Page:Pearl of Asia (Child JT, 1892).pdf/150



It is seldom that the Siamese resort to capital punishment, most violations of law being punished by imprisonment, the major crimes by incarceration for life, such as murder and treason. As soon as sentenced the prisoner is manacled and turned over to some Prince or noble, whose slave he becomes, and he is then placed under a task master who proceeds to get all the work out of him possible. Under his control the doomed one has a foretaste of hades ere he shuffles off his mortal coil. The life prisoner has a chain fastened to a steel ring riveted around his neck, and this is never taken off till death claims him; the chain from his neck is also riveted around his ankles, and the clanking of these fetters can be heard in every part of Bangkok, as long lines of prisoners are daily driven through the streets to their work. The other prisoners are chained around the ankles with a chain about eighteen inches in length. Any one owing slaves has a right to put them in chains on the most frivolous pretext, and I was assured by a gentleman who had traveled through the interior of the country that he saw large numbers thus manacled, male and female. The prisoners in Bangkok are put to work in the gardens of the nobles, sawing teak wood logs into boards, working on the streets and cleaning out canals, in fact all kind of hard work, and at night men and women are locked up together in close rooms and treated