THE KNOUT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 568, 7 March 1873, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE KNOUT.

At a gathering of Polos in (lie little village of Kenits, Alexanclrina Kossowitz, a young lady whose father, the youngest son of a formerly noble Polish family, was killed in the recent troubles in Warsaw, expressed in passionate words hor sympathy with the unfortunates whom Russian severity had murdered or sent into exile, and her detestation of the oppressors of her race. The meeting was a purely social one, and none dreamed that anything said there would reach the ears of the Russian spies, for all present were known to be Poles, and firm haters of the harsh rule under which they then lived. The young lady was, however, betrayed by a woman whom she hud replaced in the affections of a Polish doctor, and she was brought before a Russian judge, and condemned to receive thirty-five lashes of the knout. Almost benumbed with shame and terror, the girl was led away to be prepared for punishment. In half an hour after the sentence had been given two hundred troops had been iormed into a hollow square, in the centre of which had been placed a scaffold, standing on four legs, the top of which was an inclined plane. Beside this stood the executioner, having in Ins muscular hand the knout. The weapon consists of a stick,or a handle, f wo feet long, with a lash four lent long of soft leather, to the end of which is attached by a loup a piece of raw hide, two inches wide by two feet long. In the hands of an experienced man, the piece of raw hide can be made to cut like a knife. As the executioner stood facing the scaffold, Alexandrina Kossowitz was brought to him by her guard, and in a tew moments her clothing was removed to her waist, despite her almost mute appeals to be saved the shame. As she pleaded, she was bent on the plane, her hands strapped to the two upper corners, and her ancles secured to the foot of the structure. One of the executioner’s held her head, and the petty judge gave the order for the whipping to commence. Twirling the long lash in the air, the executioner stepped suddenly backward, and with a sharp crack the thong fell on the back of the sobbing girl, cutting a livid streak from her shoulder to her waist. A terrible tremor passed over her, and a quick low cry eseped her lips, but it was the only sound she uttered, and were it not for the blood which soon commenced to flow, it might have seemed that the whipping was being done on the naked back of a corpse. When the last lash had been given, the young lady was unfastened, and, with her clothes rudely thrown over her, she was taken to prison, and there, after thanking the judge for his mercy, according to the usual formula, she was delivered over to her friends. Five days afterwards, the Gazette of Wilne contained this announcement: —“The Polish criminal, Alexandrina Kossowitz, daughter of the rebel Perer Kossowitz, who was knonted for seditious u'trances on the 28th of July, at Kernst, while submitting her lacerations to medical treatment, in t' e house of the physician, stole a vial of prussic acid, with ■which she ended her days.”