Prison Life; Little Maria (1824 - 1825)

C H A P T E R X V I I I

Prison Life; Little Maria

[ 1824—1825 ]

HE Burmese army had been defeated twice now, once when led by the Kyi Wungyi, once under the Thonby Wungyi. The latter had been killed in july by one of his own fear-frenzied men while bravely defending his stockade. The court began slowly to admit to itself that it might possibly have formed a wrong eStimatc of the enemy.

It certainly had. Moreover, it had formed a wrong estimate of the whole war. Bandula had been sent over the mountains with most of the army that he might fall upon the British on the Arakan seacoaSt in the direction of Chittagong and Bengal. Where the Burmese had almost no forces, at Rangoon, the British had appeared with their whole Strength, with unassailable ships and even with a steamboat, the firSt ever seen in Burma. But Bandula, when facing negligible British forces, had driven off minor detachments and hence was credited with Victories. The king, convinced by these that only Bandula understood how to fight foreigners, commanded him to return to Ava and win victories in Rangoon. His army was brought back from Arakan and sent down the river. New—and reluctant—troops were raised and sent after it.

Life in the Death Prison went on as usual. When the news was bad the foreigners were confined days at a time in the inner prison. When it was better, they were allowed to use their huts.

Various events marked the days. Once a woman was brought in covered with pusmles of smallpox. The Spotted Faces, themselves concerned, had sense enough to clear a little open space on the floor. Luckily, after about twenty-four hours she was taken away.

By what miracle the fifty or so other prisoners escaped the disease no one understood, even Price. This was the only case that made an impression on his peculiar nature. Already that summer he had undertaken one piece of surgery that had made Adoniram and Gouger fear for their lives.

One of the Spotted Faces had had a large swelling on an eyelid, probably a fatty cyst. For days the doctor had itched to get a knife on it. Finally he persuaded the Spotted Face to let him remove it with the only tool in the place, the stump of an ordinary penknife. Adoniram and all the Englishmen tried to dissuade Price from trying the operation. They could imagine only too vividly the consequences to all of them of a mishap. But Price would not listen.

The prisoners watched the operation in horror. None of them had ever seen such hacking. As Gouger expressed it, “after many ejaculations and contortions on the part of the patient, the operator succeeded in whittling out something which very much resembled in appearance two or three inches of a large dew-worm; when, I suppose, not knowing what to do with it, or unable to extend his discoveries further, the disgusting string was snipped off.”

But to the amazement of everyone except Price, when the wound had healed the swelling was gone and the Spotted Face still had his eyesight. There was only one slight difficulty. In removing the cyst Price had somehow also severed a muscle or nerve and the eyelid now lay inert over the eye like a curtain. But, explained the ingenious surgeon, this was really an advantage in disguise. “The eye will keep all the better. When you want it, all you have to do is lift the lid with your finger; and when you have done with it, let it drop again.” Occasionally the Spotted Face suspected a flaw in this reasoning. But he was never able to lay a finger (or an eye) on it, and nothing happened to the doctor or the other prisoners.

The incident illustrated Price’s uncanny ability to make the jailers think his wildest ideas were practicable. Once he actually persuaded Father to give him some bamboo and a lump of clay. Out of this he promised to make a clock which would keep the prison time. Adoniram and Gouger thought he had gone completely crazy. After a great deal of work, even Price realized the job was impossible; but as usual he snatched victory out of defeat. He used the clay to model a human head. On it he marked the “phrenological compartments”——the location of the qualities of will, love, hate, intelligence, forbearance and the like, as conceived by medicine of the time — and lectured leamedly to as many prisoners and Spotted Faces as would listen. The immensity of amazement he aroused was matched only by the minuteness of knowledge he instilled.

Adoniram and Gouger, not being surgeons or inventors, hit on another way of passing the time. They decided to play chess. The game was well known in Burma and the Spotted Faces would not think the players were hatching plots or making magic. With Price’s knife-stump and bits of discarded bamboo (from Price’s clock) they carved out a set of crude pieces. In one corner of the prison they found an old piece of buffalo hide. The cup of earth oil——crude petroleum—which served as a lamp was crusted with fine carbon. This they smeared into squares on the hide. Henceforth they lay on the floor or sat cross-legged for hours absorbed in chess.

Rodgers and Laird had fewer resources. But even they managed to get along by talking to their fellow prisoners at times when conversation was permitted. Rodgers, particularly, enjoyed hobbling from one group of prisoners to the other, learning all about themselves and their families and discussing the news of the day.

Even humor in the prison had a macabre flavor. At best, all prison life was grim; at worst, it seemed unendurable. Once, for instance, Father stamped with heavy wooden shoes on the face of a prisoner in the stocks until he was nearly dead, then finished him off with a club. The slave of a prince, the prisoner had committed the crime of falling in love with another slave. The prince had ordered him to be assassinated quickly. The Spotted Faces had started to starve him to death but he made too much noise. After his body had been removed it was noted in the prison register that he was an opiumeater and died for lack of opium.

Once the jailers marched into the inner prison about a hundred captive Sepoy soldiers. The hundred, added to the fifty already there, packed the place until there was barely standing room. The prisoners came to the verge of death from heat and lack of air before the wicket door was opened. Fortunately, all of the newcomers except eight officers were taken away the next day. Seven of these eight slowly died of Starvation. The eighth, a Brahmin named Davy Singh, owed his life to his caste. He refused to eat rice cooked by the Burmese but asked for it uncooked and nibbled it raw, grain by grain. Rationing his rice this way, he managed to live through the long periods when he was given nothing. But although he survived the war, he became stone blind from vitamin deficiency.

It was not surprising that tempers gave way now and then, as on one notable occasion. At this period Adoniram and Price occupied adjoining sleeping places. Price could never go to sleep unless he lay on his side with his knees bent up to touch his nose. In his frequent nightmares, he would straighten out his knees with tremendous force. Weighted with the heavy fetters, they would crash into the small of Adoniram’s back like a cannon-ball.

For some time Adoniram had been trying to achieve the “quietism” of Madame Guyon, a French Catholic of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, whose doctrines had long interested him, but after two or three of these eXperiences in a single night quietism failed him. He blew up. “Brother Price,” he exploded, “you are a public nuisance! I insist on your sleeping as other people do!”

Price replied that his thrashings were unintentional. Adoniram retorted that they were done on purpose. After some bickering Adoniram offered to fight Price. Gouger might have enjoyed the spectacle of a fight between two missionaries, but the Death Prison was not the place. He averted it by offering to sleep between them. From then on, whenever Price’s knees thudded into Gouger, he would wake the doctor and smoke a pipe with him. Then he would persuade him to go to sleep on the other side, where the next blow would fall on Rodgers.

But on the whole, all the foreigners agreed, they got on together pretty well. Something interesting was always happening. Prisoners were constantly coming and going in the Death Prison —sometimes high officials of the government who had momentarily fallen under court disfavor, sometimes whole families. From them they learned the latest gossip. The servants of all of them remained faithful, and without pay continued to provide food. Gouger’s baker even set up in the business of providing hard rolls for the army, and thus earned enough not only to take care of himself and Gouger but also to provide him with occasional delicacies and bits of clothing. Every week that passed and found them still alive was a triumph. Every prisoner’s entire energy was directed to a single object: survival.

Meanwhile Nancy was as busy in their behalf as her advancing pregnancy would permit.

By September, Bandula was in fact Acting King of Burma. He had been loaded with honors and given the full direction of the war. Contingents of new troops went down-river every day. Soon, the court war party hOped, he would lead them to victory over the British.

Nancy resolved, with Adoniram’s approval, to make one last appeal to Bandula himself. It was a dangerous Step. Some friends at court advised her against it. Most likely he did not even know the prisoners were alive. If he were reminded, he might order their execution. She decided to take the chance. Adoniram wrote the petition, including every argument he could think of that might affect Bandula favorably.

With fear and trembling Nancy took it to the great man through the surrounding crowd of courtiers. A secretary read it aloud. Bandula actually liStened, and rather pleasantly asked her several queStions about the teachers. Her answers seemed to satisfy him. He promised to think about the subject. She should come again and he would give her a decision.

Elated, Nancy hurried to the prison. Adoniram agreed that the chances looked good that he might be released, and probably Price as well. But when Nancy told the city governor what she had done, he was amazed at her rashness, and predicted that she had probably cost all the foreigners their lives.

In a day or two she went back to Bandula’s house. This time she brought the mOSt valuable present she could. But Bandula was not home. His wife received Nancy, accepted the present, and told her that Bandula had said he was too busy preparing the Rangoon expedition to do anything just now. As soon as he had recaptured Rangoon and driven the British out of Burma he would return to Ava and set the prisoners free.

This closed the door on any hope of release. Henceforth Nancy devoted her time to doing what she could to make the prisoners’ 10t easier. She spent most of every other day at the governor’s house. His wife, who had stood up for her when she had admitted giving the governor the two hundred ticals, became her firm friend.

The governor himself took a great liking to her. He had an almOSt childlike curiosity about America, and would question her for hours about the American government, the manners of the people, their customs, their clothing, their houses, their ships, their money, and every detail of their lives. Every day Nancy enthralled him with stories about Bradford and Salem and Washington and New York. She told him about the cold and snow and how they lived through the winter. And when she was sometimes kept from an appointment, he would be as disappointed as a child deprived of its favorite bedtime story.

This relation, even more than gifts, enabled her to procure little favors for the prisoners. For herself, she had a pass, usually honored by the Spotted Faces, permitting her to visit Adoniram any time of the day.

In October Bandula left for Ava. Thousands of additional troops accompanied him helter-skelter, armed with a bewildering conglom—eration of spears, swords, shields and muskets. Gouger, recovered from a fever which had nearly killed him, peered through crannies in the wall and saw them pass. He was sure they were going to certain destruction. Some of the Burmese convicts thought so, too. At one time twenty stewards of townships which belonged to various princesses and other palace women of importance were imprisoned. They told Adoniram that the king had been persuaded into the war by the military leaders, eSpecially Bandula. Adoniram asked one of them, “Suppose the English should retire and leave things as they were before the war?”

“Oh!” the man said feelingly. “How good that would be!” One prisoner, who had been in one of the early battles, told Gouger that the British shells were charmed and knew exactly whom to look for. He knew that of his own knowledge, for he had been standing near his superior officer, whose title was “Tsekai.” All at once a huge iron ball came sailing through the air, the fuse on it slowly revolving and hissing “Tsek-tsek-tsek!” Sure enough, it found the Tsekai and burst directly over him, blowing him to pieces.

By November, Bandula was entrenched outside of Rangoon with a force of sixty thousand men. He had told the Prince of Sarawady, “In eight days I shall dine in the public hall at Rangoon and after— wards return thanks in the Shwe Dagon pagoda.” It seemed he should be able to do it. Facing him, the British had thirteen hundred Europeans and twenty-five hundred Sepoys — a total effective force of less than four thousand. But they knew warfare. They had mounted twenty guns on the commanding platform of the Shwe Dagon pagoda and had placed gunboats in the Rangoon River and one of the creeks, where they could enfilade Bandula’s stockades.

On December 1, 1824, Bandula advanced, launching his main attack on the pagoda, the Strongest point in the British position. The attack was decisively defeated, but the exhausted British were too few to follow up the retreat. Luckily for them, Bandula did not retreat out of reach; he obligingly waited until they had rested, and a few days later the British stormed the Burmese position. Bandula’s whole army dissolved like a lump of wet sugar; Bandula was able to hold together only seven thousand men with whom he beat a retreat up the river to Danubyu.

The news arrived in Ava toward the end of the year. The Princesses of Pugan and Shwedong and the queen mother sent for Nancy at once. By now, Nancy was finding it difficult to get around, but they were anxious for her advice. The Princess of Pugan told Nancy: “The Bandula’s troops have piled up their arms for the use of the foreigners. They have all dispersed, and the enemy has nothing to do but march to Ava, clapping their hands.”

They asked, what should they do? Should they run away, or stay? If they stayed, would they be safe? Would Nancy protect them from the English and speak well of them? This was a new tune for the vain, despotic Burmese royalty, but in their dismay they credited the English with supernatural powers, like the demons called Balus that eat human flesh.

Nancy reassured them. The English were disciplined. They would not hurt Burmese women unnecessarily, particularly royalty. In any case, she would do what she could when the time came if they would do what they could for the prisoners.

This was almOSt the last contact Nancy had with the court. For on January 26, 182 5, a daughter was born to her. She named the little girl Maria Elizabeth Butterworth Judson.

Twenty days later Nancy appeared at the prison gate with the baby in her arms. It was a pale, puny, wailing infant that Adoniram saw, but to the Spotted Faces her whiteness made her an object of wonder. Adoniram’s feelings were a mixture of love, frustration and sadness. For weeks before Nancy’s confinement he had been consumed with fear. Now that the baby was born, Nancy could get around again, but what did the future hold? Their firSt baby had been buried at sea. The second, Roger, lay beside Mrs. Price beneath the battlefield at Rangoon. The prospect for little Maria looked no brighterr

After Nancy had left with the baby, he secluded himself for a long time in the little bamboo hut in the prison yard. He was composing a poem which began:

Sleep, darling infant, sleep,

Hushed on thy m0ther’s breast; Let no rude sound of clanking chains

Disturb thy balmy rest.