Adieu The Scaffold City Galle Hemantha Situge LL.B (Sri Lanka) Attorney-at-Law former Hon. Treasurer of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka.

Adieu ! The Scaffold City Galle

Hemantha Situge LL.B (Sri Lanka)

Attorney-at-Law

former Hon. Treasurer of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka.

The death penalty or the execution in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was imposed as a deterrent mode of punishment in the Criminal jurisprudence, i.e. by the Sinhalese, Portuguese, Dutch or English. The horrifying pages were placed on record during the days that the Dutch considered Galle as their capital in 1656 also when then they considered Galle the main port of Ceylon and before that when the Portuguese took control of the maritime provinces in Ceylon. They gave the public the gibbetian days of the yore. The city of Galle was associated by many a name used by them i.e. Galle, Pinto Gale, Point Galle, Punta de Gale. Sir Emerson Tennent went to the extent of calling Galle as the Tarshish of the Holy Bible. For Arabs, including Ibn Batuta it was known as Kalah.

The earliest record of a scaffold within the city of Galle is associated with a word found in the old testament of the Holy Bible. Then it was known as the ‘Gibbet’ island a small natural islet that juts’ out like the closenberg bay. Its desolation is disturbed only by the ghost, where its name gave rise to.

The Portuguese chose to mount their old scaffold on this hillock to execute the death penalty to the traitors that betrayed them. The oldest panoramic view of this Gibbet island was drawn in water colours by Captain O’Brian in 1864. (figure 1) R K de Silva has reproduced this magnificent drawing in his splendid work ‘Early Prints in Ceylon.’ (1800-1900) published in 1985 (248,257-8)  present ‘Gibbet lane’ in Magalle adjoining the Closenberg road is reminiscent of the old-world charm in Galle. Then it was a sandy road the present – gibbet lane- that is found in Captain O’Brian’s drawing where the prisoners of the death row took to their dooms day. The other photograph is captured in circa 1866 a more closer view of this islet. (figure 2)  This photograph taken by Barton is published in A.M. Ferguson’s Souvenirs of Ceylon. (Ferguson : (1868) 11)

However another salient feature of this gruesome era of scaffolds is that two words that have seeped into the Sinhalese language are of Portuguese origin. They are the Sinhalese words Alugosuwa (Sin: Vadakaya)   and Porakaya (Vadakastanaya). According Dr. Sannasgala the etymology of the Sinhalese word Alugosuwa is derived from the Portuguese word Algoz which means the public executioner, hangman. The etymology of the Sinhalese word Porakaya or Porake is derived from the Portuguese word forca. 

It is said that the Dutch continued to use their garrotin on the same spot.  Curiously a hitherto unpublished map drawn and found in the Department of Surveyor General Galle in 1954 records this place as Porke Kanda, Poraka Pittaniya. This cartographical record bears ample corroborating testimony to the Galle’s scaffold’s tales of woe. (figure 1) i.e. there had been a scaffold mounted on a hillock and also there was a scaffold ground for execution. This panorama and phantom filled vista of the Gibbet island was buried in the sands of time with the Galle’s ill-fated harbour project that in the 1960’s  when the Gibbet island was filled with granite stones for a new pier to the harbour. There are some old folk who venture to vouch that they witnessed the foundation of old scaffold or the Dutch garrotin (figure 3)   which is depicted in the sketch provided by the Dutch predikant Philip Baldaeus in his ‘Description of Ceylon’ , or they heard of an eerie feeling that flabbergasted them by the screams of the death convicts in the old Galle that bade adieu! to the city of Galle.

Another scaffold, possibly another Dutch garrotin was utilized in Galle mounted on a hillock known as “Porakagodella Kande”   literally known as – the hill that contained the scaffold mounted on a mound this hill is recorded by Reimers as ‘Romish Kerk’. All old deeds, maps, plans depict the metes and boundaries of the beginning of the present Catholic Church – hill of St. Mary’s Cathedral – record this, boundary as the ‘Porakagodella Kande’  the old place name used for the area.

Curiously this hill was known as the “Gibbet hill” or the “Calvary hill” denoting words of the old or new testament of the Holy Bible. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when Bishop Dr. Elmore Perera was the parish priest of the Galle the Diocese he had the rare opportunity to witness vital strands of evidence, whilst an old burial was dug unto where there were old Dutch coins, manacles chains and skeletons evidently used and of the convict slave prisoners. These vital pieces of evidence were never kept for posterity evidently – “they were kept to be buried with the dead.”  (Ferreira : pers comm)

Rev. Fr. P.G. Gomez in his posthumously published work entitled “Sketches of Jesuit work in Sri Lanka 1893-1990”   records this story of the Calvary Hill. Thus “Our Calvary Hill – a very appropriate name for it afforded a sort of explanation – is the hillock which was once the variest eye – sore of the town, as it was then, the much haunted place of execution, where the felon met his doom, with short shrift on the scaffold. Afterwards, the good pioneer R.C. Fathers took the golden opportunity of its notoriety, by the forelock, - occupied it, - christened it with the above well-meant name and put up small church the old Hall stands now. ”                                                          (emphasis added)

Another known Dutch garrotin was mounted at the premises of the Dutch Court house Gregs Plaat in Galle Fort Dutch Engineer Reimers in his map dated 1790 records this Dutch Court house Gregs Plaat was at the present site of the All Saints – Anglican Church of the Church of England (Brohier 1951) (Paranavithana) Tradition has it that the Dutch garrotin of this Gregs Plaat was found in the present site of the church altar. (Roberts : 1994    ) (Roberts: 1988 ) (Roberts: 2004)

The last scaffold of Galle was found in the premises of the old Portuguese burial ground later the Victoria Park in 1889 named after the Buddhist resurgent Anagarika Dharmapala in 1960’s.

Another Dutch garrotin from the distance of the gibbet island “stone throw a way” was installed as a deterrent mode of death punishment imposed at the premises of the ‘Vliet Zorg’ (i.e. the security of freedom) the Dutch Buiten Huisten – the country house outside of the Fort city – Pettah. This old Dutch building was later modified to house the first English Kachcheri of Galle in Kachcheriwatte or Ja-Kotuwa in Magalle of Galle Matara road the present building of the Co-perative Society.

 The hangmans man’s noose was introduced by the English in 1882 in between the Southern Provincial Council building (earlier the Hill top Holiday Inn) was surmounted on two casurina (in Sinhalese Kasa Kasa) trees. Rt. Rev. Dr. Joseph Van Rheeth the first Bishop of the Galle Catholic diocese has had written to the then, English Governor and expressed his displeasure whilst requesting not to use the said premises has stated, that any devotee who climbs the hill of Catholic Church could see the execution of the death penalty also toll of bell could be heard in the vicinity on each and every occasion when the death conviction was imposed.

With this cry of halt the death penalty continued to be imposed inside vicinity of the present Galle prison. The imposition of the death penalty was done only till 1920 in Galle.

Admiral Walsh’s graphic description of this hair raising horrified episode filled with horror gloom and dismay is indeed the most gruesome record when the Dutch wrest control of Galle as their main port of call and as their capital.

When the stringent Roman Dutch Law was used as a deterrent mode of punishment in Galle the Dutch erected their garrotin’s at the place where the murder took place. The cause celebre´ of the ‘Vliet Zorg’  bears ample testimony to this fact in Galle.

Multiple modes of death punishment that prevailed in the country were not alien to Galle. These gibbets and garrots were brought to a hast with the introduction of the Proclamation of the British Governor in 1799 (3 years after the end of the Dutch rule)  also listing “breaking on the wheel, mutilation or other barbarous methods of punishment and execution.”

This Proclamation prescribed the manner of execution which was common to us thus : “The sentence of this Court is that you be taken from this place to the Prison and there on the – day of (month) (year) be hanged by your neck until you are dead.” 

Until the year 1939 if a pregnant woman was to be sentenced to death the execution was merely postponed  until the confinement took place. Later a pregnant woman was not sentenced to death but given a term of imprisonment. The Death Penalty in Ceylon (then known as, now Sri Lanka)  was suspended in May 1950 but was re-introduced in December 1959. Later it continued till 1976 where J.W. Chandrasena alias “Honda Papuwa” was executed for a triple murder.

A related policy measure in this regard was the decision of the government to suspend the death penalty. It is only in 1989 that the second Optional Protocol was added to the international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to encourage parties to the covenant to also abolish the death penalty.

Galle’s by-gone past is steeped in a hoary world of Portuguese Gibbets, Dutch scaffolds – garrotins – the noose that only the hangman could spare during Colonial British times. Galle was a city of scaffolds. Adieu! the scaffold city Galle.

LITERATURE CITED OR REFERRED TO :-

01.	Baldaeus Phillip		A Description of the East India Coast of Malabar and Coromandel (1872) AES 2000
02.	Brohier R.L. and Paulus J.HO		Land, Maps and Surveys Volume II Colombo 1951, 99PP
03.	de Silva R K		Early Prints of Ceylon Serandib Publication 1985
04.	Ferriera Anton B.		Australian Aloysian News Quarterly
05.	Ferguson A.M.		Souvenirs of Ceylon Colombo 1868
06.	Gomez P.G.		Sketches of Jesuit Work in Sri Lanka, 1893-1990 Thisara Publications 2009.
07.	Paranavitane K.D. and de Silva R.K.		Maps Plans of Dutch Ceylon, Colombo Sri Lanka Netherlands Association 2002.
08.	Paranavitane K.D.		An Inventory of Sri Lanka maps in the General state Archives in the Netherlands Colombo 1984 18-22 P
09.	Punchihewa de S. Gamini		Wanderlust Stamford Lakes publishers 2008 P 27-110
10	Situge Hemantha		Porakayen Samugath Gaalupurawaraya (in Sinhalese) Lochana magazine of the Galle Heritage Study Circle of the Southlands College Galle.
11.	Sannasgala P.B.		Dutch Vocables in Sinhalese language NAAL 1986
12.	Roberts Norah		Welcome to Galle self published Fort Printers Fort Galle.
13.	Roberts Norah		Galle as Quiet as Asleep Aitken Spence Publication 1993 (1st Edition)
14.	Roberts Norah		Galle As Quiet as Asleep Vijitha Yapa Publication 2004 (2nd Edition)
15.	Moldrich Donovan		Hangman Spare The Noose!1982