On the thugs : received from an officer in the service of His Highness the Nizam / [Philip Meadows Taylor].

  • Taylor, Meadows, 1808-1876.
Date:
[1833?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the thugs : received from an officer in the service of His Highness the Nizam / [Philip Meadows Taylor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    latter of whom follow the profession of Thugs in conjunction with their agricultural pursuits. The Marwarries* and other hankers are also frequently the channels of communication between Thugs, and there is no doubt of their being the purchasers of the property of the murdered. The religious medicants throughout the country occasionally assist in this measure, by becoming the receivers of messages from hands of Thugs, to he delivered to the next party that comes that way ; with this view also they have adopted the practice of forming choolahs, or fireplaces of a particular construction, to serve as marks of their progress through the country. When a party of Thugs come to a road that branches off in two directions, they adopt the precaution of making a mark, for the guidance of their associates who may come after them, in the following manner:—the soil in a convenient spot is carefully smoothed, and the print of a foot is distinctly stamped upon it. A Thug on seeing this mark, which he naturally searches for, knows by the direction in which it points which track has been followed by those that have preceded him. The peculiar designation by which they are known is a point in which the Thugs are particularly tenacious, and they attach an importance and even respectability to their profession, that they say no other class of delinquents is entitled to. The denomination of thief is one that is par- ticularly obnoxious to them, and they never refrain from soliciting the erasure of the term, and the substitution of that of Thug, whenever it may occur in a paper regarding them, declaring that, so far from follow- ing so disgraceful a practice as theft, they scorn the name, and can prove themselves to he as honest and trustworthy as any one else, when occasion requires it. It seems their ambition to he considered respectable persons; and with this view they expend much of their gains on their personal decoration. Even those who have been seized and admitted as approvers, or informers against their comrades, in fact, king’s evidence, are more solicitous about their dress and decent appearance than anything else. They mostly seem to he men of mild and unobtrusive manners, possessing a cheerful- ness of disposition entirely opposed to the violent passions and ferocious demeanour that are usually associated with the idea of a professed mur- derer. Such is the extent to which this dreadful system has been carried that no idea can be formed of the expenditure of human life to which it has given occasion, or the immensity of the wealth that has been acquired by its adoption. When it is taken into consideration that many of the Thugs already seized confess to their having, for the last twenty-five and thirty years, annually made a tour with parties of more than a hundred men, and with no other object than that of murder and rapine; that they boast of having successively put their tens and twenties to death daily; and that they say an enumeration of all the lives they have personally assisted to destroy would swell the catalogue to hundreds, and, as some declare, to thousands f—some conception of the horrid reality may be formed; of the amount of the property that they have yearly made awray * Inhabitants of Marwar, generally bankers and traders. f Ameer Ali, an approver and noted Thug, now at this place, declares and glories in having been present at the murder of 719 persons, whose property is_ estimated at two lacs and a half of rupees !