Vigilante Justice Looms in Asotin
A town sits on the edge of a riot following a deadly fire and accusations of arson.
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 week, the City Hotel in Asotin, Washington, burned down, resulting in the death of Frank Sherry. Evidence of incendiarism pointed so strongly to John Myers, the estranged husband of the hotel operator, that he was arrested and held on $3,000 bond. Friends of the deceased from Montgomery Ridge arrived in town thirty strong, threatening to lynch the prisoner. Sheriff authorities were forced to transport Myers across the river to Lewiston, Idaho, to avoid the mob. The party followed, and the Sheriff was ultimately forced to take the prisoner further away as the community remains in a state of dangerous ferment.
“The party, bent on lynching, followed, and finally the sheriff was obliged to take the prisoner farther away.”
The threat of mob violence in response to perceived failures of the justice system was a grim reality of the 19th-century West. This account captures the tension between frontier-style retributive 'justice' and the formal, if slow, legal apparatus of the state.
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