Vigilante Justice Narrowly Averted in Roslyn
A mob of men attempted to lynch a laborer near Roslyn before word arrived that the alleged crime had not been completed.
A Pole charged with rape came near paying the penalty to Judge Lynch, at Roslyn, a few days ago. He was taken to the woods by a crowd of incensed men, who had made their plans to string him up, but a messenger brought them word that the Pole had failed to accomplish his purpose and they let him go, with instructions to travel as fast and as far as possible, which counsel the amorous brute took advantage of without delay.
“He was taken to the woods by a crowd of incensed men, who had made their plans to string him up.”
This account captures the brutal, extrajudicial nature of frontier labor towns in the late 19th century, where racial tensions and 'Judge Lynch' reigned in the absence of stable civil order. It reflects the dangerous vulnerability of immigrant workers in Washington's mining camps, a history of exclusion that persists in the study of regional labor struggles.
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