Inhuman torture!! Fairburn's edition of the trial of Thomas Picton, late Governor of Trinidad and Colonel of the 54th Regiment of Foot, for torturing Louisa Calderon in the island of Trinidad in the month of December, 1801 ... Which was tried at the Court of King's-Bench, Westminster on Monday, Feb. 24, 1806 before Lord Ellenborough & a special jury / Taken in short-hand.

Thomas Picton

Date:: [1806?]

Credit: Inhuman torture!! Fairburn's edition of the trial of Thomas Picton, late Governor of Trinidad and Colonel of the 54th Regiment of Foot, for torturing Louisa Calderon in the island of Trinidad in the month of December, 1801 ... Which was tried at the Court of King's-Bench, Westminster on Monday, Feb. 24, 1806 before Lord Ellenborough & a special jury / Taken in short-hand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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General Picton was invested, not only with the chief civil, but military command. A robbery had been committed of great magnitude, which, in this country, would have amounted to a capital offence; and, by the mild and mercifnl laws of England, the offenders would have lost their lives. Where a robbery has been committed in a dwelling-house here, however painful to the Judge, he cannot interfere to save the life of the criminal, but the crime is expiated by an ig~ nominous death. Under such circumstances, imform a was laid before Governor Picton, at the Government-house, and the parties were brought before him; and the Prose- cutrix appearing involved in a suspicion, was committed for the purpose of being examined, in the regular course, by Beggorat the chief Magistrate, in order to ascertain whether •he was an accomplice or not. In the course of the proceedings, reference was had to the Criminal Judge, and every fair means used to induce her to confess; and it was not till after repeated equivocations, that he made this representation of her concealing the truth, and intimating the experiment of a slight torture; the suggestion of Beggorat was acquiesced in ; and this was said to be either premeditated or implied malice in the Governor, to which not one tittle of evidence had been adduced; and, therefore, with respect to malice, it was out of the question ; as from the ante- cedent committal, to the subsequent discharge, it did not ap- pear that he had ever known her or seen her but once, in every count of the indictment, it was alledged that the act done was unlawfully and maliciously done, without any real or probable cause. He, however, contended that a Judge may mistake the limits of his jurisdiction, but he cannot act ma- liciously; and, in fact, having acted according to the laws of Spain, which he was sworn to observe, he could not be said to have acted unlawfully. He then adverted to the laws of the island of St. Vincent, where, if a man were guilty of maiming another, or guilty of various other offences, he is liable to have his nose slit, or one of his members, perhaps his right hand, cutoff; and, though we may shudder at it, for the sake of humanity, yet such is the law, and it is our bounden duty to go by the law of the particular place where the offence is committed. In the island of Trinidad, a different line of policy was necessarily adopted, at diff rent times, and this Colony was totally different from all the other Spanish Settlements in America; sometimes it wras highly cultivated, and sometimes

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