Amoy (Xiamen), Fukien province, China: a thief with his thumbs chopped off. Photograph by John Thomson, 1871.

A young man with his thumbs cut off and right foot injured, posed against the same background as Thomson's negative number 738. According to Thomson, Chinese courts in the late Qing were full of corruption and injustice. Poor people who were unable to bribe the court had to endure physical punishments such as beatings, suspension by cords, or having their thumbs chopped off, any one of which was thought to be a "suitable lesson to the deceitful and dishonest pauper". This poor thief in Amoy was strung up by the thumbs until the flesh rotted away. He had been a petty burglar, but had not stolen anything of a sufficient value to enable him to bribe the conniving detectives, so he had to pay with his thumbs