Chapter ALPEEN to A MUCK of A by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Insults, and, if I had not Permission in three Days, I would run a Muck (which is a mad Custom among the Mallayas when they become desperate).”— A. Hamilton, ii. 231.

1737.—

“Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet
To run a muck, and tilt at all I meet.”

Pope, Im. of Horace, B. ii. Sat. i. 69.

1768-71.—“These acts of indiscriminate murder are called by us mucks, because the perpetrators of them, during their frenzy, continually cry out amok, amok, which signifies kill, kill…”—Stavorinus, i. 291.

1783.—At Bencoolen in this year (1760)— “the Count (d’Estaing) afraid of an insurrection among the Buggesses .… invited several to the Fort, and when these had entered the Wicket was shut upon them; in attempting to disarm them, they mangamoed; that is ran a muck; they drew their cresses, killed one or two Frenchmen, wounded others, and at last suffered themselves, for supporting this point of honour.”—Forrest’s Voyage to Mergui, 77.

1784.—“It is not to be controverted that these desperate acts of indiscriminate murder, called by us mucks, and by the natives mongamo, do actually take place, and frequently too, in some parts of the east (in Java in particular).”—Marsden, H. of Sumatra, 239.

1788.—“We are determined to run a muck rather than suffer ourselves to be forced away by these Hollanders.”—Mem. of a Malayan Family, 66.

1798.—“At Batavia, if an officer take one of these amoks, or mohawks, as they have been called by an easy corruption, his reward is very considerable; but if he kill them, nothing is added to his usual pay…” —Translator of Stavorinus, i. 294.
1803.—“We cannot help thinking, that one day or another, when they are more full of opium than usual, they (the Malays) will run a muck from Cape Comorin to the Caspian.”—Sydney Smith, Works, 3rd ed., iii. 6.

1846.—“On the 8th July. 1846, Sunan, a respectable Malay house-builder in Penang, ran amok .… killed an old Hindu woman, a Kling, a Chinese boy, and a Kling girl about three years old .… and wounded two Hindus, three Klings, and two Chinese, of whom only two survived.… On the trial Sunan declared he did not know what he was about, and persisted in this at the place of execution.… The amok took place on the 8th, the trial on the 13th, and the execution on the 15th July,—all within 8 days.”—J. Ind. Arch., vol. iii. 460-61.

1849.—“A man sitting quietly among his friends and relatives, will without provocation suddenly start up, weapon in hand, and slay all within his reach.… Next day when interrogated .… the answer has invariably been, “The Devil entered into me, my eyes were darkened, I did not know what I was about.” I have received the same reply on at least 20 different occasions; on examination of these monomaniacs, I have generally found them labouring under some gastric disease, or troublesome ulcer.… The Bugis, whether from revenge or disease, are by far the most addicted to run amok. I should think three-fourths of all the cases I have seen have been by persons of this nation.”—Dr T. Oxley, in J. Ind. Archip., iii. 532.

[1869.—“Macassar is the most celebrated place in the East for ‘running a muck.’ ” —Wallace, Malay Archip. (ed. 1890), p. 134.]

[1870.—For a full account of many cases in India, see Chevers, Med. Jurisprudence, p. 781 seqq.]

1873.—“They (the English) .… crave governors who, not having bound themselves beforehand to ‘run amuck,’ may give the land some chance of repose.”—Blackwood’s Magazine, June, p. 759.

1875.—“On being struck the Malay at once stabbed Arshad with a kriss; the blood of the people who had witnessed the deed was aroused, they ran amok, attacked Mr Birch, who was bathing in a floating bath close to the shore, stabbed and killed him.” —Sir W. D. Jervois to the E. of Carnarvon. Nov. 16, 1875.
1876.—“Twice over, while we were wending our way up the steep hill in Galata, it was our luck to see a Turk ‘run a muck’ .… nine times out of ten this frenzy is feigned, but not always, as for instance in the case where a priest took to running a-muck on an Austrian Lloyd’s boat on the Black Sea, and after killing one or two passengers, and wounding others, was only stopped by repeated shots from the Captain’s pistol.”—Barkley, Five Years in Bulgaria, 240-41.

1877.—The Times of February 11th mentions a fatal muck run by a Spanish sailor, Manuel Alves, at the Sailors’ Home, Liverpool; and the Overland Times of India (31st August) another run by a sepoy at Meerut.

1879.—“Running a-muck does not seem to be confined to the Malays. At Ravenna, on Monday, when the streets were full of people celebrating the festa of St John the Baptist, a maniac rushed out, snatched up a knife from a butcher’s stall and fell upon everyone he came across ..... before he was captured he wounded more or less seriously 11 persons, among whom was one little child.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 1.

„ “Captain Shaw mentioned … that he had known as many as 40 people being injured by a single ‘amok’ runner. When the cry ‘amok! amok!’ is raised, people fly to the right and left for shelter, for after the blinded madman’s kris has once