Hyder Ali Cawn, and his son Tippoo Saib, have long been distinguished, and not less detested, throughout every part of the civilized world, for the cruelties which they practised on their prisoners of war, during their dominion in India. Of their unexampled barbarities, many accounts have been published in England; and the enormities which these narratives record would have staggered credulity itself, had not the few mutilated wretches who have escaped their tyranny, furnished evidence by their appearance, that a faithful detail of facts could leave but little room for exaggeration.

In addition to those tales of horror which have been submitted to the public eye, there are others, equally affecting, on which no written register has ever conferred its honours. These, while the unhappy victims whose sufferings they record were alive, obtained for a season a local circulation; but no sooner had they found a refuge in the grave, than these tales began to fade in the recollection of tradition, and gradually to retire into oblivion, where they also have found repose. To some few a more protracted existence has been allotted. One of these has just fallen into the publisher’s hands; and he conceives he shall promote the cause of humanity by giving publicity to the unvarnished narrative. It was written by James Scurry, lately deceased, who actually endured the cruelties which he describes.