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Rh HANG-CHOW-FU, a city of China, in the province of Cheh-Kiang, 2 m. N.W. of the Tsien-tang-Kiang, at the southern terminus of the Grand canal, by which it communicates with Peking. It lies about 100 m. S.W. of Shanghai, in 30° 20′ 20″ N., 120° 7′ 27″ E. Towards the west is the Si-hu or Western Lake, a beautiful sheet of water, with its banks and islands studded with villas, monuments and gardens, and its surface traversed by gaily-painted pleasure boats. Exclusive of extensive and flourishing suburbs, the city has a circuit, of 12 m.; its streets are well paved and clean; and it possesses a large number of arches, public monuments, temples, hospitals and colleges. It has long ranked as one of the great centres of Chinese commerce and Chinese learning. In 1869 the silk manufactures alone were said to give employment to 60,000 persons within its walls, and it has an extensive production of gold and silver work and tinsel paper. On one of the islands in the lake is the great Wên-lan-ko or pavilion of literary assemblies, and it is said that at the examinations for the second degree, twice every three years, from 10,000 to 15,000 candidates come together. In the north-east corner of the city is the Nestorian church which was noted by Marco Polo, the façade being “elaborately carved and the gates covered with elegantly wrought iron.” There is a Roman Catholic mission in Hangchow, and the Church Missionary Society, the American Presbyterians, and the Baptists have stations. The local dialect differs from the Mandarin mainly in pronunciation. The population, which is remarkable for gaiety of clothing, was formerly reckoned at 2,000,000, but is now variously estimated at 300,000, 400,000 or 800,000. Hang-chow-fu was declared open to foreign trade in 1896, in pursuance of the Japanese treaty of Shimonoseki. It is connected with Shanghai by inland canal, which is navigable for boats drawing up to 4 ft. of water, and which might be greatly improved by dredging. The cities of Shanghai, Hangchow and Suchow form the three points of a triangle, each being connected with the other by canal, and trade is now open by steam between all three under the inland navigation rules. These canals pass through the richest and most populous districts of China, and in particular lead into the great silk-producing districts. They have for many centuries been the highway of commerce, and afford a cheap and economical means of transport. Hangchow lies at the head of the large estuary of that name, which is, however, too shallow for navigation by steamers. The estuary or bay is funnel-shaped, and its configuration produces at spring tides a “bore” or tidal wave, which at its maximum reaches a height of 15 to 20 ft. The value of trade passing through the customs in 1899 was £1,729,000; in 1904 these figures had risen to £2,543,831.

Hang-chow-fu is the Kinsai of Marco Polo, who describes it as the finest and noblest city in the world, and speaks enthusiastically of the number and splendour of its mansions and the wealth and luxuriance of its inhabitants. According to this authority it had a circuit of 100 m., and no fewer than 12,000 bridges and 3000 baths. The name Kinsai, which appears in Wassaf as Khanzai, in Ibn Batuta as Khansa, in Odoric of Pordenone as Camsay, and elsewhere as Campsay and Cassay, is really a corruption of the Chinese King-sze, capital, the same word which is still applied to Peking. From the 10th to the 13th century (960-1272) the city, whose real name was then Ling-nan, was the capital of southern China and the seat of the Sung dynasty, which was dethroned by the Mongolians shortly before Marco Polo’s visit. Up to 1861, when it was laid in ruins by the T’aip’ings, Hangchow continued to maintain its position as one of the most flourishing cities in the empire.

HANGING, one of the modes of execution under Roman law (ad furcam domnatio), and in England and some other countries the usual form of capital punishment. It was derived by the Anglo-Saxons from their German ancestors (Tacitus, Germ. 12). Under William the Conqueror this mode of punishment is said to have been disused in favour of mutilation: but Henry I. decreed that all thieves taken should be hanged (i.e. summarily without trial), and by the time of Henry II. hanging was fully established as a punishment for homicide; the “right of pit and gallows” was ordinarily included in the royal grants of jurisdiction to lords of manors and to ecclesiastical and municipal corporations. In the middle ages every town, abbey, and nearly all the more important manorial lords had the right of hanging. The clergy had rights, too, in respect to the gallows. Thus William the Conqueror invested the abbot of Battle Abbey with authority to save the life of any criminal. From the end of the 12th century the jurisdiction of the royal courts gradually became exclusive; as early as 1212 the king’s justices sentenced offenders to be hanged (Seld. Soc. Publ. vol. i.; Select Pleas of the Crown, p. 111), and in the Gloucester eyre of 1221 instances of this sentence are numerous (Maitland, pl. 72, 101, 228). In 1241 a nobleman’s son, William Marise, was hanged for piracy. In the reign of Edward I. the abbot of Peterborough set up a gallows at Collingham, Notts, and hanged a thief. In 1279 two hundred and eighty Jews were hanged for clipping coin. The mayor and the porter of the South Gate of Exeter were hanged for their neglect in leaving the city gate open at night, thereby aiding the escape of a murderer. Hanging in time superseded all other forms of capital punishment for felony. It was substituted in 1790 for burning as a punishment of female traitors and in 1814 for beheading as a punishment for male traitors. The older and more primitive modes of carrying out the sentence were by hanging from the bough of a tree (“the father to the bough, the son to the plough”) or from a gallows. Formerly in the worst cases of murder it was customary after execution to hang the criminal’s body in chains near the scene of his crime. This was known as “gibbeting,” and, though by no means rare in the earliest times, was, according to Blackstone, no part of the legal sentence. Holinshed is the authority for the statement that sometimes culprits were gibbeted alive, but this is doubtful. It was not until 1752 that gibbeting was recognized by statute. The act (25 Geo. II. c. 37) empowered the judges to direct that the dead body of a murderer should be hung in chains, in the manner practised for the most atrocious offences, or given over to surgeons to be dissected and anatomized, and forbade burial except after dissection (see Foster, Crown Law, 107, Earl Ferrers’ case, 1760). The hanging in chains was usually on the spot where the murder took place. Pirates were gibbeted on the sea shore or river bank. The act of 1752 was repealed in 1828, but the alternatives of dissection or hanging in chains were re-enacted and continued in use until abolished as to dissection by the Anatomy Act in 1832, and as to hanging in chains in 1834. The last murderer hung in chains seems to have been James Cook, executed at Leicester on the 10th of August 1832. The irons used on that occasion are preserved in Leicester prison. Instead of chains, gibbet irons, a framework to hold the limbs together, were sometimes used. At the town hall, Rye, Sussex, are preserved the irons used in 1742 for one John Breeds who murdered the mayor.

The earlier modes of hanging were gradually disused, and the present system of hanging by use of the drop is said to have been inaugurated at the execution of the fourth Earl Ferrers in 1760. The form of scaffold now in use has under the gallows a drop constructed on the principle of the trap-doors on a theatrical stage, upon which the convict is placed under the gallows, a white cap is placed over his head, and when the halter has been properly adjusted the drop is withdrawn by a mechanical contrivance worked by a lever, much like those in use on railways for moving points and signals. The convict falls into a pit,