A Terrible Story BRUTAL INHUMANITY OF A MOB.

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 69, 11 December 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Terrible Story BRUTAL INHUMANITY OF A MOB.

The Naples correspondent of the Daily News gives the following horrible story just as it is reported in the Pungolo of October 12. San Giovanni a Teduecia is the first small town from Naples which forms a continual line of street, together with Porfciea, Resina, and the rest, and is not more than half an hour distant from Naples : — "A fact occurred at San Giovanni a Teduecia on October 9 which seems incredible, but is quite true. A poor mad woman, falsely believed to have hydrophobia, waa followed in the streets of the tows by a mob intent on killing her. Especially one man repeatedly who took up a big 1 stone with both hands, and threw it at her. The unhappy creature fell under the blows, rising only to fall again. The crowd waa inspired by the brutal fury so easily propagated in a mob when it believes itself justified in executing summary justice on some miserable creature — a fury that is only increased at the sight of blood. There was actual rivalry as to who should giv© the murderous final blow. Women threw stones, chairs, whatever came first to hand. Strong young men struck at the poor maniac with thick sticks. "Weak and dizzy with pain, the unfortunate creature crawled along, her face covered with blood and dirt. In this state she reached the house of the head-police-man, who stood regarding Ihe scene with crossed arms from the causeway, surrounded by his subordinates. It was a new kind of spectacle. On one side this group of 'mustachioed Carabineers and municipal police, some of them very young and showing evident signs of fear ; on the other, the poor crawling woman, abandoned to the mob, who now proceeded to bind her. In fact a slip knot was made in a rope, and passed round her neck, and she was thus dragged along the ground into a court-yard, her head strikingthe pavement repeatedly. Then her feet were tied with another rope, and her hands with a string. But the owner of the courtyard drove her out again, upon which the mob fastened her by the rope round her neck to a string on the closed door, and by the rope round her feet to a post opposite. Now she was safe, and the mob began to mock her, having no longer any fear. At every movement of her body the slip knot tightened. Someone, rather more humane than his fellows, relieved her of this rope, on which she fell to the ground, striking her head against the edge of the causeway. There was -np one'; among that brutal crowd who thought of placing a pillow ! or a bundle of straw to support her wounded head. ! And what were the police doing ? The head delegate stood with crossed arms regarding the scene, with his subordinates around him. Finally it entered his head to send, f the . mad woman to the asylum, and, after an hour's delay, there arrived one of the wooden boxes used to transport the corpses. It was, of course, destitute of all that was necessary to transport a living, and, above all, a wounded person. Into this box or coffin the unhappy lunatic was dragged by the hair, the cover was placed over her, and she was carried off, while foT sometime was heard dull thuds, as her limbs, struggling in delirium, struck the sides of the wooden box. The unhappy woman had become insane because her husband, a mason, fell from a scaffolding and was killed on the spot."