The four Egyptian natives who were condemned to death for
the murder of Captain Bull and the attack on the other British officers were hanged on Thursday, and six others con- victed of complicity in the crime were flogged and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. The condemned men were tried with scrupulous fairness by a competent and impartial tribunal composed of Egyptians as well as Englishmen, and we cannot doubt that they thoroughly deserved their punish- ment. The outrage was of a most brutal description, and was unprovoked by any act of violence on the part of the British officers. Indeed, we hold that the officers would have been perfectly justified in using their guns in self-defence against the cowardly mob who assailed them. Instead, and in order to prevent bloodshed, they gave up their weapons to their assailants, whose only response was to maltreat them with every circumstance of brutality, which included even robbing the body of the murdered man. Had the murder been the result of a sharp and sudden altercation ending in the dis- charge of a rifle, there might have been some excuse. But we must remember that, having obtained their guns from the officers, the mob dragged them from their carriages and killed one and injured two others. The officers had every reason to believe that they had been invited to shoot pigeons, such invitations being commonly given by villagers in Egypt.
Previous page
