"Confessions of a Thug" is a real-life account of a thug as told to the author Meadows Taylor in 1820.
"A strange page in the book of human life is this! Thought I, as he left the room. That man, the perpetrator of so many hundred murders, thinks on the past with satisfaction and pleasure; nay, he takes a pride in recalling the events of his life, almost every one of which is a murder, and glories in describing the minutest particulars of his victims, and the share he had in their destruction, with scarcely a symptom of remorse! Once or twice only has he winced while telling his fearful story; and what agitated him most at the commencement of his tale I have yet to hear ..." writes Meadows Taylor.

Who were the thugs? How did they look? What were the appearances of their victims. It is to address these questions that illustrations have been included in this publication. Two sources – both contemporary to Confessions of a Thug – have been relied upon for this purpose : pen and ink drawings by J.Lockwood Kipling (father of Rudyard Kipling) and water color portraits from an album commissioned by Colonel James Skinner - the illustrated "Tashrih al-aqvam" (an account of origins and occupations of some of the sects, castes, and tribes of India). These illustrations give valuable details of features, appearance, mode of dressing and the immediate surroundings of a variety of subjects one would find in Northern India in the early 1800’s.