The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1916-10-18
ANGRY MOB HANGS .
ANDBURNS BODIES
Of Two Negro Men At
Paducah, KY.
FIVE THOUSAND SPECTATORS
Watch Double Lynching-Siege
and Hanging Process Last.
ed Five Hours.
ARMED MEN STORM THE JAIL


Paducah, Ky, Oct. 16.--Hanging
4 Brack Kinley, a negro, accused of
an assault on a white woman, and
Jesse Thornhill, another negro, who
made a remark deploring the pro-
posed{lynching, to the same limb, a
mob of 500 armed men and boys,
who had stormed the McCracken
county Jail seized Kinley at noon to-
day, fired about 1900 shots into the
writhing bodies of their victims and
then set them OH fire.
The double lynching followed a
siege and assault of the county Jail,
which lasted for five hours and Gull
minated in the negro Kinley being
taken to the scene of the assault
Friday on Mrs. Eta Rose, wife of
G. d. Rose, a mechanic at the Illi-
nois Central shops here, who had
Z been robbed, beaten and criminally
assaulted by negro at her home, a
mile from the city on the Poole road.
Mrs. Rose identified Kinley as her
assailant
The negro Thornhill, an employe
at the Illinois Central shops, was ov-
erheard TO remark that the lynch
ing was a dirty shame and he didn't
blame Kinley." He was seized by
members of the mob, searched and
relieved of a loaded revolver and
hanged by the mob first. Thornhill,
it is alleged. had threatened to kill
some white man."
AS the negroes We're choking to
death the mob fired fully 1000
shots into their bodies and then
} built fire under them. The flames
J caught the hanging mems clothing,
and in Ea,f an hour the ropes We're
burned in two. The burning bodies
dropped icto the fire below and We're
consumed.
While Einley was presented to
! Mrs. Rose for her Identification, the
other was taken to a tree, rope
thrown over a limb, his neck en-
circled in a moose and an automobile
Mtchad to the other end. As soon
as Kinley had been identified as the
assailant of the woman, he was led
to the same tree and the process re-
peated.
Five thousand men, women and
children witnessed the lynching.
Hundreds went in automobiles to
the scene of the hanging. For sew
cral days a lynching had been threat
ened openly on the streets. A mob
had pursued the negro after the as
sault on Mrs. Rose Friday, threat
ening summary vengeance. The mob
began gathering shortly after 6
o'clock this morning and the lynch
ing occurred just before noon.
The spectators mounted a rail-
road trestle in the immediate vicin-
ity, one of the points OF vantage.
While Kinley was taken to the Rose
home, the leaders of the mob resolv-
ed to hang Thornhill. Pleading for
his life, the boy was bound and ex-
ecuted. In few minutes it was an
nounced that Mrs. Rose had satisfi-
ed herself of the identity of Kinley.
He was hanged to the same tree and
a number of shots fired into his
body. Quietly and methodically the
mob gathered quantity of wood,
built fire and placed the bodies of
both negroes upon 1t.
By order of the Board of City
Commissioners all saloons in Padu-
cab were closed at noon as a pre-
caution against a possible race riot.
This was the first lynching in Nc
Cracken county for about twenty
FIVE years.
Only few of the members of the
mob were masked. There was no
attempt by the sheriff's Office or the
police to arrest any of the lynchers.
The mob stormed the Jail, held
the jailer and deputies at bay and
chiseled the bars Of the cell con-
tanning Kinley.
II was the expressed determine
ton of the mob to make sure that
the negro was the woman's assailant
by having'ber identify him. in which
event they said they intended to
! hang him.