The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1904-03-08
AN OHIO
LYNCHING
Mob BatterS in Door Of Spring
field Jail TO Get the Negro
Murderer of a Policeman.

SPRINGFIELD, o., March Sat II
O'clock last night the negro Richard
Dixon was taken from the jail and shot
to death in the jailyard here, and the
body was taken from there to the cor
ner Of Main street and Fountain ave-
nue. and hung to a telegraph pole, where
the mob spent the next half hour rid
ding the body with bullets from sew
eral hundred reyolvers.
The mob forced an entrance to the
Jail by butting in the east doors with e
railroad iron. At 1850 the mob melt
ed rapidly, and it was the general opln-
ion that no more attempts would be
made to force an entrance.
AT 10:45 the police were satisfied that
there was nothing more TO fear, and
they with other officials and newspa-
per men, passed freely in and out of
the Jail. Shortly before II o'clock d.
version was made by a small crowd
moving from the east doors around TO
the south entrance.
The police followed, and a bluff was
made at jostling them off the steps
leading up to the south entrance. The
crowd at this point kept growing,
while yells of Hold the police!"
Smash the doors!" Lynch the mig
gerV were made, interspersed with re-
volver shots
All this time the party with the
heavy iron railing was beating at the
east door, which shortly yielded to the
battering ram, as did the inner lattice
iron doors. The mob then surged
through the east door, overpowered
the sheriff, turnkey and handful Of
deputies and began the assault on the
iron turnstile leading to the cells.
The police from the south were
called inside to help keep the mob
from the cells, and in five minutes the
south door had shared the fate of the
east one.
In an incredibly short time the jail
was filed by a mad mob of $50 men,
with all the entrances and yard gates
blocked by fully 100 men, thus max
ing it impossible for the militia to have
prevented access to the negro had it
been on the scene. The heavy iron par
tition leading to the cells resisted the
mob efIectually until cold chisels and
sledge hammers arrived. which were
only two or three minutes later in ar
irving
The paddock to the turnstile was
broken, and the mob soon filed the
corridors lending to the cells. Seeing
thst further resistance was useless
and to avoid the killing of innocent
prisoners, the authorities consented to
the demand Of the mob for the right
man. He was dragged from the cell
to the jail door and thence down the
stone steps TO the paved court 10
the Jail yard. Fearing an attempt on
the part of the police to rescue him,
the leaders formed a hollow square.
Some one knocked the negro to the
ground, and those near to him fell |
back four or five feet
Nine shots were fired into his pros
trate body, and, satisfied that he was
dead dozen men grabbed the lifeless
body, and with a triumphant cheer the
mob surged into Columbia street and
marched TO Fountain avenue, one Of |
the principal thoroughfares in the !
town, where the body was hung up |
and riddled with bullets.
Coils was shot by Dixon while the |
latter was in his room in a hotel here
his baggage. He had decid- |
ed to quit the place, and, fearing trou-
bic with Anna Corbin, a woman with |
whom he was acquainted, Dixon asked |
Coils to go to the hotel with him. |
While in his room Dixon and Miss |
Corbn quaUeled, and Dixon is said to |
have shot her in the breast. The po-
liceman then attempted to arrest Dix
on, when the latter fired into the Off
GERS body, inflicting fatal wounds.