death. It is therefore probable that, all other circumstances being equal, the appearances of vital disturbance produced in the structures of the necks of persons strangled or hanged previous to death, and of bodies suspended at periods from five minutes up to the cessation of rigidity several hours after apparent death, would merely present a series of vascular changes gradually receding from the strongest to the least marked. In 1853, a Hindu of Dacca, was found guilty of strangling his wife, and of suspending her body to a mangoe tree at the back of her father's house.† A man, of Mymensing, having intrigued with a widow, and not giving her sufficient means for her support, she complained to the village Punchayet, who decided that both parties should be beaten. The man was seized by his father and was struck several blows, but the woman managed to escape. The paramour, enraged at having been summoned and beaten before the Punchayet, pursued her with three of his relatives. On coming up with her, they Strangled her; and, Hanging her body on a tree hard by, reported that she had committed suicide.‡ In the same year, the father and brothers of a girl of Tipperah, finding her in company with a man with whom she was intriguing, seized the man and, holding him down by the neck, arms and legs, Strangled him. They then Hung up the corpse, and reported that he had destroyed himself. § * This distinction is of very great importance, and full validity in a large proportion of medico-legal investigations involving an examination of the body-but any attempt to make use of it in cases of Disputed Survivorship would be evidently irrational and vexatious. † Nizamut Adawlut Reports, vol. iii., part 2 of 1853, p. 107. § Ibid, p. 37. A man of Serajgunge, having failed to persuade a woman with whom he had a liason, to break off the connexion, murdered her. There were several discrepancies in his own confessions, and in the statements of the only eye-witness— a boy of twelve-but it appeared probable that he had first compressed the woman's throat with his hands, until life was nearly extinct, and that he then Suspended the body to a tree.* In 1854, a man of Jessore, after having brutally injured his young wife, Strangled her, and then Suspended her body by the neck to a tamarind tree.† One of these cases occurred a few years since at Shahjehanpore in the N. W. Provinces. Some persons having been employed by a spirit seller to pull down the shop of a rival dealer, knocked down the unfortunate Abkar, got on him, pressed his neck and Strangled him, and then Suspended him by the neck to a burgol tree close by. The evidence was, however, not thought sufficiently reliable to justify conviction.‡ Two men of Bareilly, confessed on apprehension, and before the Joint Magistrate, that they laid a plan to murder a person who appears to have intrigued with the wife of one of them. They threw him down, Strangled him with a rope, and then Suspended his body to a tree.§ One Mohumda, of Dehra Doon, having been too intimate with the wife of a fakeer, but failing to persuade her to go to his house, Strangled her husband, probably with the woman's assistance, and Suspended his body to a beam in the house. || *Nizamut Adawlut Reports, 22nd August 1854, p. 283. Ibid, 24th November 1852, p. 1371. HANGING. In India, as elsewhere, the Medical Jurist's opinion is especially called for, (1) in cases where bodies have been suspended after violent death; (2) in instances of suicide, and of (3) murder by Hanging; and (4) in cases of apparent drowning, &c. where it is questionable whether death has not resulted from homicidal Hanging. 1. Aware of the great prevalence of suicide by Hanging, the criminals of this country not unfrequently destroy their victims by blows, &c. and suspend them, with a hope that their deaths will be attributed to self-destruction. The foregoing remarks will show that the detection of such cases cannot always be easily accomplished. From time to time, however, collateral circumstances, the revelations of eyewitnesses, or the confessions of the criminals, have furnished us with nearly demonstrative instances of each description of crime. I. Hanging with a view to conceal Murder.-In January 1852, the body of one Hossein Buksh, was found hanging on a tamarind tree, just outside the garden wall of a person named Sheikh Mohasun, at Hooghly, the defendant in the trial which ensued. It was made out in evidence, with great clearness, that the deceased, led either by an intention to steal, or by a desire for revenge on account of an illicit connexion which existed between his wife and the prisoner,-made his way, late on the fatal night, into an upper room of the prisoner's house, armed with a hatchet. He struck at and slightly wounded his wife first, and then the prisoner, who, however, struggled with him and, aided by three of his servants, threw him down, and tied his hands with a rope. Nothing further was distinctly known until the body was found hanging, on the following morning, by the darogah, who had come to inspect the premises, upon the prisoner's information that the deceased had entered his house with an intention to steal, and had, after wounding him, run away. Dr. Ross deposed that he saw the body hanging. The rope was tied to a lower and upper branch. [It appears that these two branches were more than three feet apart.] It could not have been adjusted by him in any other manner than by standing on the wall, from which he was too far. [The tree stood off three feet from the wall.] The place where the rope was tied to the two branches was inclining away from the wall, and away shortly from the trunk of the tree; the distance and the [intervening position of the] trunk of the tree rendered it impossible that the deceased could have tied the ropes himself. The only way that the hanging could have been effected was by others, either on the wall and tree, or on the tree only. There was a quantity of blood between the wall and the tree. Dr. Ross examined the body, and was of opinion, that death was caused by his being stunned or stupified by blows on the head, giving rise to profuse hæmorrhage, and by his being hung by the neck, while in that state of insensibility or stupor, until life was extinct. The marks on the neck showed that he was not lifeless when he was first suspended, but he must have been very near it, as the mark on the neck had not the perfect characteristic parchment-like appearance which invariably exists when death has occurred from hanging exclusively. The lungs and heart also did not exhibit the morbid signs which are the results of Hanging-there was no gorged state of the vessels of the lungs, and the heart was completely empty of blood. There were various marks, scratches and abrasions on the surface of the body, more particularly on the arms; the outer skin of the right wrist had been scraped off by some means, either by having been tied by a rope, or dragged over a rough surface. The two first fingers of the right hand had been removed some years ago. The remaining stumps of the fingers were permanently bent towards the palm, and prevented the perfect antagonism between the thumb and the remaining fingers, so that he would be more easily overpowered by his assailants, and the same mutilation would prevent him from adjusting the rope with which he was hung with the accuracy observed.* The blanched state of the brain, the tongue and the gums, went far to prove that he was in too weak a state, from loss of blood, to have hung himself. The weapon which was probably employed was of a bluntish nature (if at all of a cutting character), as the wounds were much contused.† * A case which in some measure meets this particular point is cited by Taylor. A woman was found dead in her bed at the Hotel Dieu, with her head hanging out, and with a silk handkerchief carried twice round the neck, and then tied in front. In this instance, in which there could be no doubt of suicidal strangulation, the deceased had lost four fingers of her right hand, so that the member had been, from a very early period, of but little service to her; "Nevertheless," remarks Dr. Taylor, "She contrived to tie the cravat round her neck with great firmness and dexterity. It is easy to conceive that, had her body been found in a suspicious locality, a plausible opinion of homicidal strangulation might have been formed from the maimed condition of her hand. This case then," he adds, "will serve to teach us a proper caution in drawing our inferences as to what persons, labouring under any corporeal infirmity, are capable of doing, when they make attempts on their own lives," p. 750. See also the case of the Prince de Condé who, it was alleged, could not have hanged himself-on account of a defect in one hand which it was thought prevented him from tying the knots, (p. 740.) † Nizamut Adawlut Reports, vol. ii., part 1 of 1852, p. 18. In the following case, there was certainly reason to suspect that the deceased was hung by others, but the decomposed state of the body rendered the proof of this defective. In 1843, Dr. Murray, of Beerbhoom, examined the body of a man in which he found great swelling of the temple and cheek extending to the ear, and very well marked behind the ear, over a space at least three inches long and about two inches broad. These parts were gorged with blood, which, in some places, was coagulated. The state of the brain was so altered as to |