Vigilante Violence in Roslyn
A saloon keeper is dragged from jail and lynched by a mob after a deadly dispute over a two-dollar debt.
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Roslyn has made a dark record for itself of late by the many murders committed there, and Tuesday there was another one followed by a lynching the following morning. The affray grew out of a two-dollar debt between two white men. Trotman, a saloon keeper whose place was recently closed by authorities, asked Thomas, a miner, for money he was owed. When Thomas said he would pay as soon as he could, Trotman pulled a gun and shot him. Thomas fired back but missed. Trotman was arrested and jailed, but Wednesday morning around 7:30, a mob of citizens and miners broke into the jail with crowbars, took Trotman to a roundhouse, and hanged him from the rafters. Trotman leaves behind a wife and family in Colorado; he had reportedly fled that state after committing a murder there.
“The mob was unmasked and seemed to have been composed of all classes.”
This event captures the era of frontier vigilantism in Washington's coal towns, where state authority was often bypassed by organized mobs. While Roslyn is now a historic landmark known for its film and coal-mining heritage, this incident serves as a grim reminder of the volatility inherent in 19th-century labor camps.
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