"AN ORDERLY MOB."

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3030, 12 March 1881, Page 4

"AN ORDERLY MOB."

Lynching appears to have been carried a little too far in Tennessee of late. A mob of lynchers, seven in number, disguised with their hats drawn down, and nearly all their fnce3 covered with handkerchiefs, broke open tbe gaol of Springfield with a view of lynching three negroes imprisoned there ; two of thorn—Bell and Jarnieson — charged with the murder of a man named Deprade, and the third, Eamsey, with shooting a young lady who refused to marry him. Bell and Jamieson were soon secured, by the mob ; but Eamsey, who anticipated the coming of the lynchers, and expressed his intention of selling his life dearly, proved an awkward customer to deal with. Retreating behind the door of his cell, armed with a heavy hickory club, he fought for an hour like a wild beast afc bay. Coal oil was thrown into the cell and ligiited paper hurled after it, but without success. Shot after shot was fired at Ramsey, who at last fell dead in a pool of blood. The lynchers then took the other two negroes who had witnessed Ramsey's fight and death to a place about seven miles from the town and hanged them on dogwood trees with " a card small but strong that cut far into the flesh." A quieter, more orderly mob," says the Nashville American, "|there neverwas." The information which led to the hanging of these two men was extracted from a negro, by name Jim Higgins, a few evenings before the lynching took place, by a party c? men who, asking him out of the prison in which he was confined on suspicion of being implicated in the murder, swung him to a limb of a tree for a few minutes, let him down, and told him that if he did not confess they would burn him alive. As he still proved obstinate they tied him down, piled leaves upon him, and put fire to the soles of his feet. They continued to apply this torture to him until at last he implicated Eell and Jamieson. Oil and soda were then applied to his feet, and he was given several drinks of whiskey • but the gaol physician, by latest accounts, pronounces him to be in a most critical condition, his toes having been completely roasted.—Pall Mall Gazette.