Santa Rosa, Cal. (1920)
Dec. 10, 1920: Two men and a woman suspected of rape, and the
murder of the county sheriff and two deputies who were investigating the rape,
were taken from the jail and hanged by a mob described as “50 to 100 men.”
Category: lynching
Suicide: No
Cause: impatience with legal procedures
Weapon: hanging[1]
[1] “Mob
Lynches Three Brutes in California,” [Marshalltown, Ia.] Evening Times-Republican, Dec. 10, 1920, 1; “Deputies Guard Santa
Rosa Jail,” Chattanooga News, Dec. 6,
1920, 1.
The first account describes the mob breaking down the jail door by using a telegraph pole as battering ram. That must have been a sight to see. Medievalism, meet Samuel Morse.
Mob rule is vicious, often evil, and completely undermines the concept of responsible government.
ReplyDeleteGiven that we haven't seen a responsible government in America since FDR, it gives one pause to consider that the biblical insistence on "an eye for an eye" (the law of retaliation) might have some validity in certain cases.