TORTURED TO DEATH. An Extraordinary Story of an American Trader's Cruelty.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 119, 12 September 1885, Page 6

TORTURED TO DEATH. An Extraordinary Story of an American Trader's Cruelty.

There have been sworn in Hongkong, before a Justice of the Peace, informations charging terrible crimes against C.P. Holqombe, an American citizen trading in an island called Guap, among the Carolines. It appears that the commerce carried on there is one of barter, the foreigner exchanging goods of western manufacture for dried cocoanut, or copra. One night Holcombe left his store in charge of a native boy, Bor 0 years old. Next morning it was found that some 200dols. worth of goods had been stolen. The amount is a matter of little consequence, but we may mention that according to the estimate of others, it could not have exceeded 50 dole. On discovering his loss, Mr Holcombe took the little boy and screwed his fingers in a blacksmith's vise. The child soon wailed out the names of two natives in an adjacent village, and Mr Holcombe, seizing thorn, put them in irons. Their chief, however, interfered, and obtained from the child an admission that its confession had been extorted under torture, and was not true. Mr Holcombe was accordingly obliged to release the men, their potentate being too powerful to disobey. Ho had recourse, once more, to the expedient of screwing the child's hands into the vise, and once more the lad named two men in another village. These Mr Holcombe arrested, and having conducted thorn to his dwelling, set about torturing them after his favourite fashion. Their toes, fingers, and noses were screwed into vises, until the bones were crushed. After some three weeks of this treatment, varied by suspending the men by their hair from trees so that their mutilated toes barely touched the ground, Holcombe took them out and hanged them. At the execution the little boy had to adjust the ropes, and as he failed to perform the operation to Mr Holcombe's satisfaction, the latter sharpened his wits by firing a revolver at him. To the truth of this tale two eye-witnessea, Englishmen, have sworn, and the officer! commanding the United States squadron has been moved to despatoh a man-of-war to make inquiries.