Vigilante Mob Targets Ballard Policeman
A vigilante mob descended on a Ballard home demanding that an acquitted police officer flee the county within 24 hours.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Last night, fifty or sixty people living in Ballard were looking for Thomas Henry, the Ballard policeman who was on Thursday acquitted on the charge of murder for killing H. Hendrickson on June 15 last. Many people believed that the shooting was a cold-blooded crime, and there was great indignation among them at the result of the trial. The feeling against Henry has been very bitter among the dead man's friends, and especially those of his own nationality. Henry went to Ballard yesterday, and was about town all day. His presence there excited those who believed him to be a criminal, and especially some of the dead man's Scandinavian friends. Knots of men gathered on the streets and discussed the shooting and the acquittal, and there were mutterings and many threats of lynching. Hearing these, the authorities were on the alert for any demonstration, and during the evening two watchmen went over to Henry's house to notify him to be on his guard, but he was gone. About 11 o'clock a mob formed and proceeded to Henry's house and, finding he was not there, went to the residence of Frank Frazier, where Mrs. Henry had been seen, and where they supposed the husband might also be found. They knocked at the door and wanted to get in, but Mrs. Frazier and Mrs. Henry were so frightened that they would not open the door. The mob then wanted the women to open the window so that they could hand a note in. The women refusing to do this, the note was then shoved under the door. It was addressed to Henry, and ordered him to leave King county within twenty-four hours or he would have to take the consequences. After leaving this warning the mob quietly departed.
“There were mutterings and many threats of lynching.”
This incident captures the volatile nature of justice in 1890s Ballard, then a separate town with its own distinct, often immigrant-heavy social fabric. While modern Seattle is arguably less prone to vigilante house calls, the tension between neighborhood-level community justice and formal legal acquittal remains a recurring theme in urban civic life.
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