The Corvallis times. (Corvallis, Or.) 1888-1909, 1903-10-07
Ohio MOB is FOILED
THREE MEN CAUSE RIOTAND
NARROWLY ESCAPE
LYNCHING.

| atd1iy OuoI-OpiVeys StlI OP
the Town-One of the
Spivevs Hanged Three
Times.
| Oxford, O.. Oct. 2.-Five men
were seriously injured and one nar-
rowly escaped lynching several
times as the result of last evenings
riot at this place.
Three brothers by the name of
Spivey were visiting Edward Rich
ardson, of Billingsville, IDd., just
across the state line from Oxford.
The three came to attend the annu.
al street fair and farmers exposi-
ton. The stown was filled with
strangers when these three men be-
gan carousing in saloon. They
pulled their revolvers on the bar
tender. who elected them, and they
proceeded to raise more trouble in
lother saloons. When Marshal Wood
roof undertook to arrest them he
was mortaliy shot. A fusillade of
shots at the crowd followed. Dep
uty Marshal Manrod was shot twice
when he took the place of his chief.
During this fusillade in the street,
Ernest Jotten, while returning from
his school to his boarding house,
was struck in the abdomen by a
stray bullet, and he is now in a
critical condition.
! After the shooting the three men
ran in different directions, with
crowds after each, and each was hit
in the head by >stones thrown by
those pursuing them. Louis Spivey
was shot by citizen. The excite
mens was intense when the three
men were finally lodged in Jail af-
ter running a mile from the scene
hof the shooting.
The crowds that had been pur-
suing the three men in different di-
rections finally concentrated about
tie Jail and battered down the doors
and took Joseph Spivey out to
Lynch him. There possibly never
was such an experience of any one
as his in the hands Of a mob. He
was hauled from place to place with
a rope about his neck and swung up
three different times, and yet es-
capped with his life. In their haste
the mob did not pinion his arms or
his legs, and he managed to use
them so as to prevent strangulation
the first time he was hung. Auoth.
er time he was let down so that he
might write farewell letter to his
wife and children, and at another
time some one cut the rope. Be-
fore the mob finally succeeded in
hanging him until dead the officers
grabbed him and rushed him off to
the city prison, where the mob was
held at bay for some time, and fin
ally order was secured enough for
speeches to be made by Mayor Flan-
nigan, Rev. Thomas J. Potter and
the brother of Marshall Woodruff.
While the speeches we're being de-
livered the officers spirited the
Spivey boys into the cellar of the
| jail and thence out through a coal
chute and made their escape with
them to the Butler county Jail at
Hamilton, O., distance of Is
miles. The mob finding then it
bad been beaten, dispersed, and the
village was quiet during the latter
part of the night.
This village with its three large
institutions of learning, ia noted for
its culture and order, but itwas the
scene over a year ago of the lynch
ing of Henry Gerber, a negro, for
the murder of Mrs, Horner, and a
striking feature of the attempted
lynching last night was the part
taken by the negroes, who protest
ed every time the rope was slacken-
ed and Joseph Spivey was let down
to say his prayers, write to his wife
and children or for any other pur-
pose of mercy. Some of the negroes
raised quite a disturbance while
proclaiming that if the man had
been a negro he would surely have
been lynched in the first place with
out any one giving heed to his ap.
peals.
The mob was without leader
at any time, but still it would not
have been foiled but for heappeals
of Woodruff's brothers to let the
law take it's course.
The physicians attending the
Spivey brothers, two of the five
men injured in the riot last evening
report both today in serious con-
dition. Louis. who was shot by
citizens who were assisting the of