The ms. contains 31 pieces (some dealing with the same affair) focusing on the sanctions incurred by officials for mistakes or negligence (失察, 疏放), lack of exertion (不力), or missing deadlines, in the management of homicides. The sometimes fairly long documents, issued by higher offices and transmitted by the Ministry of Personnel, go over the affairs in detail in order to determine the precise dates from which deadlines are calculated or establish the circumstances of administrative mistakes and the list of officials involved. Reports from magistrates, autopsy reports, and testimonies are sometimes lengthily quoted. Most documents deal with the incapacity of officials to arrest or even identify the criminal. Some of them are “models,” the title ending with the character shi 式, with blank spaces for dates and the character mou 某 instead of person, place, or office names. All the affairs recorded happened in Hunan and occurred between 1764 and 1804. The ms. was apparently kept at some point in the yamen of Chenzhou 郴州 (Hunan). (There were only two department magistrates named Hu in the nineteenth century: Hu Jun 胡鈞, appointed in 1836, and Hu Lizhen 胡禮箴, appointed in 1852; see Hunan TZ [1885], 122/17b.)