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12 Nov 58 Peter Hong Kong Mother ______________________________________________________________________________________________

[Sheets 1-3 missing]

4

Nov 12. 1858

I forgot to tell you about the grand ‘sing song’ we had outside our domain – a religious sing song, not attended with the gymnastics & performance as last time.

It was a very elegantly decorated erection with lots of illumination & glaring devices, fine glass chandeliers which I don’t know where they could have got & was not a bad turn out on the whole. And there was a sort of holy of holies in the background with a species of altar & everlasting candles which were always supposed to be alight, only that they went out when they got to the end & there were 5 priests with heads completely shaven & no pigtails even. Fine subjects for phrenology, who kept up an everlasting sing song noise more like groans or moans than any thing else & this they did I was told for three days without stopping which must have been very agreeable & fully accounted for the mournful tone they assumed.

This was all that occurred. The groanings of the priests being attended by a monotonous kind of music which savoured of ‘at the siege of Belle Isle, I was there all the while’* except that it wasn’t half so melodious & for this all honest hard working Chinamen were made to stump up a large sum out of their earnings.

We, on our side, also had our performance & it was publicly announced that Signor Lavaterly (otherwise called Bill Jones) would astonish all Hong Kong with a grand gymnastic & acrobatic display such as was never seen before. But as the wonderful performance had already been pronounced very poor in Macao, altho’ then under another name, I did not consider the fact of his having changed his name a proof of his having changed his equilibristic & acrobatic powers & so did not favour Signor Lavaterly with my presence. Nor indeed did the better portion of Hong Kong.

We had a very interesting spectacle here in the shape of a hanging yesterday & as it took place on board a man of war steamer which came & anchored right in front of our place for the occasion, we had a very fine view of it. Two other men of war & two gunboats also came & anchored near at hand so as to have a look & there were about a dozen boats in tow of each, so that altogether with the amateurs who flocked in numbers to the performance there was quite a gathering.

At eight o’clock the gun fired & in an instant the Jacks made a run along the deck & hauled up their unfortunate comrade with such rapidity that when his body reached the yardarm, it actually turned head over heels with the jerk & strangled him in an instant.

I must say I think hanging is nothing but a relic of barbarism & on the part of executioner who is certainly not a man guided by any good motives, I think it is nothing more nor less than cold blooded murder.

Fancy a man, as was the case in this present instance, who is already stained with one great crime, being liberated for putting an end to the existence of 3 fellow criminals. What is the use of hanging one man for murdering his brother, if you teach another, who is already criminal, tho’ not so deep sunk in infamy, to take away life wholesale.

Nov 13. 9 p.m.

As the mail closes tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon & I expect to be hard at work all day, I will wish you good night & good bye at present

Give little Helen a kiss for me. I was at work in the office till half past 12 last night & I am now going down again. Telle est la vie, in China.

I write to my Father also by this mail.

Your affect. Son

Peter G Laurie

* siege of Belle Isle – A nursery rhyme commemorating the British siege and capture of an island near St Nazaire on the Brittany coast in 1761, part of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)