Today’s Excruciating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The torture that the Japanese inflicted upon the native population at Nanking, China in December, 1937 almost surpasses the limits of human comprehension. Here is one example:
Mutilation: The Japanese not only disemboweled, decapitated, and dismembered victims but performed more excruciating varieties of torture. Throughout the city they nailed prisoner to wooden boards and ran over them with tanks, crucified them to trees and electrical posts, carved long strips of flesh from them, and used them for bayonet practice. At least one hundred men reportedly had their eyes gouged out and their noses and ears hacked off before being set on fire. Another group of two hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians were stripped naked, tied to columns and doors of a school, and then stabbed by zhuizi—special needles with handles on them—in hundreds of points along their bodies, including their mouths, throats, and eyes.
Bayonet practice on a Chinese prisoner
Culled from: The Rape of Nanking
Prisoner Du Jour!
Prisoners: Murder, Mayhem, and Petit Larceny is a collection of seventy portraits of turn-of-the-century prisoners in the town of Marysville, California and the fascinating contemporary newspaper and prison accounts describing the crimes of which they were accused. The photos themselves are more fascinating than most of the crimes. There’s something magical about glass plate negatives that you just can’t reproduce with modern photography. And I think people just had more character back in the day – or at least it seems that way.
HENRY CHATFIELD
STOLE A PAIR OF SHOES AND WILL GO TO JAIL
Henry Chatfield, who was employed at the Carstenbrook grading camp on the California Midland railroad in Linda township, quit work a little bit early yesterday and stole a new pair of shoes from a fellow workman. He put the shoes on and walked to town. The owner discovered the theft an hour later and he also came to town and spotted Chatfield, who tried to escape.
The police were notified and made the arrest. [January 25, 1907]
GOT NINETY DAYS
Henry Chatfield, who was arrested for stealing a pair of shoes belonging to M. J. Toohey at the Carstenbrook camp and who pleaded guilty in Justice Morrissey’s court yesterday, was sentenced late in the afternoon to serve ninety days in the County Jail. [January 26, 1907]
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
November 22d. At four o’clock in the morning we glided away through the pine forests toward Savannah, over one of the smoothest railroads I ever was on. Arriving at Savannah at sunset, we passed through the beautiful city and left the cars at dark. The weather was biting cold, no quarters or fuel were furnished us, and having had no rations for two days, most of us are too weak to move about and keep our blood stirring. A remaining spark of Yankee ingenuity suggested rather a novel mode of keeping warm. Two or three men would sit down on the ground, locking and interlacing each other in their arms and legs, while others would pack on and against them until there would be a solid stack of humanity of twenty, more or less. But in spite of every effort to keep warm, several of our poor, thin-blooded fellows froze to death.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost