Barwell's banian a certificate for forty thousand rupees; that
in July, 1774, when Mr. Barwell had left Dacca, they went to Calcutta to
seek justice; that Mr. Barwell confined them in his house at Calcutta,
and sent them back under a guard of peons to Dacca; that in December,
1774, on the arrival of the gentlemen from Europe, they returned to
Calcutta, and preferred their complaint to the Supreme Court of
Judicature.
The bill in Chancery filed against Richard Barwell, John Shakespeare,
and others, contains a minute specification of the various acts of
personal cruelty said to be practised by Mr. Barwell's orders, to extort
money from these people. Among other acts of a similar nature he is
charged with having ordered the appraiser of the Company's cloths, who
was an old man, and who asserts that he had faithfully served the
Company above sixteen years without the least censure on his conduct, to
be severely flogged without reason.
In the _manner_ of confining the delals, with ten of their servants, it
is charged on him, that, "when he first ordered them to be put into the
stocks, it was at a time when the weather was exceedingly bad and the
rain very heavy, without allowing them the least covering for their
heads or any part of their body, or anything to raise them from the wet
ground; in which condition they were continued for many hours, until the
said Richard Barwell thought proper to remove them into a far worse
state, if possible, as if studying to exercise the most cruel acts of
barbarity on them, &c.
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