by Mike Dash
Common feature of folk religion Bayly, Empire & Information pp. 173, 176; Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law pp. 189–90, 202.
Thieves and housebreakers ‘Dialogues with Thugs’, 29 Oct. 1836, Paton papers, Add.Mss. 41300 fo. 63v, BL.
‘Having performed the usual worship …’ ‘Deposition of Bheelum Burre Khan, Jemadar of Thugs’, n.d., T&D D/2/2, NAI. This is the only reference to religious affairs I have been able to find anywhere in the official papers preserved in London, Delhi and Bhopal. Nowhere else in any of the numerous files examined is any kind of worship hinted at. The reasons for the yawning discrepancy between the evidence of Sleeman’s ‘Conversations with Thugs’ and that of the Company’s legal records is hard to fathom, but a large part of the answer almost certainly lies in the manner in which the Thug trials were organized.
Mahadji Sindhia and other victims of Kali Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 156–8, 220–2, Russell and Lal, Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India IV, 572–3.
‘that Bhowanee may have her blood …’ Paton papers fo. 14v. Some Thugs explained the practice of mutilating the bodies of the Thugs’ victims – which the earliest stranglers questioned by Company authorities had attributed simply to the desire to conceal their identities – in precisely these terms. ‘Why do you stab the dead bodies?’ Paton asked his approvers. ‘That no life may remain,’ answered one. But others disagreed: ‘Bhowanee, whom we worship, is displeased where we do not shed the blood of our victims,’ said the strangler Dhoosoo. Ibid.
‘on one occasion …’ Russell and Lal, op. cit. IV, 575.
‘That Davey instituted Thuggee …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 187.
‘Our ancestors were never guilty of this folly’ Ibid. I, 197.
‘A wretched trade’ ‘Narrative of a Thuggee expedition in Oude … supposed to have been in 1830’, Paton papers fo. 119.
Thugs and ghosts Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 175–6. ‘It is by the blessing of Davey that we escape that evil,’ the approver Kuleean asserted.
‘… irresponsible agents’ Russell and Lal, op. cit. IV, 573.
Fate Feringeea deployed this argument to justify his murder of the Moghulanee: ‘It was her fate to die by our hands. I had several times tried to shake [her party] off.’ Ramaseeana I, 215.
Thugs and tigers Paton papers fo. 123.
‘look forward indifferently …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 150.
‘How many men …’ Ibid. I, 76.
‘If a man committed …’ Russell and Lal, op. cit. IV, 573.
‘A Thug considers …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 7.
Kali venerated by many classes Russell and Lal, op. cit. IV, 575.
Pickaxe worship Ibid. IV, 574.
Introduction of the pickaxe Ibid. IV, 575. This legend, Sleeman considered, originated ‘in a very remote period’. Ramaseeana I, iii.
Beliefs similar to those of dacoits Russell and Lal, op. cit. IV, 572.
‘When you have a poor traveller …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 196–7.
‘Do Mussellman Thugs …’ Paton papers fo. 28.
‘You paid great reverence …’ Ibid. fo. 62v. See also Ramaseeana I, 186–7.
‘Kali’s temple at Bindachul …’ Das Gupta, The Days of John Company, p. 582.
‘that fiend in human form …’ James Sleeman, Thug pp. 4–5.
‘The histories of these men …’ Thornton, Illustrations p. 407.
‘However unscrupulous …’ Sleeman, Thug p. 5.
Thugs as noble criminals See also Ramaseeana I, 235.
‘noble and chivalrous instincts …’ Charles Hervey, Some Records of Crime I, 27; Sandria Freitag, ‘Crime in the social order of colonial North India’, Modern Asian Studies 25 (1991) pp. 236–8.
‘I know not …’ Reynolds, ‘Notes’ p. 208.
‘Made positive pets …’ Extracted from the diaries of Fanny Eden. See J Dunbar (ed.), Tigers, Durbars and Kings p. 104, and the chapter 19 for further details.
‘What a sad but faithful picture …’ Cited by Bruce, The Stranglers, p. 179.
‘I could not forsake them …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 234–5.
‘These common enemies of mankind …’ Sleeman to Smith, 7 Jan. 1831, Consultation No. 11 of 18 Mar. 1831, BPC P/126/27, OIOC.
‘Mr Wilson …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 29–30n.
Hurree Singh Ibid. I, 34–5, 36–7n.
‘only about two months ago …’ Sleeman to Cavendish (resident, Gwalior), 11 June 1832, Sleeman correspondence, T&D G/1 fo. 11.
‘Are you yourself …’ Cited by James Sleeman, Thug pp. 3–4. Sleeman gives no source for this quotation and it must be regarded with a certain caution.
‘consider the persons …’ Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 7.
‘mediate his murders …’ Ibid. I, 8.
17 The Last Days of Thuggee
‘What do you think …?’ George Bruce, The Stranglers p. 167; on the history of Sahib Khan, see William Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 245–6
‘Suppose all our operations …’ ‘Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee’, Paton papers, Add.Mss. 41300 fo. 18v, BL. The speaker in this case was the approver Futty [Futteh] Khan.
‘Once a Thug …’ Smith to Swinton, 25 June 1832, BC F/4/1406 (55521) fo. 204, OIOC.
‘Suspected stranglers … were often disconcerted …’ The colourful account of one of Sleeman’s interrogations given by Francis Tuker, in The Yellow Scarf pp. 83–4 is, however, fictional.
Thugs move base of operations Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 187, 246–7, 254.
‘rarely seized or punished’ Ibid. I, 238. These men were ‘Brinjarees’ – peripatetic drovers, common throughout the mofussil, some of whom supplemented their ordinary earnings by crime.
Another tactic, employed by several able Thugs, was to abandon their gangs and work with only a few trusted associates. Sleeman noted that Bukshee Jemadar, ‘one of the most noted Thug leaders of his day, who died in Saugor Jail in 1832, had for some 15 years ceased to accompany the large gangs, and was supposed to have left off the trade entirely’. Ibid. I, 24.
‘Two seasons are still required …’ Smith to Swinton, 25 Mar. 1832, Smith to Macnaghten, 24 Apr. 1832, Sel.Rec. pp. 73–5.
‘There are many leaders …’ Sleeman, Depredations p. xi.
Act XXX, Act XXIV and Regulation 8 Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law pp. 214–20; van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveller pp. 100–2.
‘To release on security a Thug’ Smith to Swinton, 20 June 1832, in Ch Philips (ed.), The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck II, 844.
‘affording a security net …’ Singha, op. cit. p. 216.
Suppression in Bundelcund Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 20.
‘Completely suppressed’ in Madras Bengal despatches political, 28 Nov. 1832, E/4/735 fos. 1473–91, OIOC.
Doab Smith to Macnaghton, 26 June 1832, in CH Philips (ed.), The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, Governor-General of India 1828–1835 II, 1085.
Sessions from 1833–35 Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 38–9; Depredations pp. 184–5.
Standards of proof fell Singha, op. cit. p. 212. Men could still be convicted solely on the evidence of an approver, but the maximum sentence was one of imprisonment for life, and branding on the forehead.
Sentencing after 1836 Sleeman, Depredations pp. 184–5; van Woerkens, op. cit. p. 101.
Agents and collaborators Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 39–41.
Davey Deen Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 156.
Bengal, Bihar and Orissa Ibid. pp. 40–41, 56, 181; Depredations p. i.
Bengal Thugs tried in Saugor The judicial independence of the Saugor & Nerbudda Territory was ended in 1835 when it became part of the newly created Presidency of Agra, local courts then falling under the supervision of Agra’s Sadar Adalat. In practice, however, the higher court barely interfered with the by-then well-established practices of the Thug trials. See Singha, op. cit. pp. 207n, 211.
‘the enormities of the Thugs …’ Bengal despatches political, 28 Nov. 1832, E
/4/735 fos. 1473–91; Singha, op. cit. pp. 205–6.
Thugs of Bengal Sleeman, Depredations pp. i–v.
1836 murders by Deccan thugs Ibid. pp. v, ix.
Jubbulpore sessions of 1836–1837 BC F/4/1898 (80685) fos. 66–188.
Sepoys safe Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 41–2n.
Sleeman’s circular The circular of 1841 likewise threw up no trace of any stranglers. James Sleeman, Thug pp. 189–93.
End of the anti-Thug campaign The formal end of the campaign was signalled in July 1840, when the East India Company’s Court of Directors, at home in London, were informed that ‘as organised associations Thug bands had been broken up’. Singha, op. cit. p. 220&n.
As many as 4,000 rank-and-file Thugs Bruce, op. cit. p. 212.
Thuggee pronounced extinct Singha, op. cit. p. 220n.
18 The Gallows and the Drop
Sleeman’s register kept up to date Percival Griffiths, To Guard My People p. 132.
River dacoits Sukmar Sen, ‘“Bungoo” – River Thugs on the Hooghly’, Bengal Past & Present 86 (1967) pp. 167–8; Chakrabarti, Authority and Violence pp. 140–2; Arun Mukherjee, Crime and Public Disorder in Colonial Bengal 1861–1912 pp. 43–4; Anthony Sattin (ed.), An Englishwoman in India p. 26.
River Thugs Paton papers, Add.Mss. 41300 fo. 11v, BL; Ramaseeana I, 43, 72, 178–80, 264–8; II, 436–72; Edward Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs pp. 31–42, 408–20.
Seasonality of the River Thugs ‘In March it becomes too hot’, the Thug Shumsera explained, ‘and in the rains the river becomes too rapid, and the boats cannot be pulled along the banks.’ Ramaseeana I, 268.
Arrest of the River Thugs Arun Mukherjee, op. cit. p. 43.
Megpunnas Sleeman, Report on the System of Megpunnaism pp. 1–99.
Tusma-Baz Thugs Hutton, A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoits pp. 98–100; Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque I, 452–3. Other groups of suspected Thugs were harshly treated in this period. On one occasion, the British magistrate at Agra ordered every member of the ‘tribe of Nats’ – a group of acrobats – to be deported south across the Nerbudda river, an order that a second judge described as ‘of the same value as would be the order from a London Magistrate to put all Italian Opera dancers and singers across the water’. Radhika Singha, ‘Providential circumstances: the thuggee campaign of the 1830s and legal innovation’, Modern Asian Studies 27 p. 115.
Dr Cheek’s bearer William Tayler, Thirty-Eight Years in India I, 194; Russell and Lal, The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India IV, 570.
Sleemanabad Kevin Rushby, Children of Kali pp. 146, 160–1.
‘seeing that the best arrangements …’ Hussain Dost Khan to Captain Malcolm, 17 Aug. 1840, cited by James Hutton, op. cit. pp. 93–4.
‘Do not I pray you …’ Sleeman to Fraser, 22 Feb. 1838, Mss. Eur E/258/V fo. 13, OIOC.
Sentences Martine van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveller p. 47.
‘They should never recover their unrestricted liberty …’ Smith to Prinsep (Secretary to Governor General), 19 Nov. 1830, Sel.Rec. 54.
‘branding on the forehead …’ Swinton to Smith 2 Apr. 1831, ‘Government of India orders confirming sentence of death …’ T&D D/1/1, NAI.
Godna Clare Anderson, ‘“Godena”: tattooing & branding prisoners in nineteenth-century India’, in Jane Caplan (ed.), Writing on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History pp. 106–9.
Plan for executions in home villages Stewart (Resident, Indore) to Swinton, 12 Aug. 1829, Appa Sahib & Thuggee papers, SB; Swinton to Stewart, 23 Oct. 1829, ibid.
Sleeman’s description of the execution of Feringeea’s gang This took place at Jubbulpore. Sleeman to the editor of the Government Gazette (n.d., published 7 Oct. 1830), in Das Gupta (ed.), The Days of John Company pp. 580. The letter was originally published anonymously. For Sleeman’s authorship, see Smith to Prinsep, 19 Nov. 1830, Sel.Rec. 51.
‘met their fate …’ Extract Bengal Political Consultations 5 March 1830 No. 59, BC F/4/1251 fos. 379–83, OIOC. The British authorities nevertheless remained utterly convinced of the safeness of the Thugs’ convictions. Indeed, the condemned men’s desperate protests of innocence were – in Borthwick’s view – ‘clear proof of their guilt’.
… whether real or feigned … As noted, they were probably real. Cf. Andrew Ward, Our Bones Are Scattered pp. 441, 456–7, 668.
‘… coarse and disgusting levity’ Henry Spry, Modern India II, 165–8.
Wellington on executions Ward, op. cit. p. 441.
Number of executions Spry, op. cit. II, 168; Hutton, pp. 92–3. For the deaths of members of Feringeea’s family, see Sleeman’s ‘Thug genealogy No. 1’, printed in Ramaseeana I, facing p. 270.
The fate of executed Thugs For requests for cremation, see Spry, op. cit. II, 165. For bodies left on the gallows, see David Arnold, ‘The colonial prison’, Subaltem Studies 8, p. 161. For hanging in chains, see Sel.Rec. 92; Thornton p. 240. A photograph, dated 1859 and allegedly showing the skeletons of two Thugs, hanged in 1837, in gibbets on the road near Bangalore, was published by James Sleeman, Thug, facing p. 196.
Ritual mutilation of Thug corpses George Bruce, The Stranglers p. 162.
Number of Thug trials Sleeman Ramaseeana I, 38–9; Depredations pp. 184–5. The fate of Thugs committed up to 1840 was:
Hanged 466
Transported for life 1,504
Life imprisonment 933
Imprisonment for 7 or 14 years 81
Released on security 86
Acquitted 97
Made approver 56
Escaped 12
Died in jail before trial 208
Total 3,443
A further 246 men were held in prison awaiting trial, taking the grand total of suspected Thugs detained by the authorities to 3,689. These figures are drawn from Hutton, op. cit. pp. 92–3.
Trial of the Lucknadown Thugs The gangs of Aman Subahdar and Dhunee Khan were committed by Sleeman and examined by FC Smith at two separate Sessions. Some 75 members of this gang of 115 were tried at Saugor in the sessions of 1830–31, BC F/4/1309 (52131) fos. 124–319, 360–3; the remaining 14 surviving prisoners featured in a subsidiary trial, the‘10th or Lakhnadaun Case’, part of the Sessions of 1831–32. See BC F/4/1404 (55517) fos. 207–56, OIOC and Swinton to Smith, 2 Apr. 1831, Sel.Rec. 64–7. Swinton gives the name of the Thug who dropped Bunda Ali’s baby alive into the grave as ‘Sadoolah’.
The reported fates of the Lucknadown gang were as follows:
Main trial Subsidiary trial
Death 27 3
Transportation 9 2
Imprisonment for life – 1
14 years’ hard labour 5 –
7 years’ hard labour 11 –
Required to provide security 18 –
Made approver – 1
Acquitted 2 –
Died in prison after trial – 2
Sentenced in other trials 1 5
–– ––
73 14
The remainder of the gang died in prison while awaiting trial. BC F/4/1309 (52131) fos. 128–31; BC F/4/1404 (55517) fos. 231–62; Smith to Sleeman, 31 Apr. 1831, T&D D1/1, NAI. Execution of the Lucknadown stranglers Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim I, 201.
19 Across the Black Water
Saugor jail K. Mojumdar, ‘Sleeman correspondence: 1824–1856’, The Indian Archives 37 (1988) p. 3; Ind. BCJC, Western Provinces 1831, Consultation No. 21 of 11 Jan. 1831, Z/P/207, OIOC. Numbers continued to grow, and by 1837 two new brick jails had been built in the town. Henry Spry, Modern India II, 163.
Indian convict population Ibid. II, 152.
‘a large proportion’ Consultation No. 19 of 5 Mar. 1831, BPC P/126/27, OIOC.
Conditions in Indian jails Ranjan Chakrabarti, Authority and Violence in Colonial Bengal, 1800–1860 pp. 100, 118–20; Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law pp. 254–5, 269–72; David Arnold, ‘The colonial prison: power, knowledge and penology in ninete
enth-century India’, Subaltern Studies 8 (1994) p. 167. The allowance system was superseded by the provision of set rations from 1839 and, eventually, by highly unpopular central canteens. Anand Yang, ‘Discliplining “Natives”: prisons and prisoners in early nineteenth-century India’, South Asia 10 (1987) pp. 29–47; Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment pp. 10–12.
Mortality among Thugs awaiting trial James Hutton, A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoits pp. 92–4.
Wheat cakes Spry, op. cit. II, 2–3.
‘Nothing is so distasteful …’ Cited in Chakrabarti, op. cit. p. 112.
Work on the roads Spry, op. cit. II, 152–3. Charles Davidson, author of Diary of Travels and Adventures in Upper India I, 123–5, agreed with Spry that hard labour on the roads was far from an effective punishment, likely only to provide the prisoner with a ‘superior bodily condition’.
Thugs’ earlier experiences in jail Cf. Ramaseeana I, 261; II, 252–4; Edward Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs, p. 244.
Thugs confined to prison Not all magistrates took this point. Sleeman prevented one from sentencing captured Thugs to work in the fields of villages near Jubbulpore, where, he asserted, ‘they would assuredly either follow their old trade … or teach others to follow it’. Cited by GP Edwards, Report on the Jubbulpore School of Industry (1854) pp. 2–3, V/23/3, OIOC.
Secured each evening … Sleeman correspondence, File 1832 fo. 752, SB.
‘the respiration of prison-air …’ Spry, op. cit. II, 155.
The change from extramural to intramural work Ibid. pp. 262–5; Arnold, op. cit. pp. 176–7.
Thugs at Aurangabad Neville, Rare Glimpses of the Raj p. 136.
Cawnpore Emily Eden, Up the Country (London: Virago, 1983) pp. 59–60.
Agra Butler, The Land of the Veda p. 398.
Fanny and Emily Eden See J Dunbar (ed.), Tigers, Durbars and Kings p. 104; Emily Eden, Up the Country p. 60.