Note 85 — Chapter XVI · WRONGS: REAL AND FANCIED

On one occasion the British and Chinese Ministers jointly urged the payment of indemnity in the case of two Chinamen, one a British protégé, who had been injured in a fight with tax-collecting officials at a place to which Chinese junks were in the habit of resorting. The British protégé had died of his wounds, both he and his companion having been confined after the fight in the magistrate’s yamen. The Korean local officials contended that only one person had been killed—namely, the wounded Chinaman. When confronted with the fact that, according to their own report, there was a dead Chinaman in the yamen the morning after, they replied that this man was not in the fracas at all; he had merely crawled into the yamen during the night, and had died of some unknown disease. The picture of this shrewd Celestial going to the yamen to die, apparently for the purpose of fraudulently foisting an incriminating corpus delicti upon the innocent Korean official, did not appeal to the British Minister, and he got his indemnity.