as to his own responsibility in the present

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 37
aflair. The Blue Book is, in fact, another instance of the way
in which cases of the kind are hushed up and concealed
officially by the British Agency at Cairo and the Foreign
Office. If, therefore, we were dependent for our knowledge of
what took place at the trial, or for the facts of the case, solely
on the Blue Book, a certain doubt might be left on our minds
in regard to these last. Fortunately, however, the principal
points of the evidence denied by the Foreign Office is supplied
us by the day-by-day reports published of it in English,
French, and Arabic by the Cairo and Alexandria newspapers.
It is from these and other sources, including a Special Report
sent to me by the " notables and merchants of Cairo," that I
give the following account of the affair, not indeed affirming
its complete accuracy, but only its accordance with what has
been published and sent me.
As to the First Facts.
The facts of the case, which are beyond dispute, are that five
English officers of the Army of Occupation, while employed
on a march from Cairo to Alexandria, camped on the morning
of the 13th of June, 1906, at a place in the province of Menu-
fieh named Khamshish, and having established their camp,
started almost immediately on a sporting expedition to shoot
pigeons at a village some six miles distant, Denshawai, where
it was known to some of them that there were large numbers
of pigeons bred by the villagers; that, arrived at the village,
the officers, who were in khaki uniform, posted themselves
outside the village in two separate groups on two sides of it,
and commenced shooting ; that the villagers objected to their
thus shooting the pigeons ; that a dispute arose in consequence,
with the result that a native woman and three men of the
village were wounded with small shot ; that the officers then
attempted to leave the village, but were attacked by the villagers
4

38 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
and injured, some of them severely, but none of them in such
a manner as to cause death ; that three of them were captured
by the villagers and retained as prisoners, while two escaped ;
that of these two, one, Captain Bull, after running four and a
half miles, fell down, overcome by the midsummer sun, in the
neighbourhood of another village called Sersena, on the road by
which they had come from Khamshish ; that the other fugitive,
Captain Bostock, a medical officer, having reached the camp,
gave warning to the soldiers of what had happened ; that a
patrol of these then started for the scene of the affray ; that at
Sersena they found Captain Bull on the ground in a dying
state with a native of that village tending him ; that, sup
posing him to have murdered Captain Bull, they pursued
and killed him ; that, at their arrival at Denshawai, they
surrounded the village, when the captive officers were
liberated.1 ' Note. — As a contrast to the punishments inflicted on the natives
and the zeal shown to obtain their legal conviction, the following
extract from the Pall Mall Gazette will show the counter case of how
leniently and evasively the killing of the native by the soldiers at
Sersena has been dealt with : — "Cairo, July 31st.
" The report of the experts who performed the post-mortem on
the native found dead at Dersineh (Sersena) has now been made
public, and it declares that death was not due to a bayonet or shot,
but to fracture of the skull through a blow or blows on the base,
which had been completely smashed in. This clears the Mounted
Infantry, for, although the blows might have been given by a soldier
just as well as by a native, the absence of any bayonet or shot wounds
removes any direct proof of the soldiers' complicity. It is to be
hoped that, now that the matter has been sifted as far as it is humanly
possible to do so, we shall hear nothing further of it, and that the
native Press will cease its outcry."
The native account of the manner of the man's death is that he
was brained by the soldiers with the butt-ends of their rifles. There
is, it seems, to be no court martial, for the simple reason that the
soldiers have denied their guilt, and the natives cannot identify
exactly which of the soldiers killed the man.

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 39
This is the simplest statement of facts, undisputed except
as to the killing of the native at Sersena. What also is
certain is that on a report made by the officers of what had
happened to the General in command of the English garrison,
a request was addressed by him to Lord Cromer, asking that
the case might be treated under the decree of 1895 ; that
upon this Mr. Machell, the English official adviser of the
Ministry of the Interior, on the next day, the 14th, went with
a large police force to Denshawai and arrested thirty-five of the
inhabitants, certain others, supposed to be those principally
concerned, having in the meanwhile escaped, nor had they
been captured when the trial took place ; that upon Mr.
Machell's report Lord Cromer decided that the case should
be dealt with according to the special law decreed in 1895,
already mentioned.
It is worthy of notice that both General Bullock and Lord
Cromer in the official demands they made for a special
Tribunal, describe the case as a" shooting affray, with the
result that one officer was killed and two were severely
wounded," thus conveying the false impression that the three
officers had been shot by the villagers, although in every account,
official and unofficial, of the afrair the only arms of the villagers,
as both the General and Lord Cromer knew, were nabouts —
heavy sticks (mis-translated in the Blue Book " sticks loaded
with lead")— while the officers alone had firearms.
As to the Procedure before the Trial.
In accordance with this decision a decree was issued in the
Khedive's name, the Khedive being himself at the time absent
in Europe, bearing date June 17th, which runs as follows :—
« Order by the Minister of Justice :
"In view of Article 2 of the Decree of February 25, 1895,
instituting a special Tribunal to take cognisance of crimes and

40 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
offences committed against officers and soldiers of the Army of
Occupation ;
" In view of the despatch by which the Agent and Consul
General of Great Britain demands, in conformity with Article 6
of the above-named Decree, the constitution of the said Tribunal
to take cognisance of the assault committed on the 13th of
June instant, in a village near Tantah, and in consequence of
which an officer, Captain Bull, was killed* and two other
officers, Major Pine Coffin and Lieutenant Smithwick, were
very seriously injured ;
" It is ordered :
" Sole Article : Mr. Bond, Vice-President of the Native
Court of Appeal, and Ahmed Bey Fathi Zaghlul, President of
of the Native Tribunal of Cairo, are chosen members of this
special Tribunal which shall assemble to determine the facts of
the assault [statuer sur les faits d'aggression] here above
mentioned :
"Given at Cairo, June 17, 1906: Signed Boutros Ghali,
the Minister, ad interim."
On the same day, the 17th, and before any sitting of the
Court of Inquiry had been held, Mr. Machell, the English
official adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, issued to the
Press an official statement of what purported to be the facts
of the case, thus prejudging the results of the Inquiry.
Between the 17th and the 19th Mr. Bond and Ahmed
Bey Fathi Zaghlul examined the case at one or more private
sittings — sittings at which neither newspaper reporters nor
public were admitted, nor were the arrested persons who were
examined represented by counsel. The official report of their
answers, with other evidence thus privately obtained, was
1 Note. — The occurrence of the word " killed " in this Decree is
noteworthy in connection with the true circumstances of Captain
Bull's death by sunstroke.

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 41
nevertheless used against them afterwards as evidence at the
triaL On the 20th it was publicly announced that the Inquiry
had been concluded and that a decision had been come to by
it of inflicting death sentences. It is quite certain that Lord
Cromer must have known the result of the Inquiry and
approved the intention of punishing with death before this
announcement was made, and that he did so on the ground
afterwards abandoned at the trial, that the assault on the
officers had been prearranged. It is indeed probable that he
himself drew up the programme of punishment before he left
for England. The special report sent me by the notables is
insistent as to Lord Cromer's direct responsibility. It says : —
" We draw your attention to the fact, which is now a dis
closed secret, that Lord Cromer had left the necessary instruc
tions before leaving and appointed the penalties beforehand"
This is in accordance with every probability, inasmuch as there
is no official, English or native, in Egypt who would have
dared to take upon himself before trial the responsibility of so
grave a decision. Lord Cromer's approval is also plainly alluded
to in a telegram, from its Cairo correspondent, printed by the
Daily Chronicle in London on the morning of June 2ist
under the heading of " Short Shrift " : —
" The preliminary inquiry into the attack on British officers
. . . has been concluded. Everything indicates that the
outrage was much more serious than at first supposed, and
that it was prearranged. Fortunately this time Lord Cromer
is convinced of the bad faith of the natives. They will be
severely dealt with, and the sentences will be carried out
immediately, those condemned to death being shot in public.
There will be no appeal."
This telegram, be it remarked, was published in London
three clear dap before the trial began. Lord Cromer left

42 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
England on the 19th, and the telegram must have been
despatched not later than the 20th. On the same day, the
20th, the Ministry of the Interior ordered from the Police
Stores at Cairo that a gallows should be got ready and sent
to Denshawai. This was in all the Cairo newspapers. The
words of the Special Report are : " On Wednesday (the
20th) the Ministry of the Interior ordered the Police Stores
of Cairo to send the gallows to Denchewy, and we assure you,
though it was afterwards denied by the Ministry, that the
machine and twenty ropes were sent on Wednesday to Den
chewy." This ordering of the gallows, be it noted, took tlace
four days before the trial began.
The following is the text of a second Decree, also signed on
the 20th : —
" Order by the Minister of Justice :
"In view of the Decree of Feb. 25, 1895, &c,
" It is ordered :
"Article 1. The special Tribunal composed of
"Mr. William Goodenough Hayter, Judicial Adviser, ad
interim ;
" Mr. Bond, Vice-President of the Native Court of Appeal ;
" Lieut.-Colonel Ludlow, Officiating Judge Advocate of the
Army of Occupation ;
"Ahmed Bey Fathi Zaghlul, President of the Native
Tribunal of Cairo, sitting under my Presidency :
"is convoked to determine the facts of the assault here
above mentioned.
"Article 2. The Tribunal will sit at Shibine-el-Kum and
will hold its first meeting Sunday, June 24, instant, at 10 o'clock
in the morning.
"Given at Cairo, June 20, 1906. Signed Boutros Ghali,
the Minister, ad interim."

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 43
Composition of the Court at Shibin-el-Kom.
What is noticeable in the composition of the Court thus
appointed to try the villagers, and which held its first public
sitting at Shibin-el-Kom on June 24th, the chief town of
the district in which the affray had occurred, is
1. The Court was, as already shown, illegally convened,
there being nothing in the facts revealed either by Mr.
Machell's police inquiry or by the Preliminary Inquiry to
suggest that the case was one affecting British soldiers " in the
execution of their military duty " (compare page 23).
2. The judges appointed to try the case in public and to
pronounce sentences on the Mohammedan villagers, in Egypt
a Mohammedan country, on charges declared by Sir Edward
Grey to have been connected with Mohammedan fanaticism,
were three Englishmen, including an English officer, one Chris
tian Egyptian, and only one Mohammedan.
3. It is to be remarked that two of the judges out of the
five were precisely the two who had already inquired into the
case in private, and in connection with whose official inquiry
it had been publicly announced that it was intended to
pronounce sentences of death.
4. Although it has been officially stated that all the members
of the Court were " acquainted with Arabic," it is extremely
unlikely that the acquaintance of all of them with it was
sufficient to enable them to understand the native evidence.
It is equally unlikely that the accused villagers understood the
evidence given in English by the officers, although translators
are said to have explained it to them.
5. Mr. Hayter, representing the Ministry of Justice and one
of the judges, is admitted to have had no judicial experience.
Another, Colonel Ludlow's experience of Egyptian Courts
cannot have been great, while the Coptic Pasha Butros,

44 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
though Minister of Justice and President of the Tribunal,
was no lawyer, and seems to have been so distrustful of his own
judicial ability that he left the whole of the direction of the
trial to Mr. Bond, who monopolised the initiative. Yet Mr.
Findlay, acting in Lord Cromer's place, writes of the special
Tribunal legalised by the Decree of 1895: "The object
of the institution of this Court was to insure that such cases
should be tried by competent judges acquainted with the
country, customs and language of the people."
As to the Unfair Procedure in Court.
The impression given to unprejudiced spectators, as repro
duced in the French accounts, clearly was that the sole duty
entrusted to the Court was as speedily as possible to deliver
the sentences already agreed upon and made public, and to
cast over the punishments intended a thin veil of legality.
The counsel for the defence, according to these, were
throughout under intimidation from the circumstances of
military display under which the Court was sitting ; and the
timid and obsequious language of their pleading, as given in
the reports, fully bears out this impression. The following
is from the French newspaper, I'Egypte, which, it may be
remarked, has been throughout a supporter of Lord Cromer's
policy, especially during the recent months of his quarrel
with the Sultan, and to the extent that it is published on
the same sheets with an English newspaper avowedly his
partisan. Speaking of the helpless position of the counsel
for the defence, the writer, M. Munier, an eye-witness and a
French gentleman of the highest respectability, says : —
" These defenders of the accused might have exclaimed with
Cicero in the pleading he made for Milo : ' This new form
of justice is made to strike terror. I turn my eyes, I look
in vain for the ancient customs of the Forum and the old

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 45
traditions of justice. Here we have no Tribunal with which
we are familiar, and the crowd which presses on me is not
one we are any of us accustomed to see around us.' The
bench of judges," M. Munier goes on, " had been carefully
packed, and, among the magistrates charged with judging 57
accused Moslems, three judges were English and only two
native, one of whom was a Christian. Out of the 57
persons accused 50 are caged within barred enclosures,
the 7 others have disappeared and will be judged en con-
tumace. The interrogatory of these 57 accused lasted
exactly thirty minutes, that is to say they gave them no
time at all to defend themselves. The Englishmen, who
were perhaps the aggressors, and who, in any case, were
actors in the affray, and for that reason inculpated until light
should be thrown on the affair, remain free, and alone have
the right to explain themselves. One sees clearly from the
first moment that the game is not a fair one. It is Mr.
Bond who directs the arguments ; it is he who puts the
questions ; it is he who, with Lieut-Col. Ludlow, dictates
to the dragoman the words to be interpreted. On one of
the witnesses, who at the preliminary inquiry accused his -
fellow-countrymen, who in the face of the open Court now
recognised, doubtless with remorse, that it was the English
men who had begun the quarrel, Mr. Bond inflicts this
rebuke : ' Your contradiction nowise astonishes me. All
Egyptians are alike. Not one can be trusted.' We see at
once the effect of this gratuitous insult in the faces of the
two native judges.
"When the choice of witnesses was made, the Agent of
Police who accompanied the officers on their shooting expedi
tion was left out. This Agent, a man of fearless bearing,
nevertheless makes his appearance before the Court, having
been called by the prisoners' counsel. He relates the facts as

46 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
he saw them. Mr. Bond asks him if he is not afraid.
' Nobody in the world,' he replied, ' is able to frighten me ; the
truth is the truth.' But his evidence interferes with the plans
laboriously built up by those who are charged with the higher
interests of Egypt ; he is promptly sent down.1 When the
Advocate-General began his speech for the prosecution there
was not one of us who did not know the names of the victims
chosen for the act of public vengeance."
Be it also remarked as typical of the one-sided character of
the proceedings, and an astonishing instance of the readiness
with which the Court accepted as sufficient the statements,
sworn and unsworn, of the officers, to the prejudice of the
natives, that on the question of identification being raised,
Major Pine Cojfin's word was allowed without comment,
when he ventured to affirm that, out of the fifty-two prisoners
present in Court, he was able to recollect and identify twenty-
nine — a feat of memory which, under the brief and troubled
circumstances of his connection with the prisoners, is probably
unparalleled in the annals of English evidence.
Such at least is the account of it given in the English
reports of the trial, though the Special Report puts it at twelve
only, the fact remaining that the officers between them suc
ceeded in identifying at least twenty-one, without which feat
of memory so large a number of convictions could not have
been legally obtained. The memory of the officers would,
indeed, be quite incredible were it not explained in the
Special Report that it was facilitated by numbered placards in
European characters, having been conspicuously affixed to each of
the fifty-two prisoners, in order that those designed for punishment
might be easily identified, the numbers attached to those thus selected
' Note. — This police officer has since been tried for his conduct in
connection with the affair before a "Court of Discipline," and has
been condemned to two years' imprisonment and fifty lashes.

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 47
having been previously communicated to the officers. I do not
affirm that this was a true explanation of the placards, but
all accounts speak of the use of them as a feature unpre
cedented in Egyptian criminal courts, nor is it easy^ to
account for the innovation by any other theory. The fact
that, though the proceedings were avowedly all in Arabic, the
placards were in European character seems to indicate a
purpose which at least requires official explanation.
In contrast with these facilities of identification given to
the officers, we find the soldiers who had killed the native of
Sersena declared guiltless at a later military inquiry, through
the impossibility of identification by the native witnesses to
whom "all the soldiers looked alike."
As to the Evidence recorded. The Question of Uniform.
The question of uniform — an important one under the
circumstances — was the first discussed. Here, in answer to
Colonel Ludlow, Major Pine Coffin deposed that "all the
officers were in khaki uniform, wearing knee-breeches and
spurs and helmets, and all wore their regimental shoulder
badges." This, although considered sufficient to give a
semblance of legality to the application of military law to the
case, is hardly conclusive as a proof that the villagers recognised
the sportsmen as English soldiers. Helmets and khaki are
commonly worn by civilian Englishmen, and indeed by other
foreigners, in summer, when in the country neighbourhood of
Cairo, while the shoulder badges are so small, hardly larger
than half a crown, that they are not likely even to have been
noticed, still less understood, by the villagers.
The question of uniform was much insisted on by Colonel
Ludlow, as on it might be made to rest the legality of the
decision to take the case away from the ordinary criminal
courts, and treat it as one of an attack on soldiers performing

48 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
a military duty. It is difficult, however, to understand pigeon
shooting, even in uniform, as military duty, unless, indeed,
it was intended as a military demonstration to overawe the
neighbourhood ; in which case the officers should surely not
have surrendered their arms to an unarmed crowd.
As to the Right to shoot the Pigeons.
The Counsel for the prosecution asserted with much
insistence that the pigeons were wild birds, and that the dove
cotes they lived in belonged to nobody, nor does the text of
the Judgment delivered, in its recapitulation of the facts proved,
pronounce upon this point. All those, however, who visited
Denshawai in connection with the trial and the executions,
agree in a contrary opinion. The pigeons, they say, are bred
in large numbers by the villagers, and habitually roost in towers
specially constructed for them in and around the village, the
birds being an important part of the village wealth. They do
not belong to the Omdeh, though it is often assumed by
sportsmen that an Omdeh's permission gives them the right to
shoot. That the officers assumed this appears in the evidence.
Major Pine Coffin deposes that he had been out pigeon
shooting before, and that " when he went out shooting he had
always obtained beforehand the permission of the Omdeh
of the village." No evidence, however, was offered at the
trial that any such permission had been obtained in the present
instance. All that the officers were able to swear to was that
they had met a man outside the village and had asked him
through an interpreter — for they did not speak Arabic —
whether they could shoot, and that he had signified his assent
if at a distance from the village. On being questioned on the
second day of the trial, Major Pine Coffin corrected his
statement about asking leave, which had implied an admission
that he knew the birds to be private property, by saying that

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE m EGYPT 49
"he had always understood that wild pigeons, such as they
were shooting at, were public property when they were
outside the bounds of the village." Even according to this
rule, however, had it been a true one, Major Pine Coffin
would not have been justified by Egyptian law, for it stands
on his own evidence as recorded by one report that he began
his shooting within 85 yards only from the village, a dis
tance recognised by law as well within the village bounds,
for it is forbidden to fire a gun for sporting purposes within
250 metres, say 270 yards, of an inhabited house or a thresh
ing floor or a water-wheel or a public road or a canal. The
action, therefore, of the officers was, however they have
chosen to put it, illegal. The illegality seems to have been
noticed by the judges, and it is a striking instance of their bias
and of their endeavour to show the perfect correctness of the
officers' conduct that, notwithstanding the evidence just quoted
and even the admission of the counsel for the prosecution that
85 yards was the distance, the text of their sentence, where the
facts proved are recapitulated, states the distance proved to have
been 500 metres from the houses of the village and 100 metres
from the threshing-floor. That the distance was less than 100
yards is shown by the photographs of the execution since pub
lished by The Illustrated London News and other newspapers,
inasmuch as it is stated that the gallows were erected as near
as possible to where the affray occurred.
As to the Shooting of the Native Woman.
As it is not my object, in publishing this pamphlet, to insist
upon the faults either of judgment or otherwise of the officers
concerned in this affair, but to show only the injustice done, I
refrain from dwelling in detail on the curious nature of the
evidence they are reported to have given beyond stating that
the Reports published in Egypt, together with the Special

50 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Report sent me, give a very distinct impression that it was
desired both by the officers and by the Court that the full
circumstances of the woman's wounding should be concealed.
It is the universal belief in native Egypt that at least one shot
was fired by the officers into the crowd, which wounded the
woman and three men, and that it was so the published
evidence goes far to prove.
Major Pine Coffin, in the English reports, is stated to have
sworn that, understanding that the woman was dead, he
arrested one of the junior officers, saying, as he did so, that
"he had killed a woman, and he must take him away and
must therefore arrest him." The fact of the i arrest having
been sworn to is given in the text of the Judgment (see Blue
Book), but not the words reported to have been used by the
Major. It says : "He [Major Pine Coffin] went to the mob
and arrested Lieutenant Porter, assisted by another officer, as a
criminal." With regard to Lieutenant Porter's gun there is curious
discrepancy and self-contradiction in the text of the Judgment,
thus: Paragraph 5 of the Judgment says : " The owner of the
threshing floor approached Lieutenant Porter and seized his
gun, when about thirty persons, some of whom took hold of
the gun at the same time, and the others surrounded the
officer [sic]. They pulled the gun from him, after which the
gun exploded, two shots going off, and the wife of Mohamed
Abd-el-Nabi Moazzin, Amir Ads, Sheikh-el-Ghaffir, Ali
Dabshah, and Mohamed Daoud received the charge from the
gun." Paragraph 7, on the other hand, of the Judgment says :
" Major Pine Coffin went, accompanied by his two comrades,
towards the other officers ; he saw that the crowd around them
increased and the Lieutenant was unwilling to surrender his

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 51
weapon, and he saw evil intentions in the faces of the crowd.
He wished to go back, and began to take the cartridges from
his gun, which he gave to a native. He also gave his watch
to that man, and ordered his comrades to give up their guns.
He went to the mob and arrested Lieutenant Porter, assisted
by another officer, as a criminal, and all turned to go to where
they had left their carriages and horses."
These two slovenly and obscure passages, so little creditable
in the solemn summing up of "competent " English judges as
the reasons of their pronouncing sentences of death, are, as I
have said, self-contradictory. The first asserts that the gun
was pulled away from the Lieutenant ; the second, if it means
anything, that the gun was still in his hands when the Major
arrested him.
What is the reason of this discrepancy, of this obscurity,
of this intricate confusion of personal pronouns ?
According to the Special Report sent me, the evidence
offered by the onbashi, sergeant of police, Ahmed Hassan
Zagzug, which was suppressed and caused his being turned out
of the witness-box, was to the effect that the officers had
intentionally fired on the natives.
As to Premeditation in the Attack.
No evidence is recorded in the accounts of the trial of
any premeditation in the sense given to the word in English
law courts, differentiating murder from homicide, a pre
arranged attack from an accidental affray. The whole
story of there having been a trap laid for the officers — a tale
we find put forward as the chief reason which weighed with
Lord Cromer in deciding that severe and exemplary punish
ment should be inflicted on the villagers — seems to have been
at the outset abandoned at the trial, no evidence whatever
being given in support of it. On the contrary, the accidental

52 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
character of the affray comes clearly out in the testimony
of Major Pine Coffin, who declared that " the only previous
notice these men (the villagers) had that the officers of the
party wished to go shooting was that given by the onbashi
of police when he went to inform the Omdeh " — that is to
say a few minutes before the shooting began.
Nevertheless, in the text of the Judgment pronounced
on the accused by the judges, the following paragraph
occurs : —
"This crime was intentional and previously arranged,
as is evident from the fire and the sudden increase of the
mob against the officers on the south side [Lieutenant
Porter's] and those who seized Captain Bull and pointed
to the smoke." This pronouncement suggests that pre
cisely the same fiction was employed by the prosecution as
we have seen employed in the Montaza case and the
fox-hunting case, namely, that the gathering together of
natives, where disputes have arisen between them and
English officers, has been interpreted as a conspiracy to
assault with " previous agreement and intent to do bodily
hurt," thus bringing the accused under the last paragraph of
Article 220 of the Egyptian Code. Nobody in England,
however, need be deluded by this legal quibble into the
belief that premeditation of the kind which constitutes
murder is to be found anywhere in the evidence.
As to the Medical Evidence.
Although a violent assault was proved against the villagers,
and although there was evidence of the officers having been
robbed as well as assaulted by persons unknown, the published
reports contain no evidence of killing or an intention to kill.
Captain Bostock, who is a medical officer, deposes that he had
" made a superficial post-mortem examination of Captain Bull's

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 53
body, and concluded that death was due to concussion of the
brain and sunstroke." Dr. Nolan, who, by Lord Cromer's
order, had made a subsequent post-mortem examination, also
deposed that the wounds found on Captain Bull " were caused
by violent blows with a blunt instrument, but the direct cause
of death was heat apoplexy," and again, that " after hearing
the evidence, he concluded that death was due to heat
apoplexy, aggravated by concussion of the brain caused by
blows." Thus we find no conclusive evidence even of man
slaughter against the villagers.
As to the intention of killing, the evidence is wholly the
other way. Captain Bull was struck, it is not stated either by
whom or by what weapon, but apparently by brickbats thrown
by the crowd. It is unlikely, moreover, that his bruises can
have been very severe, as he was the officer chosen by Major
Pine Coffin to run back to the English camp six miles away,
and he outstripped the others and, in fact, had run four miles
before the heat of the sun overpowered him, nor is there any
evidence of his being again assaulted while on the road. Still
less is there evidence in regard to the three officers who
remained in the hands of the crowd. These were seriously
maltreated, and one of them, Lieutenant Porter, imagined that
the villagers intended to burn him, while a dumb show of
throat-cutting, a very common gesture in Egypt, but which
probably in the present instance meant no more than that the
officers deserved death for the injury caused to the woman, are
in evidence. It is clear, however, that there can have been
no serious intention to kill, for the officers were unarmed and
entirely in the power of their captors during some hours
without any murderous intention against them being carried
into effect. ,
By analogy with the Ghizeh case, I am convinced that
what the villagers intended was in the first place to stop the
5

54 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
shooting of their pigeons. It seems certain that the year
before they had complained of the depredations of certain
shooting parties, but that, through the intrigue of an Omdeh
or other influential person, their petition was not forwarded
to Government, or if forwarded, was withdrawn. They were
therefore, when this new raid on their pigeons occurred,
resolved to put an end to the injury done them by the only
means open to them, namely, that of securing the intruders'
guns as a method of identification and future claim for damages.
On one occasion, it has been stated, though I do not find it
in the evidence, that several sacks full of pigeons had been
carried away by a shooting party — a quite sufficient reason for
their action in preventing a repetition of the injury done them.
Their extreme anger, however, was certainly due to the
gunshot wounds sustained by the woman and the three men.
It is difficult to understand that any one knowing the fellahin
should read the evidence otherwise. Although attempts had
been made to wrest their guns from the officers, no blow
is in evidence as having been struck until after the wounding
of the woman. It is natural that they should not have
been content with the offers of money compensation made
them after this, and that, when they saw Major Pine Coffin
making off with the rest of the party for their carriages, they
resolved to arrest and detain them. That the three officers
were brutally treated is certain, but only one of them, Major
Pine Coffin, was seriously hurt, and it must be remembered,
when kicks are mentioned as having been dealt to their
prostrate bodies to make them get up and go back with their
captors to the village, that it must have been with naked feet,
for the fellahin of Egypt go habitually unshod. It is not at all
certain that under like provocation strangers in an English
village would have been much more gently treated.
Yet Mr. Findlay, acting for Lord Cromer, describes the

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 55
case as having been proved to be one of " brutal and
premeditated murder." As to Fanaticism.
It is to be noted that there is not a syllable in the evidence
or in the recorded proceedings of the Court that, however
remotely, suggests fanaticism as a cause of the villagers' action,
still less as one that can justify the savage punishments which
are now being excused on that plea.
In this connection it may well be asked how, if the country
was known to be in a state of fanatical excitement, as Lord
Cromer now declares it to have been, it came about that
officers in command of a body of English troops marching
through a district thus disturbed, should have been allowed or
should have allowed themselves to separate so far as five miles
from their men and go on a shooting excursion under circum
stances of such doubtful legality. If such was indeed the case,
might it not be suggested that the opportunity of a conflict
was deliberately sought ? Of course no such intention is
likely to have been in the minds of the officers. But the idea
of fanatical excitement and its attendant danger in the country
they were marching through must have been equally absent
from their minds.
The plea of fanaticism as a cause of the conflict has clearly
been an afterthought. It was not even put forward by the
Counsel of prosecution in his charge against the villagers.
Mr. Findlay admits this and more when he says : " I do not
believe that this brutal attack on British officers had anything
directly to do with political animosity."
As to the Text of the Judgment.
The judgment, as printed in the Blue Book, is one of the
most disgraceful documents ever issued, as their deliberate

56 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
summing up of a case and sentence by civilised judges. It is
self-contradictory, slovenly, and in its language truculent and
absurd. Its truculence and absurdity are shown in the following
passages : —
"Whereas this crime was committed against officers who
surrendered their arms and were defenceless, and could do
nothing but flee. This they could not do in spite of their
efforts to do so. They showed no enmity, and did not provoke
the aggressors by words or signs, and did not arouse their anger
so as to cause them to act as they had done ;
" Whereas this crime was committed intentionally and with
premeditation, as is evident from the fire and the sudden
increase of the mob against the two officers on the south side,
and the act of seizing hold of the hand of Captain Bull on
the north side and pointing to the smoke. Nobody present
had mercy on a guest who had done nothing to deserve
blame, and still less such excessive violence as to cause his
death, while people were present among the crowd who
might have prevented it but these were more severe and
more merciless than the others ;
" Whereas what makes the crime worse is that it was
committed against men who were known for their valour and
who had seen active service, and could have shot the aggressors
as they did the pigeons, but they had peaceful intentions.
They surrendered their weapons in order to save themselves,
but it only resulted in harm.
" Whereas these prisoners, by reason of the outrage they
committed, deserve no mercy, as they showed no mercy."
Nevertheless, abominable as the judgment is, it does not go
to the full length of ascribing " murder " to the villagers. Its
text on this head is "the incident is considered as homicide,
preceded, accompanied, or followed by the crime of robbery

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 57
with violence." In this it falls short of the official, report of
our Agency to the Foreign Office which calls it a " brutal and
premeditated murder." Its sentences are : —
I. Sentences of Jrath by hanging on four of the villagers.
2. Sentences of penal servitude for life on two of the
villagers. One of these, be it noted, was the husband of the
woman shot.
3. Sentence of fifteen years' penal servitude on one of the
villagers. 4. Sentences of seven years' penal servitude on six of the
villagers. 5. Sentences of one year's imprisonment with hard labour
and 50 lashes on three of the villagers.
6. Sentences of fifty lashes on five of the villagers.
As to the Executions.
With regard to the circumstances of the executions and in
connection with Sir Edward Grey's statements regarding
them, I give the following abridged translation from the
Journal du Caire, an old-established paper edited in Fren<-hn-'
and far from unfavourable to the present rigime in Egypt.
That journal's special correspondent writes : —
" Here we see the Middle Age punishments as the order
of the day, gallows, pillory, iron collar, judge, executioner,
torturer — nothing wanting but the wheel, the pale, and the
stake for burning — nor indeed are we by any means sure that
in the Modern Spirit certain persons do not regret the
abolition of torture, and of the sanctions of inquisitorial
tribunals to strike terror into these unfortunate fellahs not
deserving pity but rather the gibbet.
" Denshawai is a poor village — a heap of cinder-like earth
hidden amongst reeds beneath the shade of a few palm-trees.
At the corners of all its dilapidated huts rise cones of unbaked

58 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
brick several metres in height, the homes of those famous
pigeons supposed to be wild — of which not a single one
remains away longer than half a day from the roof under
which it was hatched.
" The agricultural road skirts the village from East to
West, and is the boundary of the threshing-floors where the
cattle go round threshing the corn. Close by, a cemetery of
tombs all of like form and in regular lines betokens respect for
the dead and reverence for their memory. Far off — very far
away — there stretches a vast plain, green with the cotton
plants, golden-yellow with the straw of the corn crop, gray
where these have been reaped, a fertile plain where the sun's
rays lose themselves in the vibrations of an overheated
atmosphere clothing the soil with the romance of a restless
mirage. "Under the shade of those heaps of dry earth swarms a
whole population of human beings, ignorant of the needs, the
customs, and law of civilised peoples. They know that the
village watchmen are paid to protect their property, and the
sergeants of rural police to prevent quarrels with the neigh
bouring villages ; their imagination hardly realises railways, or,
indeed, any machine beyond their water-wheels, yet, for my
part, I believe that even wireless telegraphy would not astonish
them. " Nevertheless it is accepted that such people may be at
times a danger for governments and a cause of anxiety for the
Army of Occupation which they might assail with stones and
staves. It will be attempted to make them understand that it
is needless to take hats, helmets, or coats for signs of Western
savagery, it will be attempted to get them to eat, drink, and
sleep, with no other thought than that of security and safety —
guaranteed to them in return for their strangled liberty.
"The village has known for two days the doom which is

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 59
to strike those guilty of insurrection. From early morning
patrols of English soldiers come and go along the dusty road
which rolls out its ten kilometres from the railway station, and
which cuts into two portions the canal which fertilizes the
land. Soon some wagons stop in front of the enclosure,
scaffoldings of wood are erected, tents are pitched, ropes are set
out, watchmen arrive from all directions, police assemble in
numbers and give orders, high personages converse circum
spectly, cavalry stir up clouds of dust, range themselves in the
fields, and form square around an enclosure in the open air.
"In the midst stands a gigantic scaffolding, twenty to
thirty feet in height. A staircase of a dozen steps leads up to
the platform of two square metres ; two arms are raised and
cross one another towards the sky to fix the gallows where is
fastened a brand new rope, strong enough to tie up an
elephant. Very near it a second smaller cord is coiled round a
pulley, and will serve to pull up the hanged persons. The
roofs of the huts are crowded with moaning women ; they
utter cries of terror at the sight of this apparatus for the
executions. Moreover, the gallows flaunts its crossbeams at
twenty paces from the threshing-floors where the straw still
smokes from the remains of a fire, its scaffolding is in view
from all the neighbouring villages, groups of people stand still
at great distances both to watch the horror of the spectacle,
and out of respect for the criminals who are to suffer.
" The sun is at its highest ; it burns helmets and backs, the
bayonets glitter in its fiery rays. The mudir gives the order
summoning the first of the condemned, an old man of seventy,
still hale, with white beard, who comes out of the tent without
making a false step over the clods of earth which he treads
down barefooted.
" Brought along between two soldiers with fixed bayonets,
he listens to the sentence of death read out, his countenance

60 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
untroubled ; with a firm step he walks to the scaffold and
with equal steadiness mounts the steps. He places himself
beneath the gallows opposite the village where for three-
quarters of a century his life has passed in peace ; he must
recognise his wife, his children, his relations, who cry loudly
while stretching out their arms towards him. He faints not ;
he utters a curse on the Omdeh who has betrayed him, on the
people who have not defended him ; he asserts his innocence,
then turning to the executioner asks for the rope to put it
round his neck.
" But already hands and feet are being bound, a leather belt
is firmly fastened round the loins, the slip knot passed round
the throat, the black hood drawn over the head ; at a sign
from the executioner the assistants stand aside, the hangman
works a lever, the trap suddenly opens, the body falls straight
into space, the cord is checked with a jerk, a dull crack of
dislocated bones, and the executed criminal turns round and
round on himself as moves a suspended beam now to the right,
now to the left, until the point of immobility is reached.
"The bystanders consider in silence the sinister aspect of
this tragic end ; hearts stop beating ; the executioners leave
no time for eyes to moisten. On a cross solidly constructed
at fifteen paces from the gibbet they are preparing the punish
ment of flagellation. The first sufferer strips to the waist,
passes his head in the iron collar, stretches out his arms, which
they bind to the cross, and on his bare torso the kurbash
descends rhythmically to the sound of the voice that counts
the blows and of the cries of pain which each of them wrings
from the sufferer ; the bronzed skin tumefies, splits in places,
the blood spurts ; it is sickening, horrible. The expiation
finished, with great effort the fellah can stand upright.
" A second man succeeds him, who cries out still more
desperately ; the third one is literally contorted under the

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 61
lash ; he loses consciousness, the doctor stops the flogging.
Meanwhile the man hanged has given up the ghost. The
small cord turns on its pulley and is fastened to the buckle
of the leathern waist belt of the victim who is hauled up to
take off the slip knot ; they untie the feet and hands, and, on
a litter brought by the assistants, they lay out the corpse to
take it away to a tent provided with winding sheets and
coffins. " The village resounds with shrill cries ; the women wave
their veils as in madness, the men in their consternation are
dumb, their eyes fixed on the murderous scaffolding.
"The second condemned follows with the same assured
step as his predecessor. He is a vigorous type of man, his
glance has no evil meaning, one would think well of him.
He makes no reply to the sentence of death ; he marches up
the funereal stairs as if for a morning call ; he looks beyond the
black veils that are waving, not a word disturbs this terrible
moment ; the trap opens, the gallows creaks, the body twirls
round and round ; dogs and men howl at the death.
" Not a single contraction of the brows among the soldiers
who are in attendance.
"The executions continue. The whip lashes the loins, the
pain forces out cries, the same voice placidly counts the blows.
" A quite young man of eighteen years, innocent of eye, of
countenance calmly beautiful, comes on between two bayonets
to hear himself reproached for the crime his impulsive youth
had led him to commit ; death has no terrors for him. A
victim doubtless unconscious (of any crime), he offers his neck
with the same serenity that he might have offered an arm to his
fiancee. No request for pardon ; the bystanders become more
silent, but a mist covers their eyes ; the lad is launched into
space ; justice is satisfied.
" Torrents of imprecations mount to the skies, the police

62 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
can hardly restrain the crowd which surges out of the village.
Order is gradually restored.
"The flogging goes remorselessly on, the new ropes redden
as they lash into the flesh.
"The amateur photographers are pressing the buttons of
their kodaks.
"They are waiting for the last condemned to death, the
brigand. " Though of a proud carriage there is nothing affected in
his disdain. Needless to hold his hands or to support him, he
walks with head erect to meet his end. He is praying.
" The name of God whom he invokes resounds over the
heads of the soldiers as far as the village ; the name of God
is re-echoed again and again from the housetops and dove
cotes. At this moment the pigeons fly round wildly.
" The trap falls for the last time.
" The hangman sighs with satisfaction.
" Soon afterwards the crowd disperses slowly^and in silence
under the shadow of a lugubrious justice. Only the women,
like hunted wolves, howl with rage and anguish.
" Civilisation has triumphed ! "
Further particulars.
The Special Report sent me contains the following particulars
as to Hassan Mahfuz, the first villager hanged, a man of
seventy-five — seventy according to our reckoning : —
" His house was about 50 metres from the scaffolding. His
hareem, daughters, sons, granddaughters, and their sons were
standing on their housetop, where they could see their grand
father with his pure white beard, and he could see them easily
in his place of execution. When his family first took sight
of him drawing near the scaffold they wailed dismally. On
hearing them he spoke out and said, " May God who is

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 63
the Sovereign of all creatures deal with you [? his judges]
unjustly." Of Ismail-el-Sisi, who was scourged, it says : "His back was
turned towards the village in order to let the women who
were then standing on their housetops see the flogging and
its effects on a human body."
Of Yusuf Huseyn Selim, the second villager hanged, it says
that in the hanging his legs were broken. "The women,
who saw him from the housetops in such a lamentable state,
resounded the air with their sorrowful cries."
Of Mohammed Gorbashi, the third flogged, it says:
"Mohammed Gorbashi was then undressed, crucified, and
flogged fifty lashes. He got maddened on receiving the
twelfth. His voice was not well heard, for a soldier was ordered
to press his head down in the opening of the cross.
Of Mohammed Derwish Zahran, the last hanged, it says :
"He was taken to the gallows. On looking at his house
he cried out, 'May God compensate us well for this world
of meanness, for this world of injustice, for this world of
cruelty.' The executioner had then put the rope round his
neck and administered it wrongly. The condemned man
was not strangled well, so he cried out, " Make haste, be
quick ! "
I understand from the Special Report that these extracts
are to be found in an official report sent by the Mudir of
Menoufieh to the Ministry of the Interior immediately after
the executions. This, it is affirmed, was suppressed, and in
its stead we find in the Blue Book a later but undated report
prepared by Mr. Machell. Similarly I am told that a fresh
report is being prepared for the Foreign Office of the evidence
at the trial, in substitution for the original report received at
the British Agency, but not forwarded.

64 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Conclusions.
A few words of very plain speaking are necessary in con
clusion. The history I have recorded is one of immense
disgrace to the English name. Unless we, as a nation, are
to forfeit all claim to civilised consideration, the whole nation
must raise its voice and protest against the last astounding
iniquity done at Denshawai. Somebody must be called to
account for it.
Before this case was fully exposed to me I had indulged
in a certain delusion, notwithstanding past cases which
I knew, that influences were at work in Egypt or at the
War Office in London, or possibly even in higher quarters
stronger than Lord Cromer, all-powerful as he seemed to be,
which he could not quite control, and that to these he had
bowed when sharing with the General in command at Cairo
the odium of extreme severities and the guilt of injustices
where the Army of Occupation was concerned. Lord Cromer's
conduct, however, on the present occasion, with its cynical
defence of a case he cannot but know to be a judicial crime
of the extremest, indeed of unprecedented turpitude — and still
more the insincerity with which he has chosen to mask his own
responsibility for what has been done by coming forward, as
he does in the Blue Book, not in any garb of repentance or
regret or self-excuse, but as the loyal defender of minor
English officials, over whose action he has no authority, and
whose conduct he generously vouchsafes to cover under the
cloak of his own unimpeachable veracity — officials who had
all the while been acting, perhaps unwillingly, under his
orders ; all this, I say, has changed my view of Lord Cromer,
and has convinced me that it is he, and none other, who must
be called upon to defend himself before Parliament for his
lapse from public virtue.

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 65
That it is a great lapse is certain. Lord Cromer is the
foremost man in English public life. He has rendered
immense services to his country. He has received its most
lavish rewards. In the very week of the Denshawai execu
tions he was decorated with the highest personal distinction a
grateful King and country could bestow — the Royal Order of
Merit His fame is a European one ; nay, one world-wide.
He has been a great benefactor even to Egypt, the land he
has sullied with this last mad act of violent oppression.
Yet, notwithstanding all this, it is clear he must be
sacrificed unless the whole'-virtue of the nation is to vanish
with him in a disgraceful smoke. I do not ask that Lord
Cromer should be condemned or disgraced or recalled from
Egypt without a full hearing. He may yet be able to tell
us that, in spite of appearances, he is personally guiltless here,
that his better judgment was imposed on by subordinates in
Egypt, that he was obeying orders from his diplomatic chiefs
at home, that he made a mistake of which he is ashamed.
If he can do this, I shall, for my part, make him all the
amends within my power in the way of apology and future
praise. But, as things stand, the known facts are too terribly
against him for any honest man with public courage not to
denounce him, and not to demand that he should be cited to
explain, or if explain he will not, then that he should leave
to others the task of reparation for his crime, needed by the
Egyptians he has wronged.
It is impossible to accept the chose jugee as his only
answer. Yet that is all he has given us. Still less is it
possible to accept as reparation his cynical suggestions of
reform for the law of 1895. What are his proposed remedies ?
I. That the sentences pronounced should conform to the Egyptian
Code? With a packed Court, it will be always possible to
show that sentences do not overstep that Code. Even the

66 ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT
Denshawai sentences of death were supposed to conform to
it. Flogging would become impossible, but death sentences
would probably be multiplied.
2. That hangings should be in private, not in public ? I
quite understand Lord Cromer should propose it, seeing what
a storm the public hangings at Denshawai have raised about
his ears in England. As a matter of fact, publicity is the
only guarantee in Egypt against still more horrible abuses.
It is no addition to the terror of death in an Egyptian fellah's
mind that he should suffer under the eyes of his fellow-
villagers and friends. As a Moslem his testimony to his faith
pronounced publicly at the hour of death is always a notable
consolation, and to deprive him of the opportunity would be
equivalent to refusing to our condemned criminals the minis
trations of the Christian clergy. Even in England, private
executions are preferred far more because they spare our own
highly civilised feelings than out of any compassion for the
condemned. To be strangled privately in a prison yard by a
hangman and the prison warders is a far more horrible ending
than to be hanged, even before an angry crowd, in the
open air.
3. That there should be an appeal. To whom ? Lord
Cromer's whole justification of the case is that the Tribunal
of Shibin-el-Kom was "composed of the best judicial elements
to be found in Egyyt." Mr. Bond, we may presume, was
the very best English judge he could find there, yet we see
the result. An appeal to the Cairo Court of Appeal might
perhaps be one from " Philip drunk to Philip sober," but it
would in practice be only from Mr. Bond, Judge of the special
Tribunal, to Mr. Bond, Vice-President of the Court of
Appeal. It could not be more. The Montaza case proves
how faint-hearted the Appeal Judges are in political cases
of this kind ; how entirely Lord Cromer can rely on them.

ATROCITIES OF JUSTICE IN EGYPT 67
Or does Lord Cromer perhaps mean that the supreme
appellant judge should be himself?
No. All these suggestions are a sham. I say more. They
are insult, and from his pen an outrage. There is only one
remedy. The Decree of 1895 must be repealed, and the
relations between Egyptians and the Army of Occupation put
on a civilised footing. There is only one reparation. Lord
Cromer must be compelled to explain himself— or, if he will
not explain, he must be recalled from an official responsibility
he has first honoured, but has now dishonoured in the face of
the world as never responsibility was dishonoured.
Let us remember the Dreyfus case ? Is there no Member
of Parliament, no body of members, with sufficient courage to
rise in their places, and say publicly of Lord Cromer, and of
no other, uf accuse ? "
August, 1906.

Ube Sresbam press,
ONWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED;
WOKIKG AMD LONDON.

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